an MIT student walks into an airport...

i mean, i know what she did was D-U-M-B, but still, quotes like that are precisely why i hate the police

you should be GRATEFUL that we did not SHOOT YOU for wearing a stupid art project that, incidentally, does not actually look like a bomb at all!

http://boingboing.net/images/cfa4827569_20070921device3.jpg

it lit up the words "COURSE VI" and "SOCKET TO ME" apparently

http://www.darkplanneur.com/images/boston.jpg

Simpson was charged with disturbing the peace and possessing a hoax device

the second charge was concocted by city officials during the ATHF lite-brite fiasco, y/n?

xpost yes

xp that is the INSIDE of the sweatshirt, btw

y, i think

C. Grisso goes where I was going to go, namely that Boston has already shown itself to be a very, very weak scorer on the "looks like a bomb" quiz.

what a moron

"hoax device" could describe so many things!

esp funny is that she was walking around and, like, TALKING to airport officials about flight arrivals and shit

yeah but mooninite wasn't strapped to someones chest in an airport.

wow i would love to slap her bleach blond head

God, another case that should be a pretty clear cut example of how fucked up the current police climate is marred by the fact that the defendant was a stupid college kid doing a really stupid thing.

I just love the idea that anybody who wants to fuck us up will be wearing wires and batteries hanging off themselves and put fucking big blinky lights all over their IEDs instead of, you know, making actual IEDs like we've been training thousands of people to do for the past four years

or even bothering to hide it

or possibly putting the bomb on a TRUCK and PARKING IT

whatever FITE TERRORISM etc fuck this country in the ass

lol boston has never ever seen an actual bomb before huh

am I the only person who is really fucking sick of hearing knee-jerk responses to this kind of bullshit that basically consist of "well the kid(s) were being STUPID anyway" which is all well and fine but you do realize the actual idiot causing the problem is the person wearing the authority costume, right?

or did I miss the issue of vice magazine where it was announced that the cool thing to do is whatever the cops tell you

pretty gal (sorta)

obviously the vice-appropriate response is to chastise the person enough with threats of violence while sneering at their hair color. test the boundaries of freedom, why don't you? psssh. way to go, getting caught. sneer, guffaw.

This is what I'm saying. Shit happens constantly, but it's always someone most folks can point to and be all "Douchebag! Doesn't count." so they don't take into account what it really means when a girl gets arrested for having some LEDs on her shirt.

Can we just treat loud/stupid assholes like loud/stupid assholes instead of THREATS TO FREEDOMS?

xpost

whoops i'm an idiot that is clearly the outside of her sweatshirt

still, someone trained as a security professional should be able to quickly discern that that is just blinky lights, not, like, a vest packed with C4

wtf does vice have to do with this. if you walk into an airport wearing a fake bomb you should know you are going to get arrested. and why shouldn't you be?

if you walk into a bank and point a fake gun at somebody you will get arrested too. and if you point a fake gun at a cop you run the risk of getting shot.

you'd think that, right xpost to river wolf

This is more the equivalent of walking into a bank and pointing a Super Soaker at the teller, though.

slocki, that argument falls apart in that i don't see how a reasonable person could think some stupid raver artwork is a bomb. that looks NOTHING like a bomb. like, not even an as-seen-on-tv-movie type of bomb.

en i see kay otm basically.

she should have been arrested on principle, who cares how real the bomb looked

also, slocki, she was not wearing a "fake bomb," wtf dude. she was wearing a homemade blinky light thing that was NOT intended to trick ppl into thinking it was abomb. it was intended to trick ppl into giving her a job, ffs

well now she has a job! making license plates!

ok the guy I knew in the air force who put a sign saying "DANGER! ANTHRAX!" next to a pile of white dust from sanding drywall in a college dorm was an idiot.

a person wearing a shirt with blinking lights is not exactly carrying a fake bomb. that's no different from saying a person who tries to check a piece of luggage with a hunk of cheese in it is carrying a fake bomb.

what principle would that be, cutty?

this is my favorite part:

The major praised the booth attendant but said the incident is a reminder of the terrorism threat confronting the civil aviation system.

did they like actually say anything like this with a straight face?

first they came for the dorks at the airport etc

sorry but at this point it is so common sense that you should not walk into an airport with a wired device strapped to your chest.

if it said BOMB I AM A BOMB on it, then okay, the super-soaker argument might hold water (ha). but this is like walking into a bank with a violin case or something

yeah, especially in boston, where the cops seem to be extra special!

they don't arrest the cheese-packed-next-to-the-cell-phone-charger people so I really don't see how the fuck any reasonable sober person could think this incident is justifiable by the fucking popos

If they would have shot and killed her, they could still have pointed at Britain: "see, we only shoot REAL threats!"

it's also common sense that you shouldn't wear shoes that don't slip on and off to the airport anymore but that doesn't mean it's not a bunch of STUPID FUCKING BULLSHIT

is there a picture of what it looked like from the outside?

I won't even walk into an airport with a belt anymore.

tombot otm

what principle would that be, cutty?

stupid people need to be slapped

maybe so, slocki, and the cops probably did the right thing in confronting her about it. but this is NOT equivalent to yelling fire in a theater. she actually did NOTHING illegal.

the police shouldn't be so fucking chuffed and self-congratulatory about arresting someone who was not remotely a threat. it's theater.

xp

i was wrong, slocki (see upthread). that IS what it looked like from the outside.

it wasn't even like she had any business being in the fucking airport

a) the kid is a moron, because, well, who in fuck with any common sense would think going thru an airport in 2007 with blocky electric blinky shit on their chest would be no problem??

b) the authorities look pretty "lame dad" for scolding everybody and talking all tough and not being able to figure out in 20 seconds what was a problem and what isn't, but really i think a) is the trigger issue here.

about 2 weeks ago I ran into about 5 people I had seen the night before out. It was embarrassing because I was wearing the exact same outfit, but then we all realized every single one of us was wearing the exact same outfit as the night before.

gabbneb stfu

wear jeans until u can strain a good stew out of them.

Plus there are a ton of nerdy college students who wear the same clothes multiple days in a row.

in college there was a (Samoan, incidentally) guy who wore this thing that I don't remember if it was a long coat or a bathrobe (perhaps you couldn't tell at the time either?) every day. one day in calc he pulled a slice of pizza out of the pocket.

sorry rw? i don't know why we can't consider if she might be a little off?

the question is why would we consider that? oh no she's in college and she wore the same clothes for a few days, she must be "off"

she also went to an airport wearing a circuit board and holding clay in her hands to meet her boyfriend of more than twice her age.

She also ate a kitten using a spork.

The week in Russian 101 where we had to practice saying what we were wearing was made much funnier by the one guy who wore the same thing every day. I thought I was above that but by the time I graduated...no. Totally normal college behavior.

(xpost) (Which is the real tragedy here because how often do you find a spork-wielding kitten?)

what sleep said

i don't think the article is clearly stating she just wore the same sweatshirt for a few days.

and i think the question whether she's "off" or not is unrelated to whether the police overreacted

wait, how the fuck do we actually know she was meeting her boyfriend (earlier articles just said 'a friend'), and that he's 42 (only the boston herald has claimed this to my knowledge)? I mean I really don't think the Boston Herald's doing a lot of fact-checking in their slam fest of a 19 year old. And even if it's true, why does it matter?

Basically, LOL at out-of-towners who make the mistake of paying attention to the Herald.

yeah, i admit i haven't paid much attention to these articles or where they come from

Basically, LOL at out-of-towners who make the mistake of paying attention to the Herald.

-- HI DERE, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 1:56 PM (Tuesday, September 25, 2007 1:56 PM)

seriously, this is the best part of this whole thing.

i wear the same hoodie like every day

me too and I bought it four years ago and washed it like twice.

i have never worn a hoodie (or a "hoo-die"). perhaps i am prejudic-ed against hoodie-wearers.

why am i not surprised.

i don't know?

is it morally wrong that i have never worn a hoodie?

i went for about a year of college wearing and XL wu wear hoodie until it was stolen. that must have looked kind of ridiculous, in retrospect.

I bet it was comfy tho.

yes, very!

I'm sorry, gabbneb, but why the fuck am I supposed to be concerned about how old her fucking BF is?

hmm, I don't think I said you were? perhaps it's totally irrelevant to anything. why did you use 'fuck' twice?

stfu

hi omar little, who are you?

i'm not trying to make anyone mad, but i seem to be doing htat

why the fuck should I be fucking reading about how he the fuck is? (xpost)

j/k - chill, everyone. Nobody exploded, nobody died, it was just a misunderstanding and that's it.

why did you use 'fuck' twice?

Because I'm a sailor from fucking Vestal, you priggish fuck.

oops xpost, hi bff etc

Because I'm a sailor from fucking Vestal, you priggish fuck.

hmm, I don't understand anything you're saying. except the sailor bit, i guess.

oh now i get it - you're saying that i think it's immoral for her to be involved with a guy twice her age. but that wasn't what i was saying/thinking.

half your age plus eight
42 = 29

do you bill your ilx time to clients, gabbneb?

again, you guys are assuming facts based on the reporting of a paper that is like a more reactionary, less fact-based version of the NY Post.

i never got a response to my letter

no, gean. that doesn't seem like a very apposite inquiry, tho.

i wear the same hoodie like every day

-- s1ocki, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 2:02 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

me too and I bought it four years ago and washed it like twice.

-- jessie monster, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 2:03 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

i went for about a year of college wearing and XL wu wear hoodie until it was stolen. that must have looked kind of ridiculous, in retrospect.

-- bell_labs, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 2:09 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

SOMEONE GOT YOU ALL IN CHECK:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/52/106104283_8653f796f5.jpg?v=0

holy shit i just remembered that my all-time favorite hoodie is languishing in the back seat of some asshole i used to work at the mountain with

TREVOR. U GONNA DIE.

why is he going to die, because theres a bomb attached to it?????

shhhhhh!

no, it's actually because i never washed it that often

holy shit i just remembered that my all-time favorite hoodie is languishing in the back seat of some asshole i used to work at the mountain with

:|

hahahahahah

WHOOPS