There are several programs out there exploring the feasibility of an archive of human common sense. The two that I know of, OpenMind http://commonsense.media.mit.edu/cgi-bin/search.cgi and OpenCyc http://www.opencyc.org/ both seem to be coming along quite well. I present this to any intrepid programmer who's looking for something to do... interface this open source technology into HAL's architecture. I'm not a programmer myself, so I'm not too sure about how reasonable this would be at this point... but it's certainly something to get you thinking.