I accidently opened World Without End, and wound up reading the last 150 pages or so again. That book is still incredible, and I urge anyone who wants to enjoy a thrilling, mentally stimulating, emotionally wrenching tale to read it. Just make sure you have a good chunk of time stored away for it.
What do you get when you take a dating site and hand all the data over to people who like doing data analyses? OkTrends, the OkCupid blog. I found the most recent article (at time of this writing, of course) fascinating. It's really cool to look at what people of different backgrounds say about themselves.
This is kinda turning into a linkdump, but I consistently love reading Dan Ariely's work on how people are predictably irrational (watch his TED talk, and how to work around said limitation. I found this article particularly illuminating on what brings close friends together, and how such relationships are maintained. It's not by talking about the obvious or casual or easy things that we make our deep friendships - it's by making ourselves vulnerable, finding points of likely disagreement, and then seeing that maybe we're not so different after all. Or if we are, then we may at least come to appreciate and respect each other's views. I may write more on this at some future point, since I consider it important.
Also, I'm apparently a nitwit - atom:id is supposed to be an IRI. Like, oh, say, http://zarvox.org/shortlog/2010/09/27. I'll hyperlink that as soon as it can become valid. (UPDATE: Successfully implemented on 2010-10-07.)