Hunting elephants

[Brucelles]

I am in Africa at the moment, working in Dar es Salaam. Being here I took the opportunity to go safari and stayed in Mikumi Nationmal Park for a while. It was excellent, packed with wild animals, but the best animals were the elephants. Elephants in the wild look a lot bigger and darker grey than they do in zoos. We got very close to some, in fact our driver was crapping himself at the time, but they decided not to kill us. There was also one in the camp at night, emptying the unfinished beer bottles. We were advised to leave him be as they think he might be part Scottish and he gets a bit pushy when he's had a few. He likes to push people over.

Anyway, I loved them. So here's a guide to elephant hunters, in their honour.

Subject: Hunting Elephants

MATHEMATICIANS hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left.

EXPERIENCED MATHEMATICIANS will attempt to prove the existence of at least one unique elephant before proceeding to Step 1 as a subordinate exercise.

PROFESSORS OF MATHEMATICS will prove the existence of at least one unique elephant and then leave the detection and capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for their graduate students.

COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A:
1. Go to Africa.
2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent alternately east and west.
4. During each traverse pass,
a. Catch each animal seen.
b. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant.
c. Stop when a match is detected.

EXPERIENCED COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS modify Algorithm A by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate.

ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMERS prefer to execute Algorithm A on their hands and knees.

HARDWARE ENGINEERS hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching gray animals at random, and stopping when any one of them weighs within plus or minus 15 percent of any previously observed elephant.

ECONOMISTS don't hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are paid enough, they will hunt themselves.

STATISTICIANS hunt the first animal they see N times and call it an elephant.

CONSULTANTS don't hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at all, but they can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do.

OPERATIONS RESEARCH CONSULTANTS can also measure the correlation of hat size and bullet color to the efficiency of elephant-hunting strategies, if someone else will only identify the elephants.

POLITICIANS don't hunt elephants, but they will share the elephants you catch with the people who voted for them.

LAWYERS don't hunt elephants, but they do follow the herds around arguing about who owns the droppings.

SOFTWARE LAWYERS will claim that they own an entire herd based on the look and feel of one dropping.

VICE PRESIDENTS OF ENGINEERING, RESEARCH, AND DEVELOPMENT try hard to hunt elephants, but their staffs are designed to prevent it. When the vice president does get to hunt elephants, the staff will try to ensure that all possible elephants are completely pre-hunted before the vice president sees them. If the vice president does happen to see an elephant, the staff will:
(1) compliment the vice president's keen eyesight, and
(2) enlarge itself to prevent any recurrence.

SENIOR MANAGERS set broad elephant-hunting policy based on the assumption that elephants are just like field mice, but with deeper voices.

QUALITY-ASSURANCE INSPECTORS ignore the elephants and look for mistakes the other hunters made when they were packing the Jeep.

SALES PEOPLE don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants they haven't caught, for delivery two days before the season opens.

SOFTWARE SALES PEOPLE ship they first thing they catch and write up an invoice for an elephant.

HARDWARE SALES PEOPLE catch rabbits, paint them gray, and sell them as desktop elephants.

PRODUCTION MANAGERS grab the nearest worker and shake him until an elephant drops out of his trousers, then turn to their supervisors & direct them: "See, hunt elephants like that!!"

IBM SALES PEOPLE claim that blue elephants are superior to the grey ones, but they can't produce one that matches the spec.

Feel free to add your own.