please don't take this politically:

At Kennedy International 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 believed the man to be 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 three sides to every triangle."

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. 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."

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."