A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW emerged from a dust cloud.
The driver, a young man in designer clothes, leaned out and asked, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have, will you give me a calf?"
Bud looked at the man, then at his grazing herd, and calmly replied, "Sure, why not?"
The young man parked, took out his laptop, connected it to his phone, and accessed a NASA website. He used a GPS satellite to pinpoint his location, then directed another satellite to take a high-resolution photo of the area.
He opened the photo in image-editing software and sent it to a processing facility in Germany. Within seconds, he received an email confirming the data was processed and stored. He then queried a database via his spreadsheet and, after a few minutes, got a response.
Finally, he printed a full-color, 150-page report on his portable printer and turned to Bud. "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."
"That's right. You can take a calf," said Bud. He watched, amused, as the young man selected an animal and put it in his car trunk.
Then Bud said, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what you do for a living, will you give me back my calf?"
The young man thought for a second. "Okay, why not?"
"You're a U.S. Congressman," said Bud.
"Wow! That's correct," said the young man, "but how did you know?"
"No guessing needed," answered the cowboy. "You showed up uninvited; you want payment for an answer I already knew to a question I never asked; you tried to show off how much smarter you are than me; and you don't know a thing about livestock—this is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog."