At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered tobe a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight whilein possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and acalculator.At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said hebelieves the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He isbeing charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction."Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire averagesolutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in asearch of absolute value. They use secret code names like "x" and "y"and refer to themselves as "unknowns", but we have determined theybelong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinatesin every country. As the Greek philanderer, Isosceles, used to say,there are 3 sides to every triangle."When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God hadwanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would havegiven us more fingers and toes.""I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it isintent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing todisintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love toinflict plane on every sphere of influence," the President said, adding:"Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make ourpoint, and draw the line."President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have thepotential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never beforeseen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-inrandom facts of vertex."Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read myellipse. While I am uncertain of the following, it is clear that, asthey continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenusetightens around their necks."
