Airline Delays Flight Over Passenger's Suspicious Math Equations (usnews.com) 512
Earthquake Retrofit shares this article from the Associated Press: "An Ivy League professor said his flight was delayed because a fellow passenger thought the math equations he was writing might be a sign he was a terrorist... He said the woman sitting next to him passed a note to a flight attendant and the plane headed back to the gate. Guido Menzio, who is Italian and has curly, dark hair, said the pilot then asked for a word and he was questioned by an official... "They tell me that the woman was concerned that I was a terrorist because I was writing strange things on a pad of paper..." He was treated respectfully throughout, he added. But, he said, he was concerned about a delay that a brief conversation or an Internet search could have resolved. "Not seeking additional information after reports of 'suspicious activity'... is going to create a lot of problems, especially as xenophobic attitudes may be emerging."
Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Insightful)
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away
Re: (Score:2)
Please look up the definition of paranoia in an authoritative dictionary
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I have always found that people tend to think I'm being mischievous when I'm in a good mood... I'm not sure if that says something about me or them.
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Please look up "Buffalo Springfield" and "For What It's Worth" in any decent online search engine.
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:4, Interesting)
Eh. I expect she didn't KNOW it was math and assumed it was Arabbic, because, you know, squiggly lines and the state of American education.
I'm surprised that a person who is that consumed with fear was capable of actually being on an airplane.
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I'm surprised that a person who is that consumed with fear was capable of actually being on an airplane.
She wasn't, she made herself so sick with worry they were already taking her off the flight by the time they questioned the Prof.
She did manage to get onto a later flight. I guess it takes a few tries sometimes.
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:4, Funny)
She did manage to get onto a later flight. I guess it takes a few tries sometimes.
Only after confirming the plane was a math free zone. I hear someone tried to explain lift to her mid-flight though and then the plane had to be diverted due to a small explosion in the cabin.
Re: Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Funny)
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Fear is not rational. Many people function perfectly well in their lives despite of which live with serious fears in some way or another. This ranges from the mild but understandable (given the constant media parade) of terrorism or getting mugged in a shady part of town, to the downright bizarre like arachibutyrophobia (fear of having peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth).
My girlfriend's father is a hard man, spent some time in the army, has gotten into fights, worked a blue collar job, and is gen
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Insightful)
What if the guy was actually writing Arabic - why should this be any indication of him being a terrorist?
How is that any different from him writing in Chinese, German, Japanese, or even just bad handwriting that is not immediately legible by his neighbouring passenger?
That's the real story here. Merely writing anything should never be considered a terrorist threat unless it is actually making a threat in a language that can be understood by the reader - if you can't understand it then it's clearly not a threat. (Stories about Bob should not count either)
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Funny)
since we use the Arabic numerals, wasn't he technically writing in Arabic?
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Funny)
Eh. I expect she didn't KNOW it was math and assumed it was Arabic
Well, if he was doing math, he was probably using a bunch of Greek symbols.
So imagine sending this woman to Greece. She would wig out and scream, "All the street signs and stores are labeled with terrorist speak!"
It's actually quite sad, that she could not recognize that he was doing mathematics. Nobody is asking her to classify the equation, or find the homogeneous solution, but to recognize mathematical problem solving . . . ? What did she do, skip elementary school . . . ?
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Well, if he was doing math, he was probably using a bunch of Greek symbols.
Are you aware of what kind of numeral "2" is?
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And don't ask me what I know about No...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22QYriWAF-U [youtube.com]
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:4, Informative)
The reason the digits are more commonly known as "Arabic numerals" in Europe and the Americas is that they were introduced to Europe in the 10th century by Arabic-speakers of North Africa, who were then using the digits from Libya to Morocco. Arabs, on the other hand, call the system "Hindu numerals",[18][19] referring to their origin in India.
Also, I was just joking about questioning what "2" is, the question brought that song to mind.
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Interesting)
What did she do, skip elementary school . . . ?
I've been finding myself wondering about this lately when it comes to a number of people I know.
Seriously, we need some way to send these people back to 5th grade. It's astonishing. Maybe 3rd grade. Force them to take classes until they at least graduate the 8th grade. Keep them out of society as long as it takes for them to grasp 8th grade-level reading, writing, and maths. I really don't think it's too much to ask.
The only problem my proposal has is that I keep coming back around to who, exactly, should be in charge of determining when they've completed an 8th grade education....
Can we bring back poll tests? I don't care if in practice that's "racist." It probably will be in effect "racist." We need to solve the root issue here. The moment we decided "racism!" was an adequate answer, we failed the entire basis of our society. Tell me why people with darker skin color might have a problem passing a short exam before voting. That will give us a good idea of what we really need to fix.
Something must be done. I do not want to live in a world where solving a simple system of equations or engaging in very basic linear algebra to find an answer constitutes genius. Yet here we are. It's 2016, and I can't even.
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Interesting)
You have the same issue I keep running into. Again and again, I'm getting more misanthropic and think "We really should stop these people from voting". I went so far as to suggest that indenture should be a thing since some people are actively arguing for concepts that would, in effect, lead to it.
And with every great idea I run into this roadblock of "who is going to decide whether...". I can tell you my life would be so much easier if I could just be like Trump and his ilk and just think myself wise and knowledgeable enough to decide these matters.
Alas, I'm a fair man to the detriment of myself way too often...
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, there are plenty of objective measures you could use... SAT scores, for example. You could require a 1200 on the classic, or 1800 on the new recalibrated scale. Neither grammar rules nor mathematics have any racial or gender bias to them. It's not perfect, of course. Most obviously, the verbal section may be problematic for immigrant citizens for whom english is not their first language. And any examination is prone to some degree of studying to the test. Though I'm a bit less concerned about the latter. If you care enough about voting and citizenship to study for the exam in the first place, it's much more likely that you care enough to educate yourself on the issues as well. The point is, though, that it is certainly ought to be possible to come up with some examination that's neutral and blind to the civil rights act characteristics.
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither grammar rules nor mathematics have any racial or gender bias to them.
The mere fact that wealthier students receive a better education makes requiring a certain level of education to vote problematic. Requiring a certain level of education to vote is very close to requiring your parents to have a certain level of income to vote. The decision to make is if the benefit of a more educated voting block outweighs removing a large percentage of the population from the democratic process. The idea of "no taxation without representation" has never been very popular in this country.
Economist "doing math" (Score:5, Funny)
So, it was an economist writing down a differential equation over a tray table.
An economist -- yeah, as an engineer, it would have been my ethical duty to report this to the authorities.
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Informative)
Woman is already nervous about flying, and 15 years of Fox News conditioning takes over
Someone said she was from Wales. (I cannot check TFA as it's page is so broken that I cannot read the left half of it). I live in Wales myself and can vouch for the fact that we don't get Fox News here.
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Informative)
There is plenty of similar crap in the UK. Maybe she reads the Daily Mail, or watches a bit too much ITN?
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Funny)
Wait until Homeland Security finds out he was writing it in Arabic numerals.
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Funny)
Arabic numerals, combined with the new evidence he was carrying methods of math instruction, all lead to one conclusion...
Re:Paranoia strikes deep (Score:5, Informative)
Arabic numerals, combined with the new evidence he was carrying methods of math instruction, all lead to one conclusion...
He was a member of Al-j'bra? "Broken bones" - such a menacing name.
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Eh. I expect she didn't KNOW it was math and assumed it was Arabbic, because, you know, squiggly lines and the state of American education.
Wait... Is algebra not of arabic origin? In arabic, algebra means "The system for reconciling disparate parts", and was brought to Italy in the ~12th century.
Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Interesting)
We need to ramp up reverse retaliation on stupid people 100x fold to stop shit like this
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Insightful)
Haven't you noticed? People today are ignorant and uneducated. But what's new is, they are proud of it.
Ours is a world in which football players, reality TV stars and talentless singer bimbos earn hundreds of times more than Nobel prize-winning scientists, and represent what young people aspire to become when they grow up.
In a world of self-satisfied, militant, openly avowed crassness, writing equations onboard a plane instead of watching the latest episode of Game of Throne on one's tablet is seen as suspicious. That's more than a little sad.
Re: Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact that at least in the US our education system is horribly underfunded and under supported, coupled with social structures that make these things worse doesn't help
The much more realistic and appropriate way to change things is to canoe these root causes rather thank trying to somehow get rid of or shame or do something else punitive to the stupid people in the world. The nice thing about people is that they sometimes can be taught
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep telling people that Idiocracy [wikipedia.org] is a documentary from the future but nobody believes me.
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Insightful)
People today are ignorant and uneducated. But what's new is, they are proud of it.
No, people today are, as always, proud of what they think they are. For instance, you seem to think of yourself an intellectual, and are jumping at the chance to denigrate those you see as different.
Ours is a world in which football players, reality TV stars and talentless singer bimbos earn hundreds of times more than Nobel prize-winning scientists, and represent what young people aspire to become when they grow up.
How, exactly, is that different from the the last century? Come to think of it, when exactly did scientists make more than non-scientist celebrities? There are a lot of professions out there, and very few of them fall into any kind of "science" classification. For most of human history, those pure-science careers have always been academic, having no practical application that would affect most peoples' lives. When your job is to move a load of cargo to a different continent to support a colony, you don't care about the amount of redshift in the starlight by which you're navigating. On the other hand, having a widespread reputation that your city is the best at some particular popular sport provides a conversation for a salesman, opening new opportunities for business.
As I see it, after the atomic bomb brought immediate public attention to scientists, pure science has been getting more celebrated. Today we have more college graduates than ever before, and that number is still rising. We have more STEM careers and more STEM jobs than ever before, and we're even starting to see an increasing number of scientist celebrities like Neil deGrasse Tyson (Whose Twitter account, I'll note, appears second in a Google search for "Neil", below only Wikipedia.)
In a world of self-satisfied, militant, openly avowed crassness...
...which is so much different from a world where we publicly post [pompeiana.org] such intellectual statements as "Phileros is a eunuch", "Epaphra, you are bald!", or "Lesbianus, you defecate and you write, ‘Hello, everyone!’".
...writing equations onboard a plane instead of watching the latest episode of Game of Throne on one's tablet is seen as suspicious. That's more than a little sad.
What's sad is the pervasive suspicion that caused it. This time, it was math equations. Next time, it could be a poet writing in Arabic. Recognizing it as Arabic would be less "ignorant and uneducated", but it'd be just as bad, and would probably result in even more delay. It's the paranoia that's the problem, not stupidity.
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How, exactly, is that different from the the last century? Come to think of it, when exactly did scientists make more than non-scientist celebrities?
Actually, The Economist had an article on this, and while professionals and academics never matched celebrities in salary, they used to have guaranteed paths into the middle class back when this was 15% of the population. Today they still have a guaranteed path into the middle class... which is over 50% of the population. The article pointed out that to keep up with similar professional rankings a top professor should be earning upwards of $1.1 million a year. Presently top professors (outside economics an
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Interesting)
Ours is a world in which football players, reality TV stars and talentless singer bimbos earn hundreds of times more than Nobel prize-winning scientists, and represent what young people aspire to become when they grow up.
You may find it insightful to learn about Gaius Appuleius Diocles [wikipedia.org]. He was a famous chariot racer who among other things amassed a fortune valued enough to feed the city of Rome for an entire year. Even in antiquity the entertainers fared quite well.
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We need to ramp up reverse retaliation on stupid people 100x fold to stop shit like this
It's not stupid people .. it's fearful people.
Just look at the number of people in the US who have been kicked off a flight or pulled up for interrogation just because they spoke Arabic or "looked like a certain way".
This is the last one that I heard about UC Berkeley student questioned, refused service after speaking Arabic on flight [dailycal.org]
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And what would be the point? Or effect?
Like being able to execute 12 year olds in some states for "murder" ... you now are harassing concerned citizens?
The woman was an idiot, yes ... but then again, you convict her for what? Being stupid?
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The problem wasn't that the woman was an idiot, every village has one. The problem is everyone else dog piling on. All it would take is for one person to say "it's just math" and for that to be enough to shut the panic down. Instead, we too frequently hand the leader role to whoever is most terrified and anyone who isn't terrified clearly doesn't understand the gravity of the situation (never mind that there really isn't a situation).
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Funny)
Trump 2016
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Insightful)
I went to MIT so I've known a lot of smart people. And oddly enough they seem to be nearly as prone to stupid behavior as stupid people.
Literally the smartest person I know is a woman who had an affair with a married man because he assured her is wife would be OK with it -- and she believed him.
So when there's something that only a idiot will do, there will be a fair share of smart people doing it. I come to think of this as a distinction between "constitutional" stupidity and "functional" stupidity. Constitutionally smart people can be functionally stupid because they're so used to be right when everyone else around them are wrong, they start to think they're infallible. In my experience there is no dumb like smart person dumb.
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As a mathematician from MIT, I'm getting a kick out of this thread.
Math, in and of itself, hasn't ever harmed anyone.
Well, that's not quite true. It has driven some to insanity and suicide but I've never heard of any algorithm to make a plane blow up. And, really, if you think too much about infinity, the concept, it can drive you insane - more so if you're one of the first to really contemplate it and quantify it.
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Insightful)
Borderline autistic here (who also happened to go to MIT, though that's not really relevant).
Seems to me that was the logical thing for her to do. Normally in a case like this, the guy lies and claims he's going to leave/divorce his wife in order to get the woman to sleep with him. By making her think they were going to be together eventually in a long-term relationship, he can trick her into doing something she might not want to do until she's in that long-term relationship (sleep with him). However, the guy's lie in this case makes no such promise. No carrot of a long-term relationship dangled to entice her into doing something she was reluctant to do. So clearly this isn't a case of the woman pining for the guy, and being gullible enough to believe his attempt to trick her into sleeping with him in exchange for some promise.
The only possibility that leaves is that the woman wanted to sleep with the guy (and vice versa), but was refusing to do so out of respect for his relationship with his wife. The fact that he told her this particular lie instead of the divorce lie suggests that he was aware this was her reason too. When he told her his wife would be OK with them sleeping together, that reason evaporated regardless of whether or not he was lying.
Crucially, if it is a lie, responsibility for any negative consequences from the event falls entirely upon the guy. At least to the autistic mind, which doesn't understand the social rule that you're "not supposed to" sleep with someone else's spouse. For such a rule to exist, both partners in the relationship have to adhere to it. And in this case clearly one partner was not adhering to it, and he claimed the other partner was not as well. So if I turn off my "social awkwardness detector" I've built up over 40+ years of trying to make sense of seemingly random social rules and customs, her behavior makes perfect sense. If she was autistic or borderline autistic like me, she probably didn't foresee that she would be criticized for her behavior because she "should have known" you aren't supposed to sleep with someone else's spouse, period.
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Insightful)
At a minimum, stupid people should be shamed for being stupid.
That woman needs to be shamed for being stupid, but more importantly, for denouncing someone out of the norm to the authorities.
People used to do that in German occupied countries during WWII: they tipped off the Gestapo that this-or-that person looked or acted Jewish, or didn't seem to like the occupants, etc. That woman is as ugly as the WWII rats - and I might add, the authorities of today are increasingly similar to those of that era as well.
This is what makes me retch, not her stupidity.
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Insightful)
She reported someone she thought was suspicious. Fuck her right?
But when the neighbors of the san benradino shooters didn't say anything it was all "why didn't they say anything".
The San Bernardino shooters weren't writing things on paper. You do know it's very hard to make paper explode with a pen, right?
When you report someone because they buy tons of sugar and potassium chlorate, you're doing the right thing.
When you report someone who buys a lot of firearms and talks about attacking the country, you're doing the right thing.
When you report someone for writing strange things on paper, you're both an idiot and a disgusting snitch.
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Informative)
The essence of the problem is that when a government and media incite fear and paranoia in an undereducated society, and when the true prevalence of threats is already very low, all this does is magnify (in dramatic fashion) the incidence of false positives. And the government knows this, and exploits this, because they are able to leverage that fear to accumulate ever more draconian powers, until the government becomes a police state. The most efficient means of amassing power is to ensure the denial of knowledge to those who have less power than you.
You can't expect the average citizen to have an understanding of differential equations, but we should expect the average citizen to be able to reason logically rather than emotionally. But people don't because they have been manipulated into becoming fearful sheep, whose unthinking compliance is all but assured by stoking their xenophobia.
Sadly, this is not going to get better. Punishing the stupid for being stupid may be viscerally satisfying, but ultimately it will be ineffective, because the real reason for their stupidity has far more to do with the overwhelming control exerted by those entities that encourage such stupidity. Expecting the general public to police itself and shame each other ignores the fact that it is the government and the media, all controlled by wealthy elites (who, as you might note, don't need to fly in commercial aircraft), who are orchestrating this sort of behavior in order to ensure their grip on power.
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly this. How many people have been victims of terrorist attacks in the US in the past 10 years? A quick check shows that there were 57 fatalities due to terrorism in the US from 2005 - 2014. (Source [umd.edu]) Fifty seven in ten years. Even if we go from 1995 to 2014 (including the 9-11 attacks), there were 3,264. Since that's over 20 years, that means there's an average of about 163 fatalities in the US every year due to terrorism. And that's including 9-11 which was clearly an outlier.
At 163 a year, "occupant of special agricultural vehicle [mongabay.com]" results in more deaths than terrorism.
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I don't believe the air marshall could have justified shooting her.
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Informative)
Since 2011 the air marshal program has killed more people on flights [wikipedia.org] than terrorists have. Sure, the number is pretty low, but it's larger than 0. Those deaths were 100% avoidable.
On top of this, and I don't have any hard data I'm afraid, but we know that X-Ray exposure can lead to cancer. Since the back-scatter X-Ray scanners were not assessed or approved by the FDA we do not know their power output. But since the power output is more than 0W/cm2 we can conclude that these scanners, used on millions of people daily, over ten years, will have killed a good number of people. How many? I'd be guessing if I suggested anything, it depends on the power output.
The "new" terahertz/mm wave scanners are also questionable. They have also not been approved by the FDA. Some studies suggest interesting interactions between DNA molecules and THz signals. Obviously more study is required before these devices can be certified as safe. Until then, I refuse to voluntarily let myself be scanned by one. However you may not know that flying in/out of Australia the scan is compulsory (though not always enforced, depending on the chaos of the security queue) and refusal to take the scan when asked will result in a refusal to fly.
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The woman's name is Gladys Pugh and she is from Wales.
I'm conflicted about that.
On one hand... Yay! The person acting like a jackass isn't an American this time!
On the other hand... It seems the whole world is full of jackasses.
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I think previous AC is taking the piss [wikipedia.org], Gladys Pugh was a television character played by a Welsh actress.
Re:Stupid people punishing smart people (Score:5, Funny)
Gotta appreciate the irony of a Welsh complaining about incomprehensible scribbling...
Asimov's democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' Isaac Asimov
Bill her! (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope they billed the idiot for the inconvenience, expense and defamation...
Re:Bill her! (Score:5, Informative)
I hope they billed the idiot for the inconvenience, expense and defamation...
While people are (perhaps rightly) ganging up on this passenger and blaming her for being ignorant, she was only a small part of the problem here. The Washington Post story [washingtonpost.com] on this incident notes a comment from Menzio that isn't in the summary here, where Menzio expressed concern about...
"A security protocol that is too rigid--in the sense that once the whistle is blown everything stops without checks--and relies on the input of people who may be completely clueless. "
Contrast this incident with what would happen in a sane world.
What happened here:
- Woman feigns illness to deplane. Reports suspicious person to authorities. Pilot escorts "terrorist" off plane. Delays follow for hours as suspect is questioned until "threat" is cleared.
What would happen in a sane world:
- Woman says to flight attendant, "Can I talk to you for a second?" and gets up from seat. Attendant knows terrorists are much rarer than lightning strikes, so is skeptical. After short conversation, flight attendant walks past, glances at man's paper, sees he's just doing math, and tells woman everything is fine -- return to seat.
What would happen in a relatively sane world with some greater level of caution:
- Woman has conversation with flight attendant. Flight attendant walks up to man, sees math. Attendant casually asks, "Hey, sir, what are you working on there?" Guy replies, "Oh, well... economics actually. I'm a prof at Penn." Situation resolved.
If still suspicious, we could even go a step further -- Attendant: "Oh, can I just check your ticket? We had a question from a passenger about seat numbers?" Attendant checks name of passenger, excuses herself, sends message to security -- they do a Google search and verify guy actually is Ivy League prof in economics, and situation is resolved in 3 minutes instead of hours.
Bottom line: while we can laugh that this woman's ignorance, the greater problem here is the general paranoia and bureaucratic structure around security theatre that requires disproportionate responses to things that don't deserve them.
Re:Bill her! (Score:5, Insightful)
There may be good reasons to have authority to (de)escalate outside the hands of the flight crew.
Perhaps in some circumstances, but the flight crew should serve as a first-level "sanity check." The chances of having a paranoid or delusional person with an unjustified belief that terrorists are common on planes is orders of magnitude higher than the chances of seeing an actual terrorist on a plane.
And even if the person isn't mentally ill and imagining evil people everywhere, the flight crews on airplanes at least tend to have some actual training in spotting suspicious activity and handling terrorist situations. Random passengers generally do not.
Again, if the woman insisted on escalating beyond flight crew, fine -- they could have radioed/telephoned into security and cleared it up in a matter of minutes (in a rational world, that is).
Authorities, not idiot complaining (Score:2)
I hope they billed the idiot for the inconvenience, expense and defamation...
Everyone here keeps blaming the idiot who made the complaint but what about those who investigated it? It's well known that there are idiots out there so when someone comes forward with words to the effect of "I think the person next to me is a terrorist because they are writing something I don't understand on paper." the correct response from the authorities should be to ignore it because they are clearly talking to one of those idiots. If they don't exercise some judgment as to which complaints are credi
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Sure, there's a bit of fail on the part of the airline. The Washington Post article though seems to indicate significantly less stupidity on the part of the airline and the authorities than in other cases such as that UC Berkeley student who was forbidden from flying for speaking in arabic to his uncle. In this case, most of delay was from the false accuser faking illness. Only after a period of feigned sickness did she leave her seat, speak to the flight crew, and make her accusation. Dr. Menzio was th
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Sounds good.
Would you rather be bankrupt, or dead? If you prefer dead, then maybe we shouldn't put too much stock in your judgement to begin with.
To play the devil's advocate... (Score:5, Funny)
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Hahahaha ... that was pretty funny!
Weapons of Math instructions!!! I will remember that.
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Weapons of Math instructions!!! I will remember that.
Remember what?
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The wording, the phrase.
What did you think????
Re:To play the devil's advocate... (Score:5, Funny)
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"There's this guy in the seat next to me... he's writing some message with Arabic numbers in it."
See -- that was the suspicion! The passenger obviously saw he was Italian, so why wasn't he using Roman numerals?!? Those suspicious Arabic numerals were a dead giveaway: Obviously he must be an Arab terrorist posing as an Italian. it's always those little things that give the foreigners away....
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, here's a virtual +5 Funny to you too!
Re: To play the devil's advocate... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:To play the devil's advocate... (Score:5, Interesting)
You may already know this, but I'll put this here anyway: The name "algebra" actually *is* Arabic in origin. It comes from "al-jabr" meaning "reunion of broken parts".
Re: (Score:2)
Solve for X [npr.org]
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Re:To play the devil's advocate... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:To play the devil's advocate... (Score:5, Funny)
"Middle School Teachers Discovered Supporting Mysterious Al Gebra Network! Entire Courses Devoted to Brainwashing!"
Next week's headline on CNN.
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Best play of words I've read in a very long time. Virtual +5 Funny to you, my good sir.
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Best play of words I've read in a very long time. Virtual +5 Funny to you, my good sir.
Actually, I assume it was just a reference to this internet meme [uky.edu] from over a decade ago with the same puns. Still funny though.
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... I hear the passengers thought he was with the Al-Gebra network
Even funnier, considering "algebra" is an Arabic word.
Equations can be seen (Score:2)
Not so sure on this one (Score:5, Funny)
There's no shortage of kids in school that will tell you math is terrifying...
better call the feds (Score:5, Funny)
It's impossible to math to take down a plane... (Score:4)
..Unless he divided by zero.
That would create a NaN, and everything that touched it would also became a NaN, thus the passagers, plane fuselage, engines, ground...
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Re:It's impossible to math to take down a plane... (Score:5, Funny)
I came very close to dividing by zero once - my injuries were so severe that I had to be taken to the l'hôpital
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+1 insightful, +1 funny
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That's not true. You've failed to consider the case where he arranges for everyone of Polish origin to occupy the starboard seats. It's basic control theory: to be stable, you need all of the Poles to be on the left of the plane.
In some dark corner of Hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
...Osama is high-fiving Satan under a "Mission Accomplished" banner.
Maybe the equations were wrong (Score:2)
terrorist code (Score:5, Funny)
To be fair, Professor Menzio (if that is his real name) was using Arabic numerals.
Culture of stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
This has become a trend in American life: the culture of stupid.
Started with Sarah Palin, who couldn't even name a newspaper she read and people readily accepted that, and it carries on today, with Trump spouting platitudes and messages of hate (many self-contradictory) that wouldn't stand a few seconds of rational though. But he says them with the right anger tone and that's all it matters.
Next time it will be us geeks&nerds being detained because we are editing some code on our laptops.
Say no to hate, say no to ignorance.
Re: (Score:2)
"Asking immigrants their religion" News flash, that is already the law
That's not what he said. He said denying entry to all muslims.
And no, nowhere in the law it says that Mexico has to pay for a wall.
So you are wrong in two counts. I.e. you are also ignorant of what exactly he said, which is exactly my point. Ignorance has become a trend.
Elvis inspired BBC picture caption (Score:3)
At least this story brought us the caption "We can't fly on together with suspicious maths".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl... [bbc.co.uk]
Re: (Score:3)
Except the BBC picture is of electromagnetism, which is far less of a black art than economics.
What if he was using metric units? (Score:4, Funny)
What if, and I'm just saying, what if he had been writing his mathy stuff and using METRIC UNITS!
This would clearly identify him as being a foreigner. And furthermore, he spoke English with an accent according to the article. Why would anyone learn to speak English with an accent unless they were, in fact, a terrorist?
Once exposed, he was no longer able to carry out his nefarious plot.
I say that woman did stop his plot. Kudos to you, plot-stopping heroine.
it's the ignorants' world now (Score:5, Insightful)
As a sidenote, such stories made me to really think about what I want to read on to/from-US planes, for many years now. Back in the days I mostly read technical stuff, papers, articles, but slowly I switched to "simple" novels with no math and no images. Might be crazy, but I just don't want to be the cause of some idiot delaying the flight - which, as we can see, happens from time to time.
...becuase writing? (Score:2)
Because its possible that just writing could bring down a plane?
Hair color and math (Score:2)
There is some entertaining detail missing from the US News story that you can find in Washington Post [washingtonpost.com]. Here is their description of how the encounter started:
The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently if inscrutably scribbling on a notepad he’d brought aboard. His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over. He was wearing navy Diesel jeans and a red Lacoste sweater – a look he would later describe as “simple elegance
Wha! (Score:4, Funny)
She saw something, said something.... (Score:4, Insightful)
too embrassed (Score:3)
I think the woman was too embarrassed to continur the flight.
FACE THE WRAITH OF THE PASSENGERS for delaying the flight for stupid reason.
Cabin Crew also scared of equations? (Score:3)
Re:For how long? (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds to me like they said, "Ok, we'd better check this out." Then they spent a few minutes, confirmed that everything was fine, and were on their way. Not a problem.
Yup, and if you RTFA a bit more carefully, you'll see that the flight was actually delayed because it had to return to the gate to let off the woman who had complained, because she was feeling ill. At the end of the day, the professor writing math got to stay on the plane, the woman who complained about it didn't. Damn, that doesn't make such a good headline, does it?
Re: (Score:3)
Having someone make a report of this nature is a 100% predictable consequence of telling every American it's important for them to be on the lookout for we're-not-sure-what. Even in the absence of bigotry, there is still going to be a certain amount of noise in the system due to ignorance and straight up hallucinations. Maybe the leaders who proposed "see something say something" understood the consequences, but it hardly matters now; at this point all business owners can do is to get better at eliciting