A foolproof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble, then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

• 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.
• Physicists hunt elephants by treating the elephant as a unstable W-Z particle and spend a fortune developing a Particle Accelerator large enough to detect one when a hippo and Rhino collide.
• COMPUTER SCIENTISTS hunt elephants by exercising this Algorithm:
  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 this Algorithm by placing a know elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate.
• ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMERS prefer to execute Algorithm A on their hands and knees.
• HARDWARE ENGINEERS hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching grey 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 colour 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.
• MANAGERS OF ENGINEERING, RESEARCH, AND DEVELOPMENT try hard to hunt elephants, but their staffs are designed to prevent it. When the manager does get to hunt elephants, the staff will try to ensure that all possible elephants are completely prehunted before the manager sees them. If the manager does happen to see a elephant, the staff will:
  1. compliment the manager'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.
• 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 grey, and sell them as desktop elephants.
• PLANNERS do not hunt elephants, but you can ask them for permission to hunt elephants, which they will only consider after at least 6 months delay, and after they have been listed for preservation.
• BANKERS do not hunt elephants, but they will lend money to buy a gun only after you prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you do not need a loan.
• INSURANCE BROKERS do not hunt elephants, but they will sell you every conceivable insurance policy with cover for everything except anything likely to happen when you hunt elephants.
• ARCHITECTS do not hunt elephants, but they design an extension to any mouse you care to hunt instead into an elephant you cannot afford, but that your neighbours will envy.

BOVINE LOGIC (NOTHING TO DO WITH ELEPHANTS)

Capitalism
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

Real Capitalism:
You don't have any cows.  The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don't have any cows to put up as collateral.

Yeah, we know that one. Boring. But what about "other ideologies"?

Feudalism:
You have two cows. Your lord takes most of the milk. The Church takes most of the rest of the milk.

Pure Socialism:
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

Bureaucratic Socialism:
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

Fascism:
You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

Pure communism:
You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

Russian communism:
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

Dictatorship:
You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

Militarianism:
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

Pure Democracy:
You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.

Representative Democracy:
You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

American Democracy:
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".

Arkansas Capitalism:
You have two cows. That one on the left is kinda cute...

Japanese Capitalism:
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.

Italian Capitalism:
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.

Swiss Capitalism:
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

German Capitalism:
You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

Nigerian democracy: 
You have two cows. The government takes both, shoots you and sends the cows to Zurich.

Singaporean democracy:
You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

Chinese Capitalism:
You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

American democracy: 
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair Cowgate. The cow sues you for breach of contract.

British democracy: 
You have two cows. You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

Irish democracy: 
You have two cows.  'Friends' of the government make lots of money from them and you pay their tax, and the cost of the tribunal to investigate why nothing was done about it.

Bureaucracy:
You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

EU democracy: 
You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

Anarchy:
You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows.

Capitalism:
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

American free enterprise:
You have two cows. You graze them on public land, paying less than a nickel for the privilege. The government pays you to pour the milk down the drain. You vote for cutbacks in handouts to those lousy Welfare bums.

American free enterprise "Enron Style":

International Capitalism:
You have two cows, but after viewing this great infomercial you decide to sell them so you can make the down payment on this year's Super Duper Milk Extraction System. The government bails you out of bankruptcy. You buy two more cows. But you can't sell the milk, because it's contaminated by effluent from the Super Duper fabrication plant just upstream from you. The government bails you out of bankruptcy. Super Duper's PR agency pays you about five times your previous annual income from dairy farming for the use of your farm to film an infomercial. You retire to a nice place far away from the Super Duper plant. Only those who were lucky enough to buy stock in Super Duper can now afford to drink milk.

Hong Kong Capitalism:
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt / equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the feng shui is bad.

Environmentalism:
You have two cows. The government forbids you to milk or kill them.

Feminism:
You have two cows. You notice how peaceful the farm is without a bull around.

Totalitarianism:
You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

Political correctness:
You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallocentric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

Speciesism:
Your species raises, kills, skins, and eats another species . . . on a large scale. Then you make jokes about it.

Counter-culture:
Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You have got to have some of this milk.

Surrealism:
You have two cows. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

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