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Airline Delays Flight Over Passenger's Suspicious Math Equations (usnews.com)
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."
... I hear the passengers thought he was with the Al-Gebra network - and he was holding potential weapons of math instruction.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
There's no shortage of kids in school that will tell you math is terrifying...
Oh no! Italians doing math?! They're only supposed to cook pasta and things. That's definitely out of character if you base it solely on cartoonish stereotypes.
Yeah, it's so stupid to do math equations on a plane, it's entirely reasonable for everyone else to believe you'll use what you are writing to cause the plane to crash since as we all know, the pen is mightier than the sword.
Since the sword is a dangerous weapon, moreso than a knife (and we're not allowed to bring those on planes) that means pens are even mightier.
Clearly the only mistake is that the air marshal did not immediately shoot this dangerous criminal and spare everyone else a waste of time.
To be fair, Professor Menzio (if that is his real name) was using Arabic numerals.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Trump 2016
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't believe the air marshall could have justified shooting her.
I came very close to dividing by zero once - my injuries were so severe that I had to be taken to the l'hôpital
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.
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 . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Wait until Homeland Security finds out he was writing it in Arabic numerals.
Arabic numerals, combined with the new evidence he was carrying methods of math instruction, all lead to one conclusion...
Required reading for internet skeptics
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.
Wow. You people never stop. Now, you're blindsiding Trump's voters.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
"Oh my lord, he's doing encryption!
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.
Gotta appreciate the irony of a Welsh complaining about incomprehensible scribbling...
The woman is Gladys Pugh but Australians may know her as Gladys Dempster. I met her at a friend's party. She had recently divorced her husband, Clive Dempster, and was visiting friends in the US before returning to Wales. I don't have her photo and couldn't find any on facebook. She was strikingly attractive but not very bright. Almost as dense as the average American.
Hi-de-Ho!
Haven't you heard? Math is fucking scary! He might have been preparing a pop quiz for people in every third row whose birthdays are divisible by a mersenne prime. Think about how many people could have died!!!
Thirty four characters live here.
Or, she might have thought he was a member of Al Gebra, and he was carrying weapons of maths instruction?
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since we use the Arabic numerals, wasn't he technically writing in Arabic?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.
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