5) "We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations, their obligations as teachers. We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there's not this kind of federal cufflink."

6) "Let us dispense with the rhetoric and look at the difference, the difference between foreign substances and the patient's own cells."

7) "NIH is very important to that institution providing money to back basic research."

8) "And, you know, hopefully, condoms will work, but it hasn't worked."

In my humble opinion, the machine (or maybe I should say the distinguished representative of a digital constituency) has passed the test with flying colors, and, as Turing's logic inescapably leads us to conclude, has earned the respect accorded any high-ranking political hopeful. In fact, I have been looking into getting it into the presidential debates but with no luck as yet. We have witnessed a serious step in the evolution of computer consciousness. While we cannot really think of a computer running this "babbler" program as having a fully human-like intelligence, we can consider it to be a viable presidential candidate. Well, to be fair, this "artificial" candidate has one major advantage over its flesh-and-blood cousin--with a flick of a switch its inane babbling is silenced.

B.J. Greenleaf '01 is a physics concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.