%)

What an Arabic reader would probably catch is that "algebra" is one of the few loan words that English has adopted from Arabic.

Jay

>WARNING ALERT
>
>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 codenames 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 scale 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."
>
>Maisoon Rice
>
>aljazeerah.info, "Letters to the Editor", 12/5/03