Rejoice, sheeple, because the NYT's blog called "The Stone" (HEH) is attempting to answer the eternal question, "What is a philosopher?" God, they go on so long. My fellow undergrad philosophy major dropouts already solved this ancient riddle long ago.

I couldn't abandon ship without saying goodbye to Julia Allison. Her birthday party was last night! And I know, I know: you're so over Julia Allison, Why do you keep posting about her? I'm tired of hearing about her! Etc.

Tony Judt's never been one to stand down. The Jewish, British, leftist historian and professor who's been called a self-hating antisemitic terrorist-sympathizer and a liberal-hater isn't one to back down. Ravaged by Lou Gehrig's disease, he's not pussying out, either.

"Have you ever stopped for a moment to consider that the cast of Jersey Shore are all secretly a bunch of classically trained actors playing roles created for them and that we, those of us who love to mock and ridicule Snooki, J-Woww, Pauly-D and The Situation, are being played HARD?" [Animal NY]

A New York Times reporter is never really broke until after he's spent all the money he got to write a book about how he went broke. [NYT]

Oh no! Susan Boyle actually has been kissed. The overnight Britain's Got Talent/YouTube singing sensation lied! Or was joking. Either way, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that we all stop the madness.

Salon's Cary Tennis and Slate's Prudence both hand out advice. Today, they happened to answer the same letter from a guy conflicted about spending his inheritance from grandma. Let's compare and contrast their responses.

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot who successfully landed an airplane in water, and kept everyone onboard alive, is a Hero. So how long until he ruins it? Or until we ruin it for him?

In YouTube form! Because, that's how we demand things of our leaders these days. Basically people are making mash-ups of the West Wing opening, but with Barack and his cabinet members being featured as cast members rather than Leo, CJ, and the gang. It's such a cute little dream of a wish!

We know it's been around the internet a couple times since yesterday, but we just find something so lovely and sad and telling about this photograph of a be-tube-topped Britney Spears, alone in a sea of asphalt, riding atop a tiny Escalade. Our Daytime Editor Alex Pareene says, "Here is your 21st century, America!" Here it is indeed. Puttering slowly in circles, bottled water clutched in hand, the hot sun beating down. Some days it feels as though we will do nothing else but form those lazy circles for the rest of time, until the day we all sigh, nod our heads, and disappear.

Novelist Nicholson Baker's new non-fiction tome, Human Smoke, details World War II through a series of wispy, "Gawker-like vignettes" of 100 to 200 words each. The New Republic's Anne Applebaum thinks that approach is crap.

Facebook investor Peter Thiel plans to pay someone who adheres to a "specific strain of Christian philosophy" $100,000 to $200,000 a year to give away his money. A tipster tell us that the strain is Stanford professor Rene Girard's. Girard's big idea is something he calls mimetic desire, which posits that the only reason I want a Wii so bad is because everybody else wants a Wii so bad. This is called the triangulation of desire. Girard has a 52-minute clip on the Web in which he explains how the theory relates to Christianity. Or, there's this clip from Grey's Anatomy, which YouTube user nefariouscarrot claims illustrates mimetic desire.

I know you've been dying to know what Britney Spears has to say on the whole Heath Ledger hullabaloo. Well, she's finally weighed in and her statement is as sad, telling, and oddly beautiful as one could hope. When asked about the young actor's death she says, while sitting in her car and lighting a cigarette, in a strange British-ish accent, "He's still here. No one ever really dies." If you care to, it's about a minute into this TMZ clip. The rest of the video is pretty existential too. Sigh. [TMZ]

Faded it-boy and friend to all races Fabian Basabe knows Oprah, good people, and he will not have you bad-mouthing her. From, ugh, his blog:

"Corporate entities are now kind of accepted in a way that's made them almost invisible to our sense of objective awareness that they're corporate entities," said Late Capitalism and Its Discontents 101 TA 'While You Were Sleeping' star Bill Pullman. Um, so ... what was he doing at a party thrown in honor of Tommy Hilfiger again? [NYO]