Al-Gebra: The new terrorist threat

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, a protractor, a setsquare, 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. 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...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.

http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/humor/

:7

there are evil people who have infiltrated our schools who teach its ways.

them. Any time you mix letters into numbers and still try to call it math you are not to be trusted.

what are those anyway?

the snow and the ice, everything is slippery.
Or perhaps it´s the rule: the steeper the hill, the faster the slide.

:crazy:

used to have a slide which was basically a sheet up plywood with a thin sheet of metal covering it that was built into a hill. The slide had been banged up so badly it wasn't very fun to use.... until it snowed. I swear to god I passed mach 2 on that thing when it was icey :-)

thought I was awake but guess I am still in the middle of one of my strang dreams.

... divide and conquer ...

(Well spotted DTF!)

We must subtract the menace from these radicals before they add to our (word) problems!

(Etymology geek note: Algebra really *does* come from Arabic, al-gebr, as do many other words beginning with "al," like "alchemy" and "alcohol.")