the qualia journal

I was talking with my best chum Yoshi Tamori. Yoshi is a mathematical genius. He likes to talk about iterations and infinities. One of Yos...

I did not understand the philosophy of the hibutsu (secret Buddha) until I chanced upon one a few years ago. To treat a Buddha statue as a h...

When I was 15, I learned about the Game of Life invented by John Horton Conway. The idea immediately fascinated me. I used to calculate g...

Albert Einstein famously said that "imagination is more important than knowledge". If I may add a humble something to the words of...

I travel quite often on the Shinkansen . It is quite efficient, and is an indispensable infrastructure for the contemporary life of Japan. T...

Soseki Natsume , in his beautiful collection of essays "Inside My Glass Doors", recalls a woman who visited him at his domicile to...

Everybody has a right to live, pursue happiness, and enjoy the small things in life. Of course, when the chips are down, and we are at the m...

There was a poignant obstinacy in Albert Einstein's effort to come up with an unified field theory in his later years. Einstein's re...

So I have been reading "Anne of Windy Willows" in the toilet. Classics have many hidden truths that you discover when you re-read...

Many interesting problems can be stated in 10 seconds, like "what's the relationship between the brain and mind?" or "do ...

When I was seven, I thought I discovered how to create a stone. It was during the summer holidays. I was playing with mud near house, mixing...

In the favorite novel of my youth "Anne of Windy Willows" (aka "Anne of Windy Poplars", but I somehow prefer the Willow...

Whenever I encounter an interesting person I try to strike up a conversation. The other day I was running in the park forest. I chanced upon...

There are certain areas of spiritual tradition that leaves you bewildered in a special and indescribable impression when you are there. The ...

One of the cute and poignant things I encountered during my recent stay in Hong Kong was the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden. There you could tak...

In the Christmas Special episode ("Party Games") of my favorite British political comedy, "Yes, Minister", Sir Arnold, t...

The fifth Asia-Pacific Computing and Philosophy Conference. 1st & 2nd October, 2009, at University of Tokyo You are invited to submit an...

When I was a kid, I used to imagine that it is always sunset somewhere on earth. Actually, as the earth rotates on its axis, the relation to...

Findings in the cognitive neurosciences suggest that the orbitofrontal cortex, along with other loci, is involved in regret. Regret is fasci...

There are countless electrons in the universe, and yet they all have exactly the same mass and charge. Why should all the electrons have exa...