Subject: Terrorist Alert!!!!


At New York's Kennedy Airport today, an individual that was 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 that 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 search of absolute value. They use
secret code names like x and y and refer to themselves as unknowns,
but we have determined that they belong to a common denominator -- the
axis of medieval, with coordinates in every country. As the Greek
philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are three 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.