GASP! How so incredibly UN-American of her!! To stand out… How.Dare.She.

Am I still on the continent I think I am??

I hope you use a lot of your community service time telling your side of the story.

America was founded by disorderly people.

I intended to say soldering, not saudering.

Or: Electronics are dangerous. So are chemicals. And computers. We should ban them.

(Please pick one.)

I think the problem here is that you’re assuming she’s saying she knew she was going to provoke a reaction when she went to the airport. I don’t really think that’s the case. I mean seriously, you just quoted it in your last post:

STAR: “I was thinking it was a cold day. It was a sweatshirt. If I’d seen my work through their eyes, no, it wouldn’t have made any sense to wear it. But I didn’t see it that way.”

If I’d seen my work through their eyes. Past tense. She didn’t think about it at that time. So no, it most definitely isn’t obvious she knew she was going to provoke a reaction. She didn’t walk out the door that day thinking that her fellow citizens were dumb, panicky animals and she wasn’t going to care. She didn’t think to herself that she was going to cause a big stir and get on the news. She went to go see a friend.

Yes, you are getting a harsh reaction here. You know why? You’re blaming the victim and you’re engaged in apologizing for the irrational behavior on the part of law enforcement, even if you are couching it in careful “Well they overreacted BUT she caused that overreaction” language. As I mentioned in the previous thread on this story, it begins to sound unpleasantly like “She asked for it, dressing/behaving so provocatively”. Exactly the kind of statement used to defend rapists in the past and murderers in the present, with the case of Angie Zapata so fresh in my mind.

If you’re looking for an echo chamber for your thoughts, you’ve come to the wrong place. And if you don’t like the comparison, too damn bad.

However, I am a little surprised at the sngl mnddnss with which today’s commenters are defending Ms. Simpson’s actions. The prevailing sense here seems to be that no rational observer should have been worried at the sight of the object pasted to Ms. Simpson’s sweater. Ths, flks, s rdcls.

Of course you and I know LEDs, batteries, and breadboards from a bomb, but regular people don’t, nor is it fair for makers to expect them to, any more than doctors expect us to know a hemangioma from a staph infection. The popular conception of a bomb is a device with lights, exposed wires, and batteries. This much is fact – we can discuss whether or not this is a realistic conception, but I don’t think this fact is up for debate. So we have established that Ms. Simpson was wearing an unusual device which, to many uneducated observers, would resemble a bomb.

Then, while wearing this device, Ms. Simpson entered a domain which, t nvrsl pblc knwldg, nd lmst nnms pblc grmnt is subject to especially stringent security procedures. (We will leave out the discussion of whether current procedures are effective or warranted [both questions to which I think the answer may be "no"], since it is sufficient that Ms. Simpson knew that these procedures were in effect.) From a young age, children are warned to be circumspect in the airport, and not to make jokes about bombings or hijacking. And this is not because we want to restrict speech, but because such jokes would decrease the signal/noise ratio for security personnel – we don’t restrict any other kinds of speech in airports (a few isolated incidents aside.) The argument that employees should somehow have decided it was TOO obvious to be a bomb is really quite silly – suppose somebody walks into a bank carrying a pistol. Would we really think, “If he were trying to rob the bank, he would be hiding the pistol, and since he is not, it must be really be a toy pistol or an art project.” Of course not.

And so, when Ms. Simpson walked into the airport wearing a sweater which could sly be predicted to scream “BOMB” to any uninformed member of the public, airport employees were not unjustified in raising alarm – and Ms. Simpson either knew, or should have known, that this would be the effect of her actions. This is really not about free speech, since anybody who knows anything about the law knows that there have always been limits to free speech where the rights of others are concerned. There is a difficult balance to draw when restricting speech, and I think that the US is much closer to getting it right than most European countries. But even with the great difficulty of these issues, it should be clear that just as it is inappropriate to walk into a bank holding a toy pistol, it was inappropriate for Ms. Simpson to walk into an airport wearing a breadboard with exposed wires on her chest.

Having dated someone from MIT, I can assure you it’s quite possible to be a complete moron and still attend that particular school.

Studies have shown that the executive portions of the cortex are not fully developed until the mid-20s

Yeah, and I read it’s even later for geeks. Big brains take longer to develop, or something like that. You have to put up with being clumsy and socially inept for longer, but you end up with a higher-functioning sophisticated brain that’s based on the adult world as you see it when you finally wake up to social awareness.

Instead of being one of those people stuck forever in mental high school. /me shudders

You’re back! Hurrah! That’s a wonderful thing indeed.

(You might have been back for a while and I just missed seeing your comments.)

I’m going to be sans computer for a couple of weeks, in intraweb withdrawal. Nice to know I have one less thing to fret about.

I hope you are feeling much better.

Why oh why are the authorities so scared of admitting that they might have made a mistake? Do they think the faith of the public will come crashing down and there will be anarchy in the streets?

I make mistakes all the time. I admit it, and apologize, and don’t drag it out for years and years and force innocent people to apologize to me.

No, you don’t.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the 1st would not protect somebody for *falsely* yelling “Fire!” in a theater. Or, to put it in modern terms, the 1st would not protect somebody for *falsely* yelling “OMGSUICIDEBOMBSWEATSHIRT!” in an airport.

I was getting so worried about seeing the non-sarcastic versions of that opinion popping up on this thread that I failed to recognize the tongue-in-cheek in this case.

I’m still worried though…

Anyway, glad to hear this story finally had an almost-happy ending.

It could be that doing the sane thing and recognizing that they had overreacted would have exposed them to liability, so that someone cynically decided that making a bullshit charge stick would be the cheapest way out. It could be that in our brave new national era of paranoia, unintentionally frightening hysterical people who watch too much television is already an offense. But either way, if you want to fix a broken system, those might be good starting points.

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Of course you and I know LEDs, batteries, and breadboards from a bomb, but regular people don’t, nor is it fair for makers to expect them to, any more than doctors expect us to know a hemangioma from a staph infection. The popular conception of a bomb is a device with lights, exposed wires, and batteries. This much is fact – we can discuss whether or not this is a realistic conception, but I don’t think this fact is up for debate. So we have established that Ms. Simpson was wearing an unusual device which, to many uneducated observers, would resemble a bomb.

I see your point. And I think most people defending Star’s position believed that it was acceptable for the uneducated observer to question Star about the object of concern.

I guess we have a choice between two schools of thought:

Accepting that, at times, we might all be confronted by the unknown: technologies we have never seen, equipment we are not familiar with, elements we are prejudiced against. We can accept to be educated by people with different or further knowledge than our own instead of being fearful without evidence of real threat.

OR

We can decide that the world is now too dangerous a place to bother venture beyond our respective lack of knowledge: Shoot first, ask questions later.

I rather stick with the former.

WTF?

Oh…

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