Posted on 09/22/2007 8:55:30 AM PDT by RogerFGay
"I have no idea what a real bomb looks like," writes a blogger at machinist.salon.com, "but I don't think it’s a plastic board with a 9-volt battery on it."
19 year old M.I.T. student, Star Simpson showed up at Logan International Airport Friday to pick up a friend. Such an event would not normally kick up an international news storm, but Simpson had not taken the general stupidity index into account; something we're apparently required to do now.
She was wearing a black sweat shirt with a white plastic board attached. The board itself, known as a socket or bread-board, is a familiar site to decades of engineering and science students and hobbyists. On college campuses throughout the country fall delivers chillier weather, colored leaves, and students with socket-boards, 9-volt batteries, and little flashing lights. But – as if we needed further proof – not everyone gets the joke: "Socket to me" writen on a sweat shirt with a socket-board attached; not even when you add the title of the school course you’re in.
Even if you have never taken a logic course in engineering, in our abundantly technological society, there isn’t much of an excuse for over-reacting. What’s next – grandpa gets tasered for the flashing Rudolf nose on his Christmas tie? Walk in the park, grandpa! Star was taken at gun-point, an exercise that included troopers with submachine guns. Good thing she cooperated, it has been observed, or she would probably be dead.
The woman at the information desk who started things off really cannot be blamed. I can certainly believe that everyone who works in airports has been trained to be on the lookout for suspicious articles. If she couldn’t identify the device, it’s not terribly difficult to understand that she would report it. State troopers, hearing of a suspected bomb in an airport, would quite naturally show up prepared. But now, in the calm light of day, when it is clear that it was just a misunderstanding, the idiots among us can’t let it go. Thank something – at least they’ve let her out on bail.
Star; you don’t get it yet. You’ve done well enough academically to have made it into the second year of M.I.T.'s electrical engineering and computer science program. If you were called a nerd in high school, it was nothing. In this big adult world, you will be surrounded by idiots for the rest of your life, and they will be in powerful positions. If you need more perspective on that, just think; "Dan Rather." It's not just Dan. Somebody hired him. Millions of people watched and listened to him every night. It goes on and on. It'll drive you crazy if you let it.
It’s unfair, I know. Back when I was a kid, it was compassionate to look out for those less fortunate. But, when they screwed up, it was clearly their fault and they had to take the consequences. Today however – idiots control everything (thanks Dan). The world is a very different place.
You have an obligation to care for them, to protect them, and whatever you do – try not to confuse them. They can become quite dangerous. The worst thing is if you show "insensitivity" to them. This is when you assume that they'll understand something that’s really really obvious to you, and then it turns out that they don't. They'll blame it on you, of course. That’s what every little smirk and joke is about. There are many people who are not able to comprehend things that seem really really obvious to you; including the humor – Socket to me! Star – honey – they really don’t get it and they’re not going to; and – for lack of a better alternative – they’re going to continue to give you a hard time until they feel better about themselves.
I think the only idiot here is Star Simpson.
Roger F. Gay
yes, he sounds gay...
anyone this stupid should be held in custody for their own protection.
does he really think in the day and age it is OK to walk around with a printed circuit board and battery- because it is obviously not a bomb? how dumb can you get?
Maybe the right shirt, but wrong place to wear it. Too many itchy fingers in the airport, she is lucky she is not worm bait.
This kind of crap adds more aggravation to an already long as^ lines we travelers experience going through security.
Someone explain to that idiot bombs can be brought in pieces and then assembled.
Duh.
Yeah, I feel the same way. Like, I don't get people who do stupid things in airports and then say it was just a joke....
susie
I recall standing in line at a TWA check in back in 1985 while the man in front of me argued with the agent because they wouldn’t let the man’s 10 year old son carry on, as hand baggage, a replica arab rifle that he was carrying. Their argument was that it was too fragile (it was plastic) to check as baggage so they want to put it in the overhead.
While this argument was going on, the TV behind the agent was showing the TWA Beirut hi-jacking in progress...
Some people have no sense.
radio shack breadboard with a dozen LEDs, probably a 555 timer, and some play-dough.
nonetheless, this alleged whiz-kid knows perfectly well what this stunt signifies, as well as her disdain for security, and her warped and cynical sense of humor....which may all combine to produce an adult with real or imagined grievances. As such, she must be placed on every terror and travel watchlist that exists. She has victimized everything necessary for safe air-travel in (perhaps, perhaps not) a cynical act, so let her live with the consequences.
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Even our liberal local news talking-head said “She’s normally very bright, but yesterday did something very stupid”...
Hey gang. She didn’t say it was a joke. She just went to the airport to pick up a friend. She’s a girl - the sweat shirt was probably for her friend’s benefit.
Assuming you are the same person that wrote the article, are you aware of something that happened about six years and 11 days ago, that originated from the same Logan airport in Boston? Two planes, destined for Los Angeles (my home city), that took a permanent and fatal detour into two very tall buildings that no longer exist (nor do the people inside them)?
I ask, because nowhere in your article is Logan Airport’s connection with 9/11 even mentioned.
Is it possible - since we’re talking about education and possibilities - that a place with such a history, whose calendar date has just been remembered worldwide, just MIGHT be justifiably edgy about someone doing what stated rules explicitly forbid - making a joke? Or, worse yet, “wearing” a joke?
To paraphrase a certain senator from New York, to expect the officials at the airport to do otherwise would require “the willing suspension of disbelief”.
Star Simpson (No relation to Bart)
This all happened at Logan International in Boston?
Is this the same Logan International that 9-11 flights originated from?
Is this the same Logan International that allowed the terrorist muslims to
commandeer flights that were used as missiles to launch an attack on the USA?
I would have to say, if the answer to any or all of the above questions is "YES" then:
Maybe shes a freakin' idiot that needs
to be locked up for her own good.
They didn’t overreact, because she’s still alive. And lucky in that.
In the instant that an officer notices her “artwork” on her hoodie there is but a mere flash of a moment to decide what to do. He doesn’t have *time* to carefully inspect the circuit board, wiring and battery and assess whether it is really a bomb, or just looks like it might be one.
That he didn’t instantly opt for a head shot is really lucky for her, but it was a huge risk taken by the cop on the chance that ~maybe~ it wasn’t an immediate threat. So he was lucky too.
The next cop in a similar situation may not be so lucky.
“some play-dough.”
And why the play-dough? I spent two years in electronics classes. I don’t recall us ever using play-dough.
The play-dough blows her story apart, no pun intended.
She’s described as a supersmart student, athlete and inventor, but even her mother said Star Anna Simpson’s circuit-board stunt at Logan International Airport yesterday was as dim as it gets.
It was “a stupid kid’s prank,” Stephanie Simpson told the Herald by phone from Hawaii. While the maneuver almost landed her daughter in a body bag, Simpson insisted Star had “no ill intent whatsoever,” but declined to comment further.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology classmates described the 19-year-old brainiac as a strange, kindhearted “character” who walks city streets barefoot and shaved her head last year so she could donate her hair to charity.
After being nabbed at gunpoint, Simpson told authorities she created the “piece of art” so she’d “stand out” at MIT’s career fair, and she’d been wearing it for days.
“She marches to the beat of her own drum,” said Caine Jette, 19, an MIT sophomore and member of the school’s Hawaii Club. “I don’t think this was intentional.”
Simpson told authorities she had gone to Logan to meet her boyfriend, Tim Anderson, 42, a retired 3-D printer inventor who lives in California. His father, James Anderson, said he spoke to his son, who told him Simpson was “transporting an art project.”
“I suspect she’s frightened to death,” James Anderson told the Herald. “She seemed like a very timid, quiet kind of person.”
James Anderson said his son met Simpson while she was interning at Squid Labs in Alameda, Calif. Tim Anderson invented a 3-D printer with a partner at MIT, formed a company to market it and later sold the company, his father said.
(snip)
http://multimedia.heraldinteractive.com/images/5af98d8426_prof09222007.jpg
Once again - she didn’t say it was a joke. The phrase “Socket to me” was supposed to be a play on words, but that’s the only humor associated with the known facts. What about a radio? A radio could be a bomb. The wrapping around a McD’s hamburger could be used as an insulator on a sophisticated device that’s being moved in piece by piece to assemble a bomb. There are batteries in iPods, cell phones, digital cameras ..... Why get upset over her piece of plastic? Is it just because news reports told you it was a “fake bomb” - Star Simpson never described it that way.
Never assume goobermint employees are smart enough to get a joke.
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