A shepherd was tending his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a
brand-new Jeep Cherokee appeared out of a dust cloud, advanced toward him
and stopped.  The driver, a young man wearing a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes,
RayBan sunglasses and a YSL tie, leaned out of the window and asked the
shepherd, "If I can tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock,
will you give me one?"

The shepherd looked at the young guy, then at his peacefully grazing flock,
and calmly answered, "Sure."

The young man parked his car, whipped out his notebook computer, connected
it to a cell phone, surfed to a NASA page on the Internet where he called up
a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, then opened up a
database and some Excel spreadsheets with complex formulas.  He finally
printed out a 150-page report on his hi-tech miniaturized printer, turned
around to our shepherd and said, "You have here exactly 1,586 sheep!"

"Amazing!  That's correct!  Like I agreed, you can take one of my sheep,"
said the shepherd.

The shepherd watched the man make a selection and bundle it into his
Cherokee.  When he was finished the sheepherder said, "If I can tell you
exactly what your political persuasion is, where you're from and who you
work for, will you give me my sheep back?"

"Okay, why not," answered the young man.

You're a Democrat from Palm Beach and you're working for Jesse Jackson,"
said the shepherd.

"Wow!  That's correct," said the young man.  "How did you ever guess that?"

Easy," answered the shepherd.  "Nobody called you, but you showed up here
anyway.  You want to be paid for providing a solution to a question I
already knew the answer to.  And, you don't know squat about what you're
doing, because you just took my dog."