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Whether he holds great power or is just a figurehead, the ultimate measure of a king’s success is whether he continues his line. He might conquer the whole world by force and brilliant strategy, but if he has no heir, his accomplishment will be completely unwoven by the competing warlords in the vacuum of power. [...]

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. Since the [...]

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 a Heaven [...]

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 are free of [...]

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 are like works [...]

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 time I encountered [...]

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 the poem, but [...]

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 metaphor [...]

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 [...]