Ivy League Economist Interrogated for doing math on American Airlines Flight

[mainer]

Unbelievable.

What do know about your seatmate? The agent asked the foreign-sounding man.

Well, she acted a bit funny, he replied, but she didn’t seem visibly ill. Maybe, he thought, they wanted his help in piecing together what was wrong with her.

And then the big reveal: The woman wasn’t really sick at all! Instead this quick-thinking traveler had Seen Something, and so she had Said Something.

That Something she’d seen had been her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/ivy-league-economist-interrogated-for-doing-math-on-american-airlines-flight/

[cali]

1. Disgusting.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. When ignorance gets to $5.00 a barrel, I want the drilling rights to that women's head. n/t

[surrealAmerican]

29. It'll never go that high.

The supply is, sadly, limitless.

[mainer]

3. Talking Barbie: "Math is hard!!!"

For some people, Talking Barbie may be right!

[Nye Bevan]

4. "Please stow all laptops and discontinue any calculus".

When you combine racism, utter stupidity, and an airplane, the results can be excruciating.

[oberliner]

35. The person was white

For what that's worth.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

5. Another "Pi in the sky" error

[erlewyne]

6. a2+b2=c2

Wasn't in invented by Pythagoras. We are all
so dumb. Looking over someone's shoulder is
fruitless.

[AlbertCat]

8. Wasn't i(t) invented by Pythagoras(?)

No...it was just explained by Pythagoras. a2+b2=c2 has always been the case.... even before Pythagoras.

The only reason I say this is because the other night on the boob tube some ancient alien idiot was all excited because some ancient civilization in South America or somewhere had carved a "perfect equilateral triangle....thousands of years before Pythagoras!!!!!"... so aliens! As if an equilateral triangle couldn't exist before Pythagoras noticed it and its properties.

The stupid is strong in this civilized world!

[awoke_in_2003]

14. "The stupid is strong"

Yep.

[erlewyne]

31. Thank you AlbertCat.

I did a typo.

Yes, you are correct about stupid.

I want to learn more about Pythagoras and the golden mean.

[AlbertCat]

32. I did a typo.

Not really.

That's the way it's often talked about. And we all knew what you meant.

It was just that ancient alien show..... Jesus!....

[packman]

7. Obviously a terrorist from that group Al Gebra

I know it scared the shit out of me.

[A Simple Game]

11. She may not be as dumb as we think!

The woman may be in the camp that believe al-Khwarizmi, who founded the discipline of al-jabr invented Al Gebra instead of the Greek mathematician Diophantus. Sadly I must admit I, along with many others, have had dealings with Al Gebra in the past.

[Dustlawyer]

15. AL Gebra made my life miserable! It is a disgustingly evil thing perpetrated on unsuspecting

Left brain people who cannot easily grasp the devious complexity that is Al Gebra!

[Lucky Luciano]

21. Haha! Though algebra is derived from an Arabic word! nt

[eridani]

33. +1000!! n/t

[Surya Gayatri]

9. Really funny comment under the article:

Rational Actor

7:22 PM GMT+0200

Clearly a member of that new terrorist group, al-Gebra

[niyad]

10. that is definitely felony-level stupid.

[Iggo]

12. Good gawd, people are fucking stupid.

[1monster]

13. Okay, even if he had been writing in Arabic, or Sanskrit, or Greek, or

Cyrillic, or Hebrew, any other alphabet that is not generally familiar in the US, why would that alone make him suspect? Because he didn't want to socialize with the nosy blonde fate seated beside him?

[Cal Carpenter]

16. ^^^This

It's nice that a celebrated academic can provide a charming WaPo-worthy example of profiling-gone-wrong, but the fact is, if he was an unknown dude that spoke no English and was writing in Arabic this woman's reaction (and that of the airline) would be just as fucked up. But it probably wouldn't hit the news. In fact, he'd probably still be in some locked room somewhere being questioned.

[Person 2713]

30. Yep IMO probably

[Xipe Totec]

17. A maid saw my notebook full of organic chemistry reaction diagrams once

And went to tell my mom that I was performing witchcraft.

Mind you, we're talking here about a simple peasant woman with no education, freshly brought from the sierras in Mexico.

Now days most Americans are descending to her level of education.

[Hekate]

20. It's a national embarrassment

[6chars]

18. He did something suspicious

[Logical]

36. Are you serious?

[Hekate]

19. The stupid, it hurts.

[drm604]

22. Idiotic.

See something that you don't understand? It must be terrorism!

Did she think that the "strange writing" would make his notepad explode?

He should be able to sue this woman. Individuals should not be subject to the random fears of society's lowest common denominators.

[jtuck004]

23. "He said the pilot seemed embarrassed." ROFL The pilot was too stupid to recognize algebra.

I would have turned in my ticket and rented a car.


"Casey Norton, a spokesman for American Airlines (whose regional partner Air Wisconsin operated the flight), said the woman had indeed initially told the crew she was sick, but when she deplaned she disclosed that the reason she was feeling ill was her concern about the behavior of her seatmate. At that time, she requested to be rebooked on another flight. The crew then called for security personnel, who interviewed Menzio and determined him not to be a “credible threat.” "


You got a note from a passenger that she was ill, so you let her sit without anyone seeing her for half an hour, turned the plane around and re-gated, and led her off?

Sure you did...or that was a masterpiece of a note on that napkin.

[Initech]

24. Idiocracy is no longer just a comedy, it's a documentary.

[Jopin Klobe]

25. "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout." ...

... “There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill – and suspicion can destroy – and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own – for the children – and the children yet unborn. ...

... And the pity of it is ...

... that these things cannot be confined...

... to the Twilight Zone. ...

[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street|

[LibDemAlways]

27. Excellent episode. I once had an 8th

grade class put it on as a play. Valuable lesson.

[LibDemAlways]

26. I have a friend who was aboard an aircraft from LA to Maui

seated beside a veiled Muslim woman who was fiddling with an alarm clock throughout the flight. My friend thought it was kind of a strange thing to be doing aboard an airplane, but she said it would never have occurred to her to bring it to the crew's attention as a precursor to terrorism -- until she mentioned it to a friend who freaked out and said she should have reported it immediately. Muslim phobia is rampant.

[oberliner]

34. This person wasn't a Muslim

Not sure if you were thinking he was.

[Person 2713]

28. I am sure math is unrecognizable and scary to some and he had dark curly hair so that right there

Morans
Trump loves the uneducated so maybe the guy is right about that