How many cows?

[red750]

An old station hand named Billy was overseeing his herd in a remote pasture in the

 

outback when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

 

The driver, a young man in a Brioni® suit, Gucci® shoes, RayBan® sunglasses and YSL®

 

tie, leaned out the window and asked the old man, "If I tell you exactly how many cows

 

and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

 

Billy looks at the young man, who obviously is 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

 

satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

 

The yuppie then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop® and exports it to

 

an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

 

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot® that the image has been

 

processed and the data stored. He then accesses an 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, turns to Billy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and

 

calves."

 

"That's right. Well, you'll be helpin yourself to one of me calves, then, since you

 

won it fair en square." says Billy.

 

He watches the smartly dressed yuppie select one of the animals and looks on

 

with amusement as the man gingerly picks it up & stuffs it into the boot of his car.

 

As the yuppie is carefully brushing the dust & hair off his

 

suit, Billy says, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what work

 

you do & where you come from, will you give me back my calf?"

 

The yuppie thinks about it for a second, wondering what this wrinkled up dirt encrusted

 

educated old man could possibly know? He grins and then says,

 

"Okay, old fella, why not? I'm a believer in fair play."

 

"You're a politician & you work in Canberra." says the old timer.

 

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but, tell me how on earth did you guess that?"

 

"No guessing required." answered Billy "You showed up here even though nobody called

 

you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a

 

question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of

 

equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are;

 

and you don't know a thing about how working people make a

 

living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep.

 

Now give me back my dog."

 

AND THAT FOLKS IS WHAT THE PROBLEM IS ALL ABOUT.