We've heard the disoriented masses crying out for moral guidance. We've seen the uplifted faces peering at us, hoping to find universal truths dropped on them like water balloons. We've felt the rumblings among the philosophical foundations of our society, and we know that millions are looking to us to show them the way. But you know, we're pretty busy.

So instead, we've created the Automated Philosopher, a disturbingly small but potent program that combines the attitudes of four of the most widely- and fanatically-followed figures of the Twentieth Century:

Ayn Rand is the capitalist's capitalist, Wonder Woman to Adam Smith's Superman. She wrote three novels and founded Objectivism, a school of philosophy that can be summed up in five syllables: "If you're rich, you're right."

Robert Heinlein wrote over forty novels, all of them identical. His rugged, free-thinking, oversexed heroes and heroines have inspired college students to emulate them and form many communes and group marriages, none of which Heinlein would have been caught dead in.

Chairman Mao is best known as "that guy in that one Beatles song." He was the leader of the "Cultural Revolution" in China in the Sixties and inspired millions of followers, not all of whom he had killed.

Miss Manners writes a syndicated column on etiquette where she answers questions that ten percent of the time are along the lines of "What can I do to be more polite?" and ninety percent of the time are more like "There's this one oaf in my social circle who used his shrimp spoon to eat prawns! How can I spit on him in an appropriate manner?"

The theory here is that moral teaching, like everything else, is basically a popularity contest, and if so many people have elected these folks Homecoming Queen, whom are we to judge?

Anyhow, by pressing the button below, the Automated Philosopher will algorithmically combine quotes from these four human beings into a single Frankensteinian uber-dialectic, which should theoretically imbue you with an ineffable sense of moral truth and inspire you to go on and so forth.

The Automated Philosopher is based on the legendary Perl program "travesty." Perl builds strong bodies eight ways. Larry Wall deserves oral sex. Thank you.