E.G. BellEarly in the computer revolution, there were many ‘threads’, circulating on various sources, containing jokes and humorous pictures, etc. FIDO, a packet mail application, was one source.
A FIDO ‘thread’ arrived, you could read it and, if you had something to add, reply in the thread. It was a great source of jokes. They were moderated, so clean (as I recall), and many were quite memorable. I saved many in files I have to this day. Some I printed. One of those was a clever list of how various professions would hunt elephants. Some examples:
STATISTICIANS
Hunt the 1st animal they see N times & call it an elephant.
POLITICIANS
Don’t hunt elephants, but will share the elephants you catch with the people who voted for them.
LAWYERS
Never 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.
The profession I remember above all others was computer scientists:
COMPUTER SCIENTISTS
Hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A:
Go to Africa.
Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
Work northward in orderly manner, traversing continent alternately east and west.
During each traverse pass:
Catch each animal seen.
Compare each animal caught to a known elephant.
Stop when a match is detected.
Experienced COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS
Modify Algorithm A by placing known elephant in Cairo to ensure algorithm will terminate. “C” language programmers prefer to execute Algorithm A on hands and knees.
I saw one variation that said a flaw in this is that it needed some restriction so that the searches stopped on the boundaries of the African continent as it progressed east or west.
This premise can be applied to many endeavors. You have doubtless heard the old shampoo instructions. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. If you programmed a computer like this, the program would enter an endless loop and eventually crash with an ‘out of memory’ error. The lesson is that there should always be a way to determine that the objective at hand has been realized. Completed. An elephant in Cairo.
Consider the Afghan War. Many consider it a loss, some blaming a lack of clear objectives. The Vietnam War is widely considered a loss, often for the same reason. Crashed for no end. Regardless of your view on these or other military actions, you surely will agree on the need for clear objectives for going to the extreme of war. Know the objectives. Have a termination at a point where it is obvious the objective has succeeded. Or failed. Elephant in Cairo.
How long do you keep repairing a vehicle? As vehicles age, they need more maintenance. More frequent repair. Costs of ownership relentlessly increase as vehicle value decreases. There is a point at which the value of the vehicle is less than the cost of keeping it. Elephant in Cairo. Or money pit.
Goals are critical to achievement. Know when they have been met. Or when they are out of reach. Or too expensive. There is a concept known as ‘sunk cost’. ‘Sunk cost’ is money spent that cannot be recovered; Not to be considered when deciding whether or not to go forward. For example, you are in a law degree program. Two years in, you realize you bit off more than you can chew. However, you feel you cannot quit because of the money you have already spent. Sunk cost. If you continue, the only thing you accomplish is more sunk cost. It is endless expense (loop) if you have no stopping point. You need an Elephant in Cairo.
In the world of commodities, there is something known as ‘stop loss’. It is a trigger price at which a security or commodity is sold to prevent further losses. If the value drops quickly, there is thus a limit to the impact on the holder. A stopping point. Effectively an elephant in Cairo.
There is a somewhat similar elephant in Cairo for auctions. This is called a reserve. It is a minimum price set by a seller for an auctioned item. If this price is not met, the item is not sold, even to the highest bidder. A minimum limit. A clear marker that the ‘search’ for a purchaser is stopped short of costly loss. Different. But similar.
There are limits to what relationships will endure. Different relationships have different limits. They are not the same for all people, but there are almost always some limits to keep from getting caught in an endless loop of violation/cheating/abuse/etc. Start out aiming for success but recognize clear boundaries beyond which it’s impossible.
Politics used to have limits that seem to have been worn away by relentless storms of scandal, crime, abuse, dishonesty, indifference, outrage, etc. There was a time when boundaries of behavior and character delimited the service of representatives. So far you may go. No farther. These seem to have evaporated. This morning, just before I started writing this, I learned that Donald Trump was ‘indicated’ on charges related to payment of hush money to a porn star for silence about an extramarital affair. In years past, the affair allegation alone would have been enough to derail a politician. This after the Access Hollywood tape, two impeachments (no convictions), impending election related charges in Georgia, the purloined documents case, a rape/defamation case with a reporter. Etc. Etc. Etc. This scandal will not be the first. There have been others; John Edwards. Dennis Hastert. Jim Traficant. William Jefferson. The list is long. Not all red or blue.
Without limits, we get what we tolerate. A seemingly endless loop of aberrant, unethical, questionable, dishonest, outrageous behavior. No boundaries recognized. No point where we say ENOUGH! (except for the faults of the other guy. “Drain everyone’s swamp but mine.”)
What a difference an elephant in Cairo could make!
