Subject: 101 ways to hunt an elephant (fwd)

          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
          excercise for their graduate students.

          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.

          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.
    How do librarians hunt elephants?

        They do an on-line search, of course (k=elephant). Depending on 
the jungle,
    they may have to undertake a retrospective conversion project on all the
    animals first. They have to look through their LC schedules to find 
the proper
    classification (Mammals get classified under M, reptiles under R, etc. An
    elephant would probably get an MP call number [P for pachyderm]) 
Then all the
    elephants would have to be tagged (100:00:Jumbo,|d1945-  ) and 
given bar codes.
    The patron could then search for the desired elephant. If not found, the
    librarian would then put a tracer on it, or, if the patron is 
really desperate,
    they could put out a request on IJL (Inter-jungle loan). The patron would
    get the elephant for 6 months, and after a 9 day grace period would 
accrue a
    fine of 10 bags of peanuts a day. If the elephant is still unreturned the
    patron's account would be reported to Marlin Perkins who would threaten to
    revoke the patron's insurance policy until said elephant was returned.
    This generally isn't a problem, since an elephant never forgets. The
    experienced animal librarian knows not to check out elephants to patrons
    wearing lots of ivory. Nevertheless, elephants in many jungles are being
    declared missing and in time may be withdrawn altogether.

One of my college friends has recently informed me that a male ballerina
is not a ballerino, as we have perhaps previously thought, but rather a
"danseur."