Water Boatwoman

https://www.waterboatwoman.com

Check out Freya Warsi’s new website Water Boatwoman, where she will be narrating excerpts from a wide range of literature. The first episode is from James Attlee’s book Isolarion, in which he describes a journey down Oxford’s magical Cowley Road.

You can access this exciting new site here:

https://www.waterboatwoman.com

 

 

An old maths joke

At New York’s Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a high-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 maths 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 three 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 maths 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 maths-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence”. The President added, “Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line”. President Bush warned, “These weapons of maths instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their maths 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”.