Xamuel.com

Just when I was really getting used to my own mortality, a new concept had to come along and change everything: Quantum Immortality. You’ve heard of the Schrodinger’s Cat experiment: seal a cat in a box and arrange so the cat will get gassed if a quantum waveform collapses in a certain way. [...]

Two of the coolest things from Japan are: Ninjas and Koans. Mix them together and you get Ninja Koans. (Some of these, you’ll have to know what they’re a parody of in order to get the joke!;))
The Overly Clever Zen-master
The ninja Nobushige visited the Zen Master Haukin and asked: “Is there [...]

When I suggest people take work and jobs less seriously, a common reaction is: “I need money or else I’ll starve.” With technology continuing to obsolete human labor at a faster and faster pace, more and more jobs are gonna disappear, whether we take them seriously or not. A lot of people [...]

A Buddhist Koan is a short tale used to nudge people closer toward Zen enlightenment. Since I really appreciate and love these witty little verses, I decided I’d share some of my favorites here. At first, I thought I’d garnish them with some detailed commentary and analysis. Then I realized, the verses [...]

In most video games, you can save your progress so that if your character dies, you can restart at a savepoint. But in a few rare games, there’s permadeath: permanent, irrevocable death, with no ability to reload from the last save spot, no ability to “reincarnate” at the temple, nothing. The first [...]

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). It’s a very long poem, so it’s split into seven parts. The spelling of its name varies; sometimes “Rime” is spelt “Rhyme”, and sometimes “Ancient Mariner” is spelt “Ancyent Marinere”. There is a lot of archaic English throughout [...]

What awaits us at the end of this mortal journey? Is death like a deep sleep, or is it the exact opposite, a waking-up from a deep sleep? There are many different ways of viewing death, and each has its own unique consequences to how we spend life.
Death is……
……A Deep Sleep. This [...]

What would it be like to live to a thousand? The average human lifespan in the Western world is about 80 years old. In parts of Africa, it’s less than 40. There’s also a correlation with gender, women tending to have slightly more time in this mortal coil. That’s all statistics; an individual person’s life [...]

It’s easy to fall into routines and get distracted from what really matters. Sooner or later I’m going to die, and when that happens, a lot of the day-to-day stuff won’t matter: day-to-day habits that I performed like a robot. At the same time, those scripts might distract me from things that would matter when [...]

When I was in sixth grade, Mrs. Black had us do a very interesting science experiment which would have a subtle impact upon me all my life. We each took an empty 2-liter bottle home and filled it with various organic odds and ends: leaves, blades of grass, eggshells, tablescraps, and so on. The next [...]