I was musing today over the three wise men who followed the new star to a barnyard and gave, not the parents, but the newborn, gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And what the child later would have thought had they given gifts of bitcoins, samples of the latest fragrances and a tree to plant and save the planet. I wonder.

Typically, the gifts we give and receive are enmeshed in feelings, imagination and hope. As a child bitcoins, unseen as they are, wouldn’t have evoked any feelings o...

IN a recent BBC News article, Google engineer Blake Lemoine is stated to have claimed that one of the firm’s artificial intelligence (AI) systems called Lamba might have its own feelings and says its “wants” should be respected — https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61784011 — which seems to have created quite a buzz. Mr Lemoine published a conversation he and a collaborator at the firm had with Lamda, to support his claims.

Brian Gabriel, a spokesperson for the firm, wrote in a sta...

THERE is something faster than the irritating “Fast Eddies” — con men, women and children (see yesterday’s post) — playing so prominent a role in contemporary society. Emotions.

Before I go on, I would like to make a critical distinction between emotions and feelings which are too often lumped injudiciously together. By “emotions” I mean the body’s release of circulating chemicals either in a local blood vessel plexus or the general blood stream. Okay, let’s call them what ...

LATELY, I have been delving into the dark sea of neurobiological “romance” that ebbs and tides so strongly about human relations, especially sex. In essence, romance is about assuring each other of conjugal safety, trust, fidelity and devotion while releasing the sexual tigers within. A quixotic, even paradoxical thing, romance. And it has to happen in the above sequence to be most effective and ultimately, satisfying, both in the short and long term.

The neurobiology of romance suggests...