A local public school teacher was arrested today at the Sacramento International airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass, a slide-rule, and a calculator. Public officials expressed gratefulness that the TSA was vigilant, looking for troubling sines. At a morning press conference, the Secretary of Homeland Security said she believes the individual is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. She did not identify the teacher, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.
"Al-Gebra is a problem for us," the Secretary said. "They derive solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values. 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 of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country and on every plane. They set up intercepts and matrices of whole numbers. While they talk of infinite possibilities, they seek limits and convergence. The amplitude of the problem has been compounded by their constants. We were able to substitute one of our operations in at a critical point to find their identity. We have apprehended a center of rotation and many of the cofunction identities. Their chain rule has been broken at the root. Their function is now discontinuous. We believe that this arrest will give us a new angle on Sohcahtoa and Fibonacci!"
The prime suspect was apprehended as he left his Torus in the parking lot. A police spokesperson mentioned that the translation of the suspect's papers will not be trivial.
When asked to comment on the arrest, the President said, "These individuals are narrow-minded and exclusive in their approach. They recognize only one possible solution to each problem. They are constantly applying demeaning labels such as 'Real' or 'Imaginary' — 'Rational' or 'Irrational'! This behavior divides and is not constructive to everyone's sense of self-worth."
