That reminds me:
I was taking a slow drive by Texas A&M once and I saw all these students out in this field trying to stand up this really tall poll. They were having a lot of trouble so I stopped and offered to help. I asked them what they were trying to do, they said, "The professor sent us out here to measure this pole." I said, just lay it down and measure it. They said that they had already done that and knew how long it was and now they wanted to measure how tall it is.