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The Ruling Party
A farmer named Van was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in the Karroo when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.
The driver, a young black man in an Armani suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the farmer , 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?'
Van looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers; 'Sure, Why not?'
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.
The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany .
Within mere seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data is stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the farmer and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'
'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Van .
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then Van says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'
'You're a Member of Parliament for the ANC’ says Van .
'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'
'No guessing required.' said Van . 'You showed up here uninvited, you want to get paid for the answer I already know to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are yet you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep. . . .Now give me back my dog.
The driver, a young black man in an Armani suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the farmer , 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?'
Van looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers; 'Sure, Why not?'
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.
The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany .
Within mere seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data is stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the farmer and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'
'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Van .
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then Van says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'
'You're a Member of Parliament for the ANC’ says Van .
'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'
'No guessing required.' said Van . 'You showed up here uninvited, you want to get paid for the answer I already know to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are yet you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep. . . .Now give me back my dog.