Passenger thinks Penn prof doing math is 'terrorist;' flight delayed

[jpak]

Source: Philadelphia Inquierer

A University of Pennsylvania economics professor who was scribbling math while waiting on a plane for his Philadelphia-to-Syracuse flight to take off on Thursday evening apparently triggered paranoia in a fellow passenger, causing a flight delay of more than two hours.

Guido Menzio - who has dark, curly hair and wears glasses, according to his Penn faculty web photo - was on the scheduled 7:20 p.m. American Airlines flight 3950 to Syracuse.

He said he was told that a fellow passenger thought he was a "terrorist." Menzio is Italian, and according to his web page, had won the Carlo Alberto Medal for Best Italian Economist Under 40 last year.

In a social media post, Menzio wrote that the woman who had been sitting next to him on the plane had passed a note to a flight attendant, and when the attendant returned, she asked the woman if she was comfortable taking off or was "too sick."

<more>

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160508_Passenger_thinks_Penn_prof_doing_math_is__quot_terrorist__quot__flight_delayed.html

[villager]

1. Intellect is very, very suspicious. Fear not -- eventually it will be outlawed. nt

[Biki]

47. 1984

The NYC official subway mantra: "If you see something, say something." It's everywhere.

Wasn't the lady was just complying ... be suspicious of everyone around you. Forget humanness, everyone is suspect.

Does that saying make any sense??? Wasn't she just being a good citizen? 1984.

[world wide wally]

29. WTF does this have the do with the cost is f tea in Cuba? ^

[Diremoon]

7. Really?

Ask me again why I have difficulty supporting a Hillary campaign.

[Liberalagogo]

40. 4-3 split... This is the problem with DU. At least it got hidden, barely.

JURY RESULTS

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Sat May 7, 2016, 02:23 PM, and voted 4-3 to HIDE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: I couldn't agree with the alerter more.
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Gees. Low blow. Bernie supporters do not have trouble with math and are not terrorists.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Totally uncalled for

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Can't you keep that crap in GDP?

There's no need to stomp all over GD with your shit on your shoes.

[LiberalFighter]

4. The female passenger should be banned from air travel.

[trueblue2007]

23. I AGREE it is the fault of the female TATTLETAIL and she is a bigot.

[They_Live]

36. That's a bit extreme...

...she can still fly, but only if she's on the outside of the aircraft.

[LiberalFighter]

41. She couldn't use her arms?

[lastlib]

48. Or on her broom...... eom

[dflprincess]

51. As a Mattel once infamously had Barbie say

"Math is hard."

That's what I thought of when I read about this woman I just had the sense she would relate to that statement.

[JI7]

5. is always some ignorant concerned asshole in these stories

[hlthe2b]

6. I am so damned sick of the anit-intellectualism and excuse-making for the truly ignorant

in this country... People commit the most stupid of acts and don't even feel shame for it. And, the Republicans rejoice. these are, after all, their "kind of people"....

[Nitram]

38. This person wan't anti-intellectual

she was paranoid about someone she thought looked Middle Eastern writing a language she didn't understand.

[paleotn]

43. math is a language she doesn't understand?!

....once again, I weep for my country.

[daleo]

60. The kind of symbols a math prof uses might be strange to most people

I took a lot of math in university, and am a practising statistician. Even I used to refer to learning advanced mathematical notation as learning how to juggle "squiggly lines".

[Nitram]

67. Not being conversant in higher mathematics is not being anti-intellectual.

Try to get it straight. Words actually have meanings. Is it anti-intellectual to misuse the word "anti-intellectual"?

[paleotn]

68. One doesn't have to be conversant in higher mathematics....

...to realize it's mathematics he's writing, not a fucking plan to blow up the plane, scripted in Arabic.

[Nitram]

69. The man was writing diffferential equations related to pricing settting.

To someone unfamiliar with differential equations, it would not look much like math at all. Again, this has nothing to do with anti-intellectualism. It has to do with Islamophobia. To be anti-intellectualism, the woman would have have had to know it was math, and disdained the man for knowing higher math. I don't get why this is so hard for you to understand.

[hlthe2b]

44. I'm talking about the RW modus operandi--create fear and feed the ignorant bigotry

SHe answered their call.

Understand now what I'm saying?

[Akicita]

8. Well, the government asks us all to be vigilant.

Maybe they should only ask those above a certain IQ level to be vigilant.

[NickB79]

9. Bill Hicks called it perfectly: Anti-intellectualism

[yourpaljoey]

64. damn, he was great

[LeftishBrit]

10. How incredibly ridiculous and disgusting

And it shows that actual events can make the most outrageous satire seem suddenly realistic:

http://www.ms.uky.edu/~jrge/340/Weapons_of_Math_Instruction.html
Weapons of Math Instruction

At New York’s Kennedy airport today, a person later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a drafting triangle, a compass, and a calculator.

During a press conference the Attorney General said he believed the man was a member of the notorious al-Gebra movement and the FBI intends to charge him with transporting weapons of math instruction.

“Al-Gebra is a fearsum, transverse cult,” the Attorney General said. “As a group they seek means of average solutions by extremes, and sometimes randomly go off on tangents in search of absolute values. A member of al-Gebra may use acute alias such as ‘x’ or ‘y’ and refer to himself as an unknown identity, but we have determined that he is likely to belong to a common denominator — the axis of medieval that coordinates in every country.” The Attorney General continued, “Al-Gebra functions as a bunch of standard deviations that have been tribal since the time of Noah’s arc,” a remark that struck a chord with the media. “They are inordinate in terrorism, of that I’m abscissaly sure.

They use degrees of irrational subtrahend to create differences and conditional inequalities among friendly, discriminant nations, leading to arguments and making us less functional and coefficient in attaining our goals. And they have the international mobility of a swarm of loci. Give them an air matrix to inflate and a plot to set it on, and they can live anywhere. If necessary, we will pursue them to the corners of this Earthly sphere.”

He complemented this with the supplementary remark, “As the Greek philanderer Isosceles once said, ‘Never forget that there are three sides to every triangle, and sometimes two of them are normal.’ ” The Attorney General added, “As you can tell, I am not diagonally opposed to that prime concept.”

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush obtusely said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes. Next to bisectual marriages and those polygonists in Utah, I’m concerned about the significant places of such weapons. Tomorrow I intend to go to the hill and address Congruence about this situation. I have a volume of suggestions and a finite series of common solutions for them to consider.”

The President also warned, “These weapons of math instruction are without parallel and have the potential to decimal everything on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of an infinity Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of kindness. If we enter a phase in which all nations are integrated in all degrees of purpose, that steady state will give us slope for a better tomorrow, and we will all be infinitely better off. In such a case we could have our pi and eat it too.”

The President further declared, “I am gratified that we have been given a sine that al-Gebra is protracting this situation with calculusing disregard. Their murky statisticians plan to inflict plane of new dimensions on every sphere of influence,” he added. “Under these circumferences, we must differentiate their roots, make our points, draw our lines, and proportionally intersect these people throughout whatever area of the domain they range. And, above all, we must make sure that they can’t get their hands on radii active materials. That is one thing you can secant you? What we need is a higher quotient of linguists embedded with our troops so that they can interpolate the gibberish that al-Gebra uses to communicate. If we had that capability, we could periodically reach new limits of success as easily as falling off a natural log. Anything short of that could lead to some real, not imaginary, complex circumstances.”

The Secretary of Homeland Security added, “As our Great Leader would say, ‘Read my ellipse.’ The one angle that I am uncertainty of is that although al-Gebra will probability try to continuously multiply in theorem, their days are numbered as we draw the hypotenuse ever tighter around their necks.”


[e-mail]
http://www.ms.uky.edu/~jrge/340/

[Akicita]

16. That's hilarious, You should send it to Professor Menzio.

I bet he wouid get a kick out of it.

[libdem4life]

20. That is awesome. Now I remember why I hated Al-Gebra. That

hypoteneuse encircled my GPA and it sloped downward.

[guillaumeb]

27. Well, algebra was refined by an Arab mathematician.

Although Babylonians invented algebra and Greek and Hindu mathematicians preceded the great Frenchman François Viète — who refined the discipline as we know it today — it was Abu Jaafar Mohammad Ibn Mousa Al Khwarizmi (AD780-850) who perfected it.

He used Al Jabr (algebra) in the title of a justifiably renowned study that became a classic textbook in leading universities for centuries: the “Hisab Al Jabr wal-Muqabalah” (The Book of Integration and Equation), introduced the use of Indo-Arabic numerals that, over time, came to be known as algorithms.

Indeed, algorithm is a Latin derivative of Al Khwarizmi’s name, and rather than attributing the collective work of many mathematicians to the scholar, it is safe to grant him grandfatherhood.

http://gulfnews.com/culture/people/the-father-of-algebra-abu-jaafar-mohammad-ibn-mousa-al-khwarizmi-1.1233076

And the word algebra is the Latin version of the Arabic al jabr, meaning restoration.

Your post was an excellent one.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

53. Yep.

That is also why LOTS of star names start with Al, which means "the" in Arabic. Aldebaran, Altair, Algol (the demon, so called because it's a "winking" variable star), algorithm, alchemy and many others.

Omar Khayyam developed cubic equations in Persia around 1000 C.E. If you want to know more about him, watch "The Keeper:The Legend of Omar Khayyam" on YouTube. It's a beautiful movie and happens to be my favorite movie. It contrasts Omar Khayyam and his service as royal astrologer/astronomer to Sultan Malikshah and his modern-day descendants who live in Houston and work in the oil business. It was made by a man named Kayvan Mashayekh, who escaped from Persia when he was a child during the 1979 revolution overthrowing the Shah of Iran.

The Persians and Arabs kept math and astronomy alive when Europe was busy hanging and burning heretics and forbidding scientific research.


Yes, that's Vanessa Redgrave playing the granddaughter of the publisher of an elaborate edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, published by Sangorsky & Sutcliffe, which went down on the Titanic:



The handsome fellow who plays Omar:

[lastlib]

49. And it has an incredibly radical Greek offshoot--Trigonom-etry

They go off on extreme tangents, and use sines and cosines to idenitfy their group members. Their ultimate leader, a shadowy figure known only as Theta, has been sought for decades for directing countless angles of attack.

[King_Klonopin]

59. Wow, dangerously high concentration of punnery in there! nt

[Laurian]

12. I wonder if she's embarrassed?

She should be, but she probably sees herself as an American patriot.

Sad, sad, sad.

[Journeyman]

13. Well, I have to admit, throughout grammar school I sincerely believed math to be terror . . .

[GliderGuider]

14. On the other hand,

A case can be made that economists are in fact terrorists.
Just not the sort that this dumbass passenger imagined...

[IDemo]

45. Chicago School; Supply Siders; they would fit the bill all right

Though I'll give credit to the ones not in those ranks.

[HereSince1628]

15. "Zero: The biography of a dangerous number" comes to mind...

zero is dangerous, Algebra as every kid knows is an anxiety provoking threat, but only a prelude to evil radians, while systems of equations takes us into the perils of the Jacobian MATRIX!

Theoretical economics by dark curly haired guys is sure to shake innocent people to their dominant latent roots!

[groundloop]

17. If he were doing CALCULUS the passengers should be very scared

between the damned integral signs and all those infernal dx/dt's, calculus is pure terror.

[TomCADem]

21. Worse, he was an economist. Probably Regression Analysis...

Given how scary that subject was, he should be happy they did not call a swat team.

[IDemo]

46. Calculus does have its limits n/t

[3catwoman3]

18. Ignoranus.

Someone who is both stupid AND and asshole.

[7962]

19. I guess she didnt do very well in math class

At the most, they couldve looked at his work & then left him alone

[fred v]

22. Ug!

Wat iz dis "math"? Iz EVIL! Me scared!

[tomm2thumbs]

24. Headline should probably say 'GOP Passenger' to be an honest news item

should start calling these idiots out by name

[hughee99]

31. This passenger must be a republican, because

That plays into what I chose to believe.

[rockfordfile]

42. I think her name should be made public

[Gregorian]

25. In an educated world,

she would have congratulated him on the brilliant method he used in solving his partial integral for modeling a new form of socialism.

But no, he's got brown skin, and is scary looking.

[valerief]

26. Why don't we ever get a pic and stats on the "terrorist fingerpointers?"

[TxDemChem]

28. While this was a horrible display of her ignorance

The comments section is awesome

[jtuck004]

30. "A tragedy of mathematics is a beautiful conjecture ruined by an ugly fact."

Seems to be anonymous, but on point.

[snort]

32. Now she can brag to her Tea Party friends

how she helped to 'get one'.

[Orrex]

33. It would seem that she knows all about the lowest common denomimator

[Ed Suspicious]

34. Idiocy and chickenshittedness run amok.

[SMC22307]

35. Guido!

http://web-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu/~gmenzio/

He told the Washington Post that he was “treated respectfully throughout” the process but remains perturbed by a system that “relies on the input of people who may be completely clueless”.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/07/professor-flight-delay-terrorism-equation-american-airlines

I can't solve differential equations, Mr. Menzio, but share your perturbation!

[rusty quoin]

54. Shouldn't she need to face the rest of the passengers for what she did?

They missed connections because of her. And Mr. Menzio was so nice about the whole thing.

I wish there was a price to be paid for being ignorant. There is one for yelling fire in a crowded theater when there is not such a thing.

I think this story may be the dumbest reason to alert a flight crew of the possible danger of terrorism I've heard yet. I have never trusted the judgement of so called regular Americans, and this event makes it clear that the one alerting is more of a terrorist than anything else.

Doesn't the flight crew have any sense, or is it the law to pull the flight anytime some dolt cries out?

[SMC22307]

55. I have no idea what any repercussions will be...

but if I were an inconvenienced passenger, I'd be pretty ticked off. And would feel sorry for Mr. Menzio, but probably more so for the loser who alerted the flight crew. What a way to go through life.

[rusty quoin]

56. I don't feel bad for her.

I'm sick of living in the same country as her.

[SMC22307]

57. I wonder if she regrets what she's done...

or if she'll be the darling of FUX "News" explaining why she turned in someone for writing *terrorist.* Seriously, what a fucking moron. And what a way to go through life. Fear, fear, and more fear.

[rusty quoin]

58. I feel bad for you and me sharing space with so much ignorance.

There is usually not enough room in my heart for those people, because I worry about the the people they trash. Fox News viewers may be indoctrinated, but it's not my problem. I back decent people. The Fox News viewers can all go to hell as much as I care. They have done too much damage.

[whistler162]

37. Depending on the economic theory he

follows she may have a point.

[Dont call me Shirley]

39. Math teachers ARE terrorists....

[dobleremolque]

50. Must. Resist. Stereotyping.......

all blondes in Syracuse. Ahaargh! Fail!

[cantbeserious]

52. So Much For All The New STEM Initiatives - Back To The Stone Ages

eom

[TNNurse]

61. Trump loves the "poorly educated"

She must be a favorite. The fact that she did not have the sense or knowledge to recognize math is tragic. I am seriously math impared but damn it looked like math to me.

[GOPblows431]

62. Paranoid much?

This country is out of its mind.

[Turbineguy]

63. Notice to Smart People:

You are a threat. To you, it may seem that you should use your intelligence to make the world a better place, but that is not so. To stupid people your intelligence is something you will lord over them in order to steal their Lucky Charms.

[yellowcanine]

65. In other news, the passenger in 37A is doing a terrorist crossword puzzle.

This crap is getting out of hand.

[Blue_Tires]

66. Well, at least the blonde got kicked off the flight and not the professor..