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Following up on this story, Matt Blaze makes a key point (and see the whole conversation):
(whispers to flight attendant): "I don't want to upset anyone, but I think the man in 15C is modeling credit default swaps".
— matt blaze (@mattblaze) May 7, 2016
Also this:
I feel like such a badass now. I just hope the authorities aren't waiting for me when we arrive at the gate. pic.twitter.com/avI8vRmAvB
— matt blaze (@mattblaze) May 9, 2016
Ari Corcoran said,
May 9, 2016 @ 5:57 am
So the "dismal science" is now a terrorist threat? An argument for econometric profiling?
[(myl) Well, there's an argument from morphology. Some people distinguish "Islamic" (neutral adjective for the religion) from "Islamist" (adjective for fundamentalist Islam), and similarly "Christian" vs. "Christianist". So "economic" / "economist" — the word for adherents of economics has always had the fundamentalist -ist affix.
But as a linguist, I should tread carefully here, perhaps by pointing out that Matt's example is really about the dangers of financial engineering, which is a more specialized profession.]
Ari Corcoran said,
May 9, 2016 @ 6:16 am
"Econometric" has a more specific meaning, i.e. the application of mathematical and statistical techniques to economic problems and theories, rather than economist as a more generic term, though may well be a fundamentalist of a more mathematical kind. "Financial engineering" falls well into that definition!
richardelguru said,
May 9, 2016 @ 6:35 am
Too many people are becoming Istist!
bks said,
May 9, 2016 @ 7:53 am
If instead of a well-spoken, Italian, Ivy League professor, the victim had been a recently-arrived Yemeni graduate student scribbling physical chemistry notes in Arabic, the results might have been different and the story less subject to snark.
[(myl) Indeed.]
Adrian Morgan said,
May 9, 2016 @ 9:19 am
The story reminded me of the time I was stopped by police for doing my physics revision.
(At the time my exam revision strategy involved reciting notes to myself while walking around and around local blocks, and apparently someone had reported me for loitering or something like that. Anyway, the police were polite enough and easily satisfied, but it's among the most amusing physics exam revision anecdotes I have.)
BZ said,
May 9, 2016 @ 1:08 pm
@myl,
Every time I've ever heard the word "Islamic" it was followed by "extremist", "terrorist", "fundamentalist" or the like (of course, nowadays, also "State") , and if it wasn't, it was implied. "Islamist" is just the noun form of same. The neutral word in my experience is "Muslim".
Update: The Internet seems to disagree with me completely. I have no idea where I picked up this distinction, and why I am so certain of its existence
KeithB said,
May 9, 2016 @ 1:41 pm
BZ:
Fos News?
KeithB said,
May 9, 2016 @ 1:42 pm
Ahh, can't edit!
BZ:
Fox News?
BZ said,
May 9, 2016 @ 4:51 pm
@KeithB,
Certainly not. I try to stay away from that stuff as much as possible. It may be that the time I started hearing the word "Islamic" coincided with the rise of importance of Islamic terror in the US. Google ngram viewer does show a slow drop of "Muslim" and rise of "Islamic" between 2005 and 2008 (the last year it has data) with "Islamic" overtaking "Muslim" in 2008.
BZ said,
May 9, 2016 @ 4:56 pm
Nevermind on ngram viewer. I entered the values wrong. There is no convergence
Bill Lee said,
May 9, 2016 @ 8:24 pm
We don't know what he wore on the flight, but his faculty picture at UPenn. [ http://web-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu/~gmenzio/ ] shows a Keffiyeh (see wiki illustrations and synonyms) around his neck.
[(myl) I think you're wrong — not every checkered scarf is a keffiyeh:
]
Dark-skinned Italian, (accented?) light beard, curly hair.
Not the American male stereotype.
[(myl) According to the story in the Daily Mail, another airport passer-by mistook him for John Lennon's son Sean:
]
And differential equations, not readily shown in public and not learned by many people.
Rebecca said,
May 9, 2016 @ 8:54 pm
So, basically, the "weapons of math instruction" joke just came to life?
AntC said,
May 9, 2016 @ 9:44 pm
@myl fundamentalist -ist affix.
Yes. A Marxist is somebody who wants to ovethrow the economic order by revolutionary politics in the vanguard of the proletariat.
A Marxian is somebody who studies Marx's writings and thought in an academic/abstract/philosophers-have-only-interpreted-the-world sort of way.
(Each claims to be the 'truer' follower of the C19th Economics theoretician.)
kktkkr said,
May 10, 2016 @ 2:06 am
A search for "economician" also throws up this reddit post with a few casual comments on morphology and astronomists and econometricians:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wordplay/comments/tyifi/technician_logician_mathematician_statistician/
And then there's "mathematist" as a noun, and "mathematicist" as an adjective, the latter of which is probably used mainly by physicsists.
Interesting stuff to think about, especially for linguisticists…
Xmun said,
May 10, 2016 @ 10:27 pm
How many other amusing physics exam revision anecdotes does Adrian Morgan have?
ohwilleke said,
May 11, 2016 @ 3:38 pm
In fairness, unless he was using Roman numerals, he probably was writing in Arabic [numerals], and the remaining symbols commonly used in differential equations were invented by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the same language that was later used by the National Socialist Party that we ultimately fought World War II with, so those symbols are pretty suspect and potentially offensive too. You can't be too careful. ;)
J. W. Brewer said,
May 11, 2016 @ 6:07 pm
Indeed, to follow up on ohwilleke's observation, there is a certain similarity between the double-integral symbol ∬ and the runic version (which I can't seem to easily cut-and-paste) of the Nazi SS logo — a similarity which unless my memory deceives me Thos. Pynchon observes and riffs on somewhere in Gravity's Rainbow.
Alon Lischinsky said,
May 13, 2016 @ 7:36 am
@BZ: Baker et al. (2013:84) have something to say about the usage you mention.