A little background: Once in a while, I'll stop by Gray's Bookstore, the local competitor to the UNCC bookstore, just to see what they've got. I stumbled across a neat book, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. I found it to be a surprisingly good read, despite the mildly humorous conflation of psychology and "science".
In looking up the link to The Moral Animal, I found that Matt Ridley—author of Genome and The Red Queen, which I also enjoyed—has also addressed the subject in The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, which has been added to my Amazon wishlist.
Enough babble. Follow the Continue reading... link for the actual "review".
]]>Linkrot warning: The article is quoted in its entirety because WBTV doesn't keep an archive, so the story link is going to change, then expire.
Two Alarm Fire Ruled Accidental
Monday, April 11, 2005
A two-alarm fire at the Farington Apartments have been ruled accidental, butt fire investigators have not released a cause.
More than 50 firefighters responded to the late afternoon fire near Fairview and Colony Roads.
Four apartment units were damaged by the fire, six others by water.
The American Red Cross assisted 24 people.
No one was injured.
Damage is estimaged at more a million dollars.]]>
See? I wasn't just making it up.
]]>From The Guardian.
]]>I think this shot must have been taken around Thanksgiving of 1985. This group of guys hung out in various configurations throughout the early '80s, and at some point during that time, each of them was my best friend. Pretty cool to have them all together in one shot.
]]>Update: Er, comments are back on but I haven't found where to allow registration. Sorry for the confusion.
Update: All right. Comments disabled until I can figure out what's going on. I'm getting an error that claims I haven't registered with TypePad, which is very wrong. Stay tuned. /sigh.
]]>Full text of the linked article after the jump in case the Sun's links rot after a time.
]]>Heard from Marc tonight. The twins are doing great. Baby A is a girl, and the other is a boy. Definitely. We're not entirely sure where he got it.
Turns out Betty and Shelly (and I) were hoping for girls, while Marc really hoped—'cause he's scairt—they'd both be boys. He'd've missed out. Girls are different, and somehow you've missed some critical education if you don't have at least one. Life, from another angle. He's helped a couple of boys grow already, so it'd be fun to watch him raise girls. With Shelly. And Julie. And Betty. And Sherie (whose name I've probably misspelled). I'd buy tickets for that.
Matt got a job today. He's going to be selling designer cologne perfume knock-offs. I wasn't so sure at first, but the more I hear about it, the more it sounds like the sort of thing that could show him the direction he's looking for. It may not be the direction any of us are expecting, but it'll be right.
[Soapbox moment: For the record, I wholeheartedly approve of designer cologne knock-offs. Let's face it, they don't have the "gosh, all this r&d resarch costs so much" excuse the drug companies claim, and designing a pleasant smell isn't exactly an art form. But I smoke, so my sense of smell isn't that sharp. Hey! there's a market. Duh. Besides, perfume may be the only remaining area of IP law where Fair Use still exists, and it's still okay to reverse engineer and improve.]
Oh, by the way, Shelly has to stop shopping, or she's stuck with bedrest. Either that or Marc's going to have to get off his ass and start helping around the house. Something like that. Family is cool, huh? :-)
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