On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 20:54:04 -0500, Gene Kearns
wrote:

NEW YORK, NY (AP)...
New York, NY. At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual
later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to
board a flight while in possession of a ruler, protractor, setsquare,
sliderule, and calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he
believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is
being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average
solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a
search of absolute value. They use secret code names like "x" and "y"
and refer to themselves as "unknowns", but we have determined they
belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with
coordinates in every country.

"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to
every triangle," Ashcroft declared. When asked to comment on the
arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better
weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and
toes."

"I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is
intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to
disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to
inflict plane on every sphere of influence," the President said,
adding: "Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root,
make our point, and draw the line."

President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have the
potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never
before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to
factor-in random facts of vertex."

Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read
my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of: though they
continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse
tightens around their necks."

You joke, but the truth shall be worse. Please note:
*********************
The first treatise on algebra was written by Diophantus of Alexandria
in the 3rd century AD. The term derives from the Arabic al-jabr or
literally ``the reunion of broken parts.'' As well as its mathematical
meaning, the word also means the surgical treatment of fractures. It
gained widespread use through the title of a book ilm al-jabr
wa'l-mukabala - the science of restoring what is missing and equating
like with like - written by the mathematician Abu Ja'far Muhammad
(active c.800-847), who subsequently has become know as al-Khwarazmi,
the man of Kwarazm (now Khiva in Uzbekistan).
********************************************
If algebra isn't a terrorist plot, I don't know what is.


John H

On the 'Poco Loco' out of Deale, MD
on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!