Category Archives: Life

Concert review: free jazz at Nanahari, Sep 19

The performers: Kevin McHugh from the US on piano, Hugues Vincent from France on cello, as well as an Australian clarinet player, and Japanese cello and flute players and a drummer. The venue: Nanahari – “seven needles”, 七針 – a small basement in Hachobori, east Tokyo, in an authentically Showa-era building. We are partly transported […]

Teilhard de Chardin, Nietzsche and individuation

On a friend’s recommendation I started reading Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man. De Chardin was a Jesuit and a paleontologist who in this work attempted to reconcile his Christian beliefs with evolution and natural selection. The result is an intense work of great ambition, rich with vivid metaphors. By chance I was leafing […]

What I’m reading at the moment

Some books that I’m reading at the moment. This isn’t to say that I’m likely to finish them all within the near future. Reading should be done at the right time and in the right context. Occasionally it’s natural to finish a book immediately after opening it, but more often I find myself waiting for […]

Identity games

I’ve recently seen the film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, based on John le Carré’s novel with the same name. In the 1970’s a TV series based on the same novel, with Alec Guinness as George Smiley, was very popular in Britain. This film, with Gary Oldman as the protagonist, is supposed to be something like […]

Entering into bioinformatics

As of now, I have been working with bioinformatics in the Mizuguchi lab at NIBIO, Osaka, for about two weeks. The lab environment is stimulating and I feel quite fortunate to be here. It is interesting to compare computer science and bioinformatics with just the hindsight of this short period. In computer science and electronics, […]