1. This should elicit at least a polite "heh" from people who relish the chance to explain the semantic difference between solipsism and narcissism (or egoism), which of course means anyone who can:

"Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?"

2. Is there ever a wrong moment to make an existential funny?

"Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, 'I'd like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.' The waitress replies, I'm sorry, Monsieur, but we're out of cream. How about with no milk?'"

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A few years ago I realized my favourite answer -- not journalism -- was depressing for someone who had already reserved a seat for himself or his child at one of Canada's more than 50 journalism programs.

That's right: 50. According to J-Source, the journalism website, there are 1,600 J-students at any given time preparing to work in an industry that has lost anywhere from one-third to half of its jobs in the last decade. The U.S. is always slightly ahead of us in trends, and in June the Chicago Sun-Times fired its entire photography staff, replacing it with iPhones for the remaining reporters. Since most reporters shoot about as well as most photogs spell, I'm breathlessly awaiting the next report of their declining circulation.

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HBO’s Game of Thrones returned for its third season on Sunday having already inspired a variety of media, from a Helmut Lang line of clothing to satires like School of Thrones, Game of Cats, and a ’90s version of the opening credits (set, of course, to Queen’s “I Want It All.”) Like the novels on which the show is partly based, Game of Thrones has resonated with viewers in a way that only a handful of shows have.

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It’s not as though there were a shortage of countries to experiment with libertarianism. There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

When you ask libertarians if they can point to a libertarian country, you are likely to get a baffled look, followed, in a few moments, by something like this reply: While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling.

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When New Yorker editor William Shawn (neatly portrayed by British actor Nicholas Woodeson) assigned Arendt to cover the Jerusalem trial of accused Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, he clearly knew he wasn’t going to get straightforward news reporting. A former prize pupil (and lover) of legendary philosopher and one-time Nazi Martin Heidegger, Arendt was already famous in academic circles for her books “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and “The Human Condition,” both of which remain influential works of 20th-century political thought. She was also a Jew who had fled Germany after the rise of Hitler and briefly been interned in a French detention camp before escaping to the United States.

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But Fiasco's Twitter presence is now at threat, as his management took control of his feed after the rapper prompted a conversation about Marxism:

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“I meant to read Marx my way when the time came.” So Jacques Derrida declared in an interview with Michael Sprinker in 1989. Four years later, the conference “Whither Marxism?” was going to give him the occasion to do just that: read Marx his way. That was also the year, of course, the Berlin Wall fell, and then the dominoes continued to fall all over the former Communist bloc. So — in the ruins of Marxism, on the grave (good riddance!) of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinism, or whatever name is finally settled upon for the monstrous construction that had just fallen apart — the time had finally come to read Marx.

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I'd like to tell you a couple of things about my personal life and then I would like to make a request. Two things happened this week; one brought joy and one brought pain. I was told I'm still cancer-free. And our dog died.

Three years after surgery and proton beam radiation therapy for a sacral chordoma there is no sign of recurrence. Dr. Christopher Ames of UCSF, toward whom I have the crazy mix of extreme emotions one can only have toward a surgeon who has opened one up and carefully cut away bone and tissue and helped to make one whole again, said, "Go enjoy your life." So Norma and I went and had lunch at the Cliff House, on whose deck we were married almost 20 years ago.

Then our dog died. He was the second of our two standard poodles to die within the last year. That was rough.

Now we have no more dogs to die. We feel strangely alone in the house.

So it's been up and down, as life is. Those of you who have loved dogs and seen them die, and/or who have gone through the terror and pain of cancer surgery and radiation, will relate. I say this not to ask for sympathy but to signal that you and I are not alone in these things. I know you are out there and I know you know what it is like.

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The latest organization to join media companies like Amazon and Netflix in producing original video content, the site's first series takes discussions from its "Explain Like I'm Five" subreddit to explain in-depth concepts in an easily digestible format.

From THR:

The "Explain Like I'm Five" subreddit, which the company says gets an estimated 4 million page-views monthly, was chosen because its discussion concept seemed fit for a video series.

The series features actors Michael Kayne and Langan Kingsley explaining broad topics to children in a classroom. The series covers diverse subject matter: "The Crisis in Syria," "Existentialism and Friedrich Nietzsche" and "The Volatility of the Stock Market" are the titles of the three episodes.

The ELIF series is produced by Jared Neumark, the founder of Landline TV and former co-director of content at College Humor. Each clip ends with a message pointing viewers to DonorsChoose.org, a online charity that helps provide teachers with classroom resources.

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Applied ethics is the application of moral theory to the real world. I first read the five books that we are going to talk about here 25 years ago, which was the beginning of a burgeoning of applied ethics, with people like Jonathan Glover and Peter Singer applying theory to real issues like euthanasia, capital punishment, poverty, distribution of income, animal rights, abortion – questions of life and death.

Talking of which, I understand you’re a bit of an expert on “trolleyology”. What is a trolley problem?

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It’s important to keep asking yourself the question, what am I doing with my life? Shall I go in new directions? Throughout history there have always been people who have been interested in this question. Tolstoy, for example, was always asking himself whether he was doing the right thing with his life.

Of course, the New Year is a great peg to hang these questions. The real issue, though, is how we go about making changes in our lives. I like to make a distinction between introspection and outrospection. In the 20th century we were obsessed with introspection – the idea that the way to find meaning in our lives is to look inside us, at our drives, motivations and priorities. That introspective approach really comes out of psychoanalysis and the self-help industry.

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And to give these forces names from the two races of men who have supplied the most signal and splendid manifestations of them, we may call them respectively the forces of Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism and Hellenism, - between these two points of influence moves our world.

Today as well — arguably to the greatest extent since the Enlightenment — the camps of religion and culture view each other with a deepening mutual distrust.

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“WHO WILL WILLINGLY DIE for [. . .] the EEC?”

When Benedict Anderson asked this sarcastic question in 1983, referring to the European Economic Community, a now-forgotten ancestor of today’s European Union, he did not have to add that, for better or worse, many people are willing to die for their nation. They’ve proved it, war after war after war. Anderson’s point was that nationalism moves mountains, but its potent we’re-all-in-it-together feeling tends to stop short at the border. The survival of your country may be capable of stirring your gutsiest emotions; the survival of the eurozone almost certainly isn’t. Unless you’re a banker.

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“I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer ... [but] I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy. I have a duty, and I execute the duty.” By their own accounts, drone pilots spend weeks stalking their targets -- observing the intimate patterns of their daily life such as playing with their children, meeting neighbors, talking to their wives -- before finding a moment when the family is away to launch the missile that will end their target's life. Afterward they drive home like any other commuter, perhaps stopping at a fast food restaurant or convenience store before coming home to their families for the night. “I feel like I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done, I just don’t deploy to do it.”

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Applied ethics should interest all but the most philosophy shy, as it poses moral questions of everyday use.

Applied ethics is the application of moral theory to the real world. I first read the five books that we are going to talk about here 25 years ago, which was the beginning of a burgeoning of applied ethics, with people like Jonathan Glover and Peter Singer applying theory to real issues like euthanasia, capital punishment, poverty, distribution of income, animal rights, abortion – questions of life and death.

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Shimon Edelman, a cognitive expert and professor of psychology at Cornell University, offers some insight in "The Happiness of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Good Life." In his new book, Edelman walks the reader through the brain’s basic computational skills – its ability to compute information, perform statistical analysis and weigh value judgments in daily life – as a way to explain our relationship with happiness. Our capacity to retain memories and develop foresight allows us to plan for the future, says Edelman, by using a mental “personal space-time machine” that jumps between past, present and future. It’s through this process of motivation, perception, thinking, followed by motor movement, that we’re able not only to survive, but to feel happy. From Bayes’ theorem of probability to Shakespeare’s "Romeo and Juliet," Edelman offers a range of references and allegories to explain why a changing, growing self, constantly shaped by new experiences, is happier than the satisfaction any end goal can give us. It turns out the rewards we get for learning and understanding the workings of the world really make it the journey, not the destination, that matters most.

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