ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (05/22/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, May 21, 1986 11:27PM
Volume 6, Issue 86
Today's Topics:
Rube Goldberg logic favors Star Wars
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Date: 18 May 86 12:38:24 PDT (Sunday)
From: Hoffman.es@Xerox.COM
Subject: Rube Goldberg logic favors Star Wars
Reply-To: Hoffman.es@Xerox.COM
From the 'Los Angeles Times', May 16, 1986, in a long story about the
economically struggling raisin industry around Fresno:
Ernie Bedrosian is a captain of the raisin industry. He is a vital,
volatile man of 52 years, a packer so focused on the difficult task of
selling raisins that he has even explored the implications of President
Reagan's so-called "Star Wars" laser weapons and deemed that, from a
raisin point of view, they are good.
As Bedrosian tells it, Star Wars would eliminate the need for military
bases and missile sites in countries like Italy. Elimination of these
bases in turn would eliminate the need to coddle to the Italians. The
United States could slap a steep tariff on Italian wine coming into this
country, eventually scaring off the importers and creating a bigger
market for California vintners.
If California vintners sold more wine, they could crush more Thompsons
[grapes]. Crush more Thompsons and fewer would be dried into raisins.
Fewer raisins means the glut would subside, prices would climb and the
world of raisins would be a far more profitable, and happier, place.
"And so," he said, "I'm waiting for Star Wars to come."
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Try getting an AI inference engine to follow that train of thought!
-- Rodney Hoffman
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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