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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”.

Stay safe!

Katherine Johnson, the mathematician who contributed hugely to the work of the US space agency NASA, has died at the age of 101. In the 1950s she was one of a group of women known as the West Area Computers, all African-American female mathematicians performing vital work for the growing aeronautics industry, and the inspiration for the 2016 film Hidden Figures.

Katherine then went on to work at NASA, most famously providing the trajectory calculations for Apollo 11 to land on the Moon in 1969. Her legacy is significant, not just for the space industry, but also as a symbol of the struggle of African-American women at a time of cultural apartheid.

Today is the 2nd February 2020, or 02/02/2020. It’s one of that rare breed of palindrome, the like of which won’t be seen again until a little over a century hence (and you can work out what that one will be!)

I rather like all those twos and zeros, a bit like polarised particles coalescing into the void. Out of the silent universe comes all complexity.

Let’s hope we all manage to move forward from today with something approaching 20-20 vision.

The Three Friends is a wonderful story for children about friendship, written and beautifully illustrated by Samantha Howatson. This magical book is available in paperback now, published by Jelly Bean Books.

You can buy it on Amazon here:

The Three Friends

It’s the summer solstice today (June 21st), or the winter solstice if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere. Time to celebrate the life-affirming tilt of the North Pole by 23.5° towards the Sun, even though apparently summer solstice days are getting shorter – the longest one ever recorded was in 1912, which gave us an extra 4 milliseconds on top of our standard 24 hours. But don’t worry if you miss it completely – it’ll be solstice on Mars in a few days!