Weapons of Math Instruction
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 protractor, a T-square, a slide rule, and a calculator.
At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he
believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. The
man 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 for
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 dis-integrate 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."