THE FARMER AND THE CONGRESSMAN

11" x 8 1/2"
Uniball pen in handbook:sketchbook

A man in a fancy car rolls up to a farmer in a field and asks 
"If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The farmer looks at the man, obviously a city slicker, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?" The farmer thinks it over, it's a huge herd so he accepts the bet.

The city slicker parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location. From there he feeds the data to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

Within seconds he receives an email on his Smart phone that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his phone and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the farmer and says, 'You have exactly 1,423 cows'.

The farmer is astonished because the city slicker's figure is exactly correct. He says, 'OK, I'm a man of my word, take a cow.' The city slicker selects one of the animals and begins to walk away.

'Wait,' yells the farmer, 'Let me have a chance to get even. Double or nothing that I can guess your exact occupation.' The city slicker agrees readily.

'You are a Congressman for the U.S. Government,' says the farmer.

'Good grief!' splutters the city slicker, 'You are exactly right, tell me, how did you deduce that?'

'Easy,' says the farmer, 'give me back my dog, and I will tell you.'

"No guessing required.' answered the farmer. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows.