A crofter named Angus was overseeing his herd just off the road in a remote mountainous area near Ben Cruachan 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 Eton FP tie, leaned out the window and, in a London accent asked him, If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf? Angus looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, Aye, 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 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-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the crofter and says, You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves. Aye! Thats richt enough. Weel, I guess ye can tak ane after all, says Angus. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man tries to stuff it into the boot of his car. Then Angus says to the young man, Och, if I can tell ye exactly what yer business is, will ye gie me back ma beastie? The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, Okay, why not? Youre a Government Civil Servant frae Westminster, says Angus. Wow! Thats correct, says the yuppie, but how did you guess that? Nae guessing needit. answered the crofter. Ye showed up here een though naebody called ye; ye want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of pounds worth of equipment trying tae show me how much smarter than me ye are; and ye dinna ken a mickle aboot hoo working people mak a living - or about coos, fer that matter…… This is a herd of sheep... noo can Ah hae ma wee doggie back?
Posted on: Sat, 15 Feb 2014 18:19:59 +0000