(Page 1 of 2) Amber Waves Revised by Rob Garbin
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SUMMARY: I decided to try and fix some of the problems with the original. Let me know what you think. The interview was being held in the corner of the busiest bakery in New York City. David Attel, a reported for Baker's Secret, a British pastry magazine, was asking the three time winner of the bread making championships, Andre Stephenson, the secret of his success.
"Everyone always wants to know what makes Americans the dominant bakers in the world" Andre snorted. "You know, four hundred years ago, American baking was considered only less dubious then American cuisine. We were thought of as crash, tasteless, and immature."
"Why was that?" David said.
"Because we were, we had lowered our standards so far with mass produced additive loaded crap that our insides were caked with it. For God's sake, Hot Pockets were one of the best selling items in every supermarket."
"So what happened to change all of this?"
"One more idiot."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm sure you noticed the strict screening measures at the airport and the fact that you can bring very little with you. Most everything you need will be provided for you while you are in country, but, unless you have lots of time to wait for anything you want to bring out, you have to leave everything here. About four hundred years ago, before the genetic manipulation bans, some bright eyed idiot with the dubious financial backing of some fortune 500 company, thought he could make a higher yielding wheat crop. This was around the time where every Tom, Dick, and Harry scientist felt that there was no danger in playing God."
"I heard about the story in my history class, but I don't see the connection here."
"Well, first off, you don't live in a country that had to rebuild its economy from scratch while battling the effects of a disastrous mistake. Second, we solved the problem by making lemons into lemonade."
"I don't understand!"
"Well the story goes like this. Some big corporation out to increase profit by cornering the wheat market found themselves a genetic engineer who thought he could make a few genetic alterations to wheat to increase yield and shorten the growth cycle. If they could get more wheat to market faster than the other guy, everyone would switch to their product. Maybe the engineer wasn't a total idiot and maybe meant things for the best, but we are still living with the results."
"From there, you have to understand how business worked back then. Basically, the almighty dollar was all that mattered. Companies constantly flirted with disaster in order to maximize profit. Look at the oil industry for example. They constantly told people what they wanted to hear about safety to get congress to allow them to do what they wanted. But when it came time to actually implement the things promised they cried that the share holder dividends would suffer, or worse, they turned a blind eye. That was how the Exxon Valdez happened."
"What people always forgot was that companies were all about maximum profit and many people equated that with intelligence. Experience should have taught them otherwise. How many times did the banking industry have to implode before they figured out that not having strongly enforced regulations was letting idiots and con-artists stick them with the bill?"
"Anyway, back to the point.
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