Today's FEEBLE
YOKE:
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 set square, 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 co-ordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'there are 3 sides to every triangle'."
When asked to comment on the arrest, Tony Blair said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."
Mernin’ Tom! They took away my internet, but they forgot that I have a laptop, and they have wi-fi! I’ll be poppin’ in from time to time.
Reasons Why a Slide Rule (and Paper Pad)
is Better Than an X Workstation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- A Slide Rule doesn't shut down abruptly when it gets too hot.
- One hundred people all using Slide Rules and Paper Pads do not start
wailing and screaming due to a single-point failure.
- A Slide Rule doesn't smoke whenever the power supply hiccups.
- A Slide Rule doesn't care if you smoke, or hiccup.
- You can spill coffee on a Slide Rule; you can use a Slide Rule while
completely submerged in coffee.
- You never get nasty system messages about filling up your entire
paper quota with pointless GIF pictures for the root window.
- A Slide Rule and Paper Pad fit in a briefcase with space left over
for lunch or a change of underwear.
- A properly used Slide Rule can perform pipelined *and* parallel
operations. (Okay, you need a guru for this.)
- You don't get junk mail offering pricey software upgrades that fix
current floating point errors while introducing new ones.
- A Slide Rule doesn't need scheduled hardware maintenance.
- A Paper Pad supports text and graphics images easily, and can be
easily upgraded from monochrome to color.
- Slide Rules are designed to a standardized, open architecture.
- You can hold a Slide Rule at arm's length, to hit the obnoxious
person at the next seat over.
- A Slide Rule is immune to viruses, worms, and other depredations
from hostile adolescents with telephones.
- Additional Paper Pads can be integrated into the system seamlessly
and without needing to reconfigure everything.
- Nobody will make you feel bad by introducing a smaller, faster,
cheaper slide rule next month.