Nice, watchable Front Line documentary on finding the historical Jesus http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/watch/

Being Wrong , by Kathryn Shultz answers a were always afraid to ask:: Why do people have so many stupid ideas? Why do I have so many ideas that turn out to be stupid? Why will my wife NEVER admit she's wrong? Why do people have so many fixed opinions about subjects they know nothing about? Why are people so certain about what they remember, even when they completely mis-remember so many events in their lives? This book is about being wrong. Why are we wrong so often? Why does being wrong feel exactly like being right? How can people be so spectacularly wrong (Greenspan comes to mind). Shultz explores an impressive menagerie of wrongness, ways of being wrong, reactions to being wrong and ways to avoid admitting we are wrong. This is truly a much-needed reference book on one of the most basic and little appreciated of human experiences. You NEED to read this book, because you yourself will be wrong almost immediately. You need to know how it happened and how to deal with it. Sur...

As one who has spent a lifetime trying to motivate people, I can testify that we could all benefit greatly by sitting back and learning the facts about human motivation. A good friend who has recently been catapulted unwillingly into command of a significant enterprise revealed a common assumption about motivation. Basically, the only tool at her disposal was performance bonuses -- carrots. As a manager of a small company, I fumbled for years, trying to understand the motivations staff, clients and prospects. As a parent, I faced the common problem of finding a way to "build a fire" under a pair of teenagers. I frequently got it wrong. This book would have changed everything ... " Beyond Pleasure and Pain " is an exhaustive review of what we know about human motivation, on the basis of more than a century of experimentation. It turns out that most of us have no idea how motivation works. But it's not a dark mystery. On the basis of massive evidence, Higgins show...