At the dawn of the stone age a tribe that lived at the top of a cliff discovered that the easiest way to attack their arch-rivals-- a tribe that lived at the bottom of the cliff-- was to drop big rocks on them. Some members of the tribe at the bottom of the cliff claimed that this symbolized the ultimate triumph of rocks over humanity. Others called that idea a bunch of hoo-haw. They realized that the rocks had not thrown themselves off the cliff-- they had been pushed.

Fortunately for all at the bottom of the cliff, this much-more sensible position prevailed and a counter-attack was devised. The next rock to plummet over the cliff struck the end of a log that had been balanced, like a see-saw, on a fulcrum. The impact caused the log to pivot and a rock that had been placed on the opposite end to fly high into the air. When it came down, it landed-- SPLAT!-- on the chief of the tribe at the top of the cliff.

The moral of the story is that if one wants to protect oneself from having rocks dropped on one's head, one must outwit the droppers, not the rocks.

For chess-players, Luddites and Philosophy department graduate students, May eleventh, 1997 is a date that will live in infamy. It was the day chess-master Gary Kasparov capitulated to IBM's super-computer 'Deep Blue'. Some people claimed this event symbolized the ultimate triumph of technology over humanity. Others called that idea a bunch of hoo-haw. Stuff like this, they said, had been happening for centuries.

While the Kasparov/Deep Blue match was pitched to the media as the ultimate contest between man and machine, it was really nothing of the kind. It was a match between Gary, (a guy who showed up one day to play chess), and several hundred other people who had spent twenty years and twenty million bucks to implant their own chess-playing decisions onto microchips.

Had I been sitting in Gary's chair, I would have employed the classic 'Rock-Squashes-Chief' strategy-- playing not against the machine, but against the programmers of the machine. I would have made every fourth move a totally irrational one. I would have moved my knights like bishops, played my pawns like checker pieces and I would have won.

And now, for those with short attention spans, we digress to a seemingly unrelated subject:

I have been drinking Rocola-Cola my entire life. My Mom put Rocola-Cola in my baby bottles. In the third grade, I got 500 signatures on a petition to get a Rocola-Cola vending machine placed in the school cafeteria. As an adult, I own hundreds of shares of Rocola-Cola stock and drink no other beverage. I even buy clothing from the Rocola-Cola catalogue and actually PAY for the privilege of using my own body as an advertisement for Rocola-Cola. I am as loyal a Rocola-Cola customer as any multi-national corporation could possibly hope to have-- which explains why I'm so cheezed-off about the new high-tech vending machines the Rocola-Cola Company is about to place on the market.

The idea is that each vending machine will be equipped with sensors and a microprocessor, which will allow the machine to adjust the price of a can of Rocola-Cola to meet current demand.

So, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a January blizzard, the machine would happily sell a can of Rocola-Cola for eight cents to either of it's two potential customers-- the security guard and the snow plow driver-- both of whom are drinking coffee. In the hundred-twenty degree heat of an Albuquerque August afternoon, the same machine would price the same can at seven dollars and ninety-five cents.

This does not symbolize the ultimate triumph of vending machines over humanity. All it means is that we have to outwit the nitwits at the Rocola-Cola marketing department.

Here's the plan: Those who care deeply about the price of Rocola-Cola will each adopt one of these new, smart vending machines and visit it in the wee-tiny hours each night the temperature drops below freezing. Paying a nickel or dime per can, we'll empty the machines. By the time summer arrives, each of us will have accumulated several thousand cans of Rocola-Cola at far-below wholesale.

Then, each conspirator will purchase one of the old vending machines, which the Rocola-Cola Company will be happy to sell us for practically nothing. We'll place our old vending machines next to their smart new ones. Nobody will buy theirs for a buck-fifty a can, because they'll be too busy buying ours for fifty-cents.

The result: We make a five hundred-to-one thousand percent profit, until the geniuses at the Rocola-Cola marketing department realize they ought to have kept the price at fifty cents. Then, we sell them their old vending machines back at triple the price.

If that doesn't work, here's the backup plan: We'll take a log, balance it on a fulcrum at the base of Rocola-Cola's corporate headquarters and stick one of the new machines on the far end of it. Then, we'll lure the marketing department out onto the roof.


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