“…virtually everyone in a Mexican village over 5 or 6 years of age liked the burn of chili pepper, but that none of the animals in the village showed a preference for it, even though they ate the pepper daily as they consumed the leftovers of the day in the garbage”

Shirk : verb ‘To avoid work, duties or responsibilities, especially if they are difficult or unpleasant.’ [source: Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary ]

According to new research from Tadashi Sekiguchi associate professor of Game Theory at Osaka Prefecture University, and colleagues from Wakayama University and Kyoto University in Japan the answer is yes.

Should robots behave politely? Because, to some, it’s a given that in the not-too-distant future large numbers of people will be interacting with robots (domestic, public, corporate and perhaps even law-enforcement/military) on a frequent basis.

Can software automatically recognise celebrities? Hewlett-Packard (motto: Let’s do Amazing) believes so, and has recently published a paper on the feasibility of ‘Wikipedia-based Online Celebrity Recognition’.
Researchers Demiao Lin, Jianming Jin, and Yuhong Xiong, from HP Labs China have been investigating so-called Smart-Browsing on the www, and point out that : “Obviously, recognizing celebrity names is important for smart browsing.”