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Hot off the wires:

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.

"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."

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