Let's start the New Year with a joke which, incidentally, tells us something about the differences between cultures. Like all such jokes it draws on stereotypes, but at least it's intelligent:

A group of people meet at the National Geographic Society in London and decide that, for the next meeting, everybody has to present a treatise on the elephant. They all return the following year and present their volumes. The German has a 700-page dissertation: "Beschreibung des männlichen Elephanten in Ost-Afrika. 1. Teil" (description of the male elephant of East Africa, Part I). The Englishman has a small, sober, black leather-bound book entitled "Elephants I have shot". The American has an 8-page booklet in colour, "How to make bigger and better elephants", while the Frenchman has a small tastefully presented book on "L'amour des éléphants" ("The love life of elephants"). The Pole presents a book called "The elephant and its relation to the Polish problem", while the Swede has a greyish book called "Elefanter och hur man titulerar dem" ("Elephants and how to address them"). The Dane presents a book of recipes: "Elefant på 100 måder" ("100 ways to cook an elephant"), while the Norwegian has a book entitled "Norge og vi nordmænd" ("Norway and we Norwegians").