Jane: I saw a billboard saying cattle farmers are promoting international understanding.
Bill: How weird is that...
Jane: How weird is that? There's hidden information. How did you feel about math as a child?
So... at this point I should be able to say, "Jane, an appropriate response might be "Yes, I wasn't sure what to think about that either" or "Too weird for me!" and the input phrases would be linked to the previous conversation somehow.
Probably already available somehow, at the very least I know how to edit the Brain to fix that particular response, but I was thinking of a more general method to allow each person to give Hal a set of responses to common things that the user might say by habit. Let Hal get to know the user as it were, and have some ready reactions to their personal speech mannerisms.
Just an idea for anyone who wants it, I'm still working on the treknobabble plugin.