From rotha@skcla.monsanto.com Mon Apr 4 03:51:11 1994 Received: from ux1.cso.uiuc.edu by dynamic.slip.uiuc.edu with SMTP id AA16085 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for roth); Mon, 4 Apr 1994 11:51:03 -0500 Return-Path: Received: by ux1.cso.uiuc.edu id AA02417 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for roth@dynamic.slip.uiuc.edu); Mon, 4 Apr 1994 08:51:33 -0500 Received: from tin.monsanto.com by ux1.cso.uiuc.edu with SMTP id AA02398 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 4 Apr 1994 08:51:29 -0500 Received: from SKCLA.DECnet MAIL11D_V3 by tin.monsanto.com (5.65/Monsanto1.3) id AA13196; Mon, 4 Apr 1994 08:51:12 -0500 Date: Mon, 4 Apr 1994 08:51:11 -0500 Message-Id: <9404041351.AA13196@tin.monsanto.com> X-Ph: V4.1@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu From: rotha@skcla.monsanto.com To: "roth@uiuc.edu"@TIN.monsanto.com Subject: You might enjoy this, especially the part about computer scientists X-Charset: LATIN1 X-Char-Esc: 29 Status: RO From: SKCLA::MRGATE::"SSW::MONSANTO::LRHOLD" 4-APR-1994 07:04:01.45 To: PJVOND,ROTHA,KOWALSKI,BITTMAN CC: Subj: Elephants From: LRHOLD @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 To: See Below ---------------------------- Forwarded with Changes --------------------------- From: JAMES H CRAIN at MONPCS01 Date: 3/24/94 4:53PM To: JOHN E COWELL at MONNPD04 To: LARRY R HOLDEN at MONNPD04 To: USHA S KUNDA at MONNPD04 To: MONTE A MARSHALL at MONNPD04 To: MARY J MIERKOWSKI at MONNPD04 To: MICHAEL G MUETH at MONNPD04 To: MARK E OPPENHUIZEN at MONNPD04 To: DENISE A SCHNEIDER at MONNPD04 *To: STEPHEN A ADAMS at MONNPD03 *To: ROBYN D BARTOSCH at MONPCS03 *To: ROBERT G BECKER *To: ROBERT J BELLVILLE *To: MARCUS W BLASKIE *To: LOUIS R BRISCOE at MONRCC53 *To: DARRYL E BROCK at MONNPD03 *To: HARRY M BROWN at MONPCS02 *To: SUZANNE M BROZEK *To: LARRY S BUNDY at MONLIS01 *To: STEVEN A CHESTNUT at DEC *To: CHRIS COLBERT at MONRCC53 *To: M E CORUM at MONRCC53 *To: CATHERINE L COWAN at MONRCC51 *To: ROBERT J DANIELS at MONLIS01 *To: DIANE E DONOVAN at MONRCC53 *To: WAYNE S ELDRIDGE at MONPCS05 *To: MICHAEL J ENDSLEY at MONRCC01 *To: NANCY J FANKHAUSER at MONLIS01 *To: LORI L FOWLER at MONRCC52 *To: SCOT A FOWLER *To: GEORGE B FULLER at MONNPD03 *To: LAWRENCE K GOERING *To: RICHARD J GRAFF *To: JEFFREY A GRAHAM at MONNPD01 *To: DONNA R GROVES at MONNPD02 *To: ROGER M GUFFEY at MONRCC53 *To: DONALD R GUMMOW JR at MONRCC53 *To: STEPHEN D HAGER at MONNPD03 *To: SALIM M HAKIMI at MONRCC01 *To: J M HEADRICK at MONLLN01 *To: PAUL A HECHT at DEC *To: SUE R HENSON at MONLIS01 *To: BRADLEY S HERMAN *To: LYNN W HERMAN at MONNPD03 *To: PHILIP R HOEKSTRA at MONRCC53 *To: JANET M HOLLOWAY at MONAG02 *To: ALAN G HOPFER at MONRCC53 *To: JAMES A HOSTLER at MONRCC53 *To: THOMAS N HUBBARD at DEC *To: CAROL A JOHNSON at MONPCS03 *To: BRIAN L KELLER at DEC *To: FRANK C KOHN at MONRCC01 *To: PETER A KOVACEVICH at MONNPD02 *To: LISA M KRAMER at MONLIS03 *To: DANIEL M KRUPA at MONNPD02 *To: MARTINA LEUNG at MONRCC53 *To: ROBERT K LEWIS at DEC *To: LIONEL R MORGAN at MONNPD03 *To: STEPHEN R MUENCH at MONNPD03 *To: DEBORAH A MUETH at MONRCC01 *To: PATRICIA J NAVARRO at DEC *To: DENNIS D RASMUSSON at MONRCC01 *To: GORDON D ROBINSON at MONLIS01 *To: STEVE P RUDOLPH at DEC *To: SHEILA A SCHUETTE at MONNPD03 *To: MARYANN E SEMORE at MONAG02 *To: MOHAMMAD SHAHSAVARANI at MONRCC53 *To: KAREN L SIMS at MONLIS01 *To: MICHAEL W SMITH at MONRCC53 *To: THERON P SMITH *To: LARRY E SNYDER at MONNPD03 *To: SHARON A TEESLINK at MONRCC51 *To: L WAYNE TRIPP at MONAG02 *To: MARTIN G WALKER *To: ALBERT M WARE *To: CHAUNCEY D WHELCHEL at MONAG02 *To: MICHELLE A WINKEL at MONNPD03 *To: LISA A WINKLER at MONLIS01 *To: ALLAN F WITT at MONRCC53 *To: PATRICIA A WOOD Subject: JDJ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This was forwarded to me via Monsanto e-mail. I thought you folks deserved to suffer as well. Larry ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How do you hunt 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 excercise. 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. 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 1st animal they see N times & 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 prehunted before the vice president sees them. If the vice president does see a nonprehunted 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. SALESPEOPLE don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants they haven't caught, for delivery two days before the season opens. Software salespeople ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice for an elephant. Hardware salespeople catch rabbits, paint them gray, and sell them as DESKTOP ELEPHANTS. COMPUTER SCIENTISTS hunt elephants by excercising 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. LIBRARIANS hunt elephants by doing an on-line search (k=elephant). Depen- ding on the jungle, they may undertake a retrospective conversion project on all animals first. Looking through their LC schedules to find the proper classification a search is initiated for the desired elephant. If not found, the librarian would put a tracer on it or would put out an inter-jungle loan request. The librarian then gets the elephant for 6 months, plus a 9 day grace period. To Distribution List: RVBAXL @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 JLOGLE @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 RVBRIL @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 PKHARR @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 RLHINT @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 RALEWI @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 NAMEYE @CCMAIL @SSW @SKCA1 LLMUNY @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 MANEME @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 JLSEBA @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 BDSELB @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 RHSORB @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 LESTOU @MONSANTO @SSW @SKCA1 BITTMAN @MRGATE KOWALSKI @MRGATE ROTHA @MRGATE PJVOND @MRGATE