The dangers of doing math
This Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent boarded a plane in the United States. It was a regional jet making a short hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.
The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently scribbling mysterious symbols on a notepad he’d brought aboard. His seatmate, a blonde, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over. He was wearing navy Diesel jeans and a red Lacoste sweater – but something about him didn’t seem right.
She decided to try out some small talk.
"Is Syracuse home?"
"No," he replied curtly.
He similarly deflected further questions. He appeared laser-focused — perhaps too laser-focused — on the task at hand, those strange scribblings.
She became suspicious. Maybe it was code, or something in in Arabic - maybe the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard their flight! Just to be safe, she decided, it was her duty to alert the authorities.
And so she did.
And so the suspicious-looking man was taken off the plane, and interrogated.
[I've paraphrased part of the article. To hear what happened, read the rest. Thanks to +Jenny Meyer for pointing this out.]