Economist removed from plane for Algebra, flight delayed 1.5 hours

boing
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From PORLOCK.

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It sounds like a recipriversexclusion.

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419WCKFCYEL._SX312_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg314×474 27.4 KB

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Jesus uses binary notation:
But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

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Oh
 well I do know about Brownian motion. Thanks. Lovely to look at, btw.

Just looked up the Hairy Ball theorem and noticed a hairy doughnut. I wonder if the café where the surrealists used to go to had hairy doughnuts to go with these:

38.jpg800×611 90.8 KB

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I’d say let’s all protest by doing math on planes
but then I’d have to do math, so


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al-jebr roughly translates to “the system for reconciling disparate parts.”

Also “bone-setting”

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“Algebra” comes from “al jabr”, meaning the reunion of broken parts.

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Wait! Is that a book by Donald Knuth? OMG, is it in print?

[ETA] I looked it up. It is in print!

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If you trace back the linguistic origins even further, algebra is atlantian for “holder of mermaid boobs.”

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Technically, “58008”.

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You win the internet. :smiley_cat:

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“even the mile of pi that Brady unrolled on Numberphile.”

Are math vloggers an incestuous community?

(I happen to like Numberphile, though “periodic table of videos” is my sentimental favorite.)

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It just shits me the way people don’t think this stuff through.

Like seriously, what did this person think was going on?

Did she think she was sitting next to someone who was designing a bomb ON THE PLANE?

How does that even
 why would
 I just


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The concept that the general public are equipped with the skills to somehow detect terrorist is ludicrous. Campaigns like “see something, say something” are probably among the worst sort of community policing. People’s internal biases always show up, and “fear of the unknown” is a rather primitive way to protect ourselves. The entire “heightened state of alert” that has been pushed since the September 11th attacks needs to be phased out. Antsy passengers on planes playing cop aren’t saving anybody from anything.

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Tell me about it! We’ve got a Federal election coming up in Australia, and it seems to have become a tradition for the government to launch a “see something say something” campaign in the lead up, because apparently when everyone is scared they like to keep the same government.

So there are posters everywhere and absolutely terrible, sickening television advertisements where everyone is looking sideways at everyone else, peeking in their sports bags, checking out what sites they are browsing, going through their rubbish, looking for anything terrorist-y “no matter how small”.

It’s like a license for racial profiling.

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Was the government agent the “man from Porlock?” I don’t think Coleridge says so.

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So that’s why Lynton Crosby was back in Australia leaving one of his minions to lose the London Mayor election for the Conservatives.

Crosby and Murdoch - payback time for exporting all our criminals to Australia.

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Everyone thinks the Porlock from which the man came to disturb Coleridge was a location, rather than a covert government agency tasked with enforcing secrecy about Project XANADU.

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A differential equation, to be exact.

Sorry to spoil the pun, but I think that’s analysis, not algebra.