(Note: I have consulted the highest authority available before posting this. The fact that he has not gotten around to answering is immaterial and irrelevant. So there.)

Dr. Miggle Windsock is reputed to be the most able computer programmer in the world. He also believes in witches. “These evil creatures, who have supernatural powers, are responsible for most of the things that go wrong in most people’s lives,” he says. “All a witch has to do is cast a spell, and your blind date turns out to be a disaster.”

And so he has done something about it–created a robot equipped with Artificial Intelligence for identifying witches, no matter how impenetrable their various disguises might be to ordinary people. “They can run,” he says, “but they can’t hide.”

Sorting out a plethora of clues according to some 300 subtle parameters–gee, I like the sound of that! Don’t you?–Dr. Windsock’s robot has already unmasked several dozen witches disguised as Wal-Mart greeters, crossing guards, real estate agents, and even a professional baseball player.

“Just letting people know who they are takes away a lot of their power,” says Dr. Windsock. “But the really indispensable step is political: the government has to re-criminalize the practice of witchcraft. That’ll be difficult, because there are so many witches currently in Congress and state legislatures. I don’t need my robot to identify them!”

But the success of the robot, Dr. Windsock says, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Artificial Intelligence “is a thing,” that it doesn’t depend on the mind-set or the intelligence of the programmer, and that anyone who questions it “is probably a witch, too, and needs to be dealt with accordingly.”