Comments on: Wading through the sewage

By: rdamurphy

rdamurphy — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:30:33 +0000

How to catch an elephant in Africa
* 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 SCIENTISTS 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,
1. Catch each animal seen.
2. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant.
3. 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 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 prehunted before the vice president sees them. If the vice president does happen to see a elephant, the staff will:
* compliment the vice president’s keen eyesight and
* 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 the 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.

By: Meryl Yourish

Meryl Yourish — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:41:17 +0000

Thanks. Cinderelphant. I hadn’t heard that one. Hehehehe.

Backseat Blogger, that video is awesome.

Thanks, everyone.

By: myshkin

myshkin — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:28:31 +0000

Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhinoceros?

A: Elephino

By: Backseat Blogger

Backseat Blogger — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:53:43 +0000

not a joke but a love story of a different sort. no cats, sorry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs_a98AySNk

By: Vaultenblogger

Vaultenblogger — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:31:26 +0000

Q: What is beautiful, gray and wears glass slippers?

A: Cinderelephant

By: Laura SF

Laura SF — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:12:39 +0000

Q. How can you tell that there’s an elephant in your refrigerator?

A. The door won’t close.

Q. How can you tell that there WAS an elephant in your refrigerator?

A. Footprints in the butter.

By: annoying little twerp

annoying little twerp — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:58:12 +0000

Why do elephants paint their toenails red?

So they can hide in cherry trees.

Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?

That just proves it works.

By: MJ

MJ — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:57:54 +0000

AtlasShrugs went to a large pro-Israel rally in NYC today and has pics:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/01/nyc-pro-israel.html

Elephant jokes? Okay – what goes clomp-clomp-clomp-squish, clomp-clomp-clomp-squish?
An elephant with one wet sneaker.

One more: How can you tell an elephant from a banana?
Try to pick it up. If you can’t, it’s either an elephant or a very heavy banana.

Hey, I don’t write ‘em.

By: wolfwalker

wolfwalker — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:07:37 +0000

The greatest elephant joke ever written.

By: Alex Bensky

Alex Bensky — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:36:06 +0000

Where are elephants found?
Elephants are so big they are hardly ever lost.

And time for a reprise of a classic:
A class of students from many countries is assigned to write essays about elephants.

The American student writes, “Breeding Bigger and Better Elephants.”
The German student writes, “An Introduction to the Bibliography for the Higher Study of the Elephant.”
The English student writes, “Hierarchy Among the Elephants.
The French student writes, “The Love Life of the Elephant.”
And the Jewish student writes, “The Elephant and the Jewish Question.”