President Bush said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, he would have given us more fingers and toes.”
Ein Nachtrag zur Dokusatire “Being W”, die gestern abend auf Arte gezeigt wurde. (Die folgende Geschichte ist nicht ganz neu und hat schon vor einigen Jahren die Runde im englisch-sprachigen Netz gemacht.)
A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted 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 Alberto Gonzales said he believes the man is a member of the notorious “Al-gebra Movement”.
He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of “Math Instruction”. ” Al-gebra is a problem for us,” Gonzales said. “They desire 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 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.”
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.” White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the president.
(Quelle)
Weil’s dazu paßt, noch ein Gag aus einem Youtube-Video :
George W. Bush visits Algeria. As part of his program, he delivers a speech to the Algerian people: “You know, I regret that I have to give this speech in English. I would very much prefer to talk to you in your own language. But unfortunately, I was never good at algebra…”
Übrigens kommt das Wort Algebra (ebenso wie Algorithmus und viele andere mit Al- beginnende Wörter) tatsächlich aus dem Arabischen. Der Bagdader Mathematiker Al-Chwarizmi (von dessen Namen sich das Wort ‘Algorithmus’ ableitet) hatte 830 das Lehrbuch Hisab al-dschabr wa-l-muqabala (Rechenverfahren durch Ergänzen und Ausgleichen) geschrieben. (Al-dschabr heißt eigentlich “Zwang”, war hier aber die Bezeichnung für die Quadratische Ergänzung beim Lösen Quadratischer Gleichungen.) Von der lateinischer Übersetzung Ludus algebrae almucgrabalaeque stammt das Wort Algebra.
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