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Square Root Looks like a Gun

HonestJoe

HonestJoe

Well-Known Member
Kuzcotopia said:
I think we're all missing the point.

This is not an issue of gun fear and hysteria, it's an issue of how uneducated these Lousiana students seem to be. . . They clearly could not recognize a common mathematical symbol that they should have learned in 5th grade.

This is is a story about stupidity, not excessive fear.
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There’s a major irony in you accusing others of stupidity when you think this has anything to do with students not knowing what the symbol was.

The reporting is clear that they knew what it was but one said it also looks like a gun, another joked about shooting him and the rumour mill got out of hand to the point that the police received a report of a student threatening the shoot up the school.
 
Curious George

Curious George

Veteran Member
Wu Wei said:
Screen%20Shot%202018-02-22%20at%201.03.58%20PM


This got the police to investigate a student who said that....

Students in Louisiana thought this math symbol looked like a gun. Police were called

Thoughts
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If that warrant read, "Johnny told Sally that Diego said Henry said Matt's older brother said he would shoot Eli with a radical," then I am embarrassed for the judge who signed off on such a warrant.

Is it too much that we ask our police to better investigate before they invade a family's privacy. I can only hope I am mistaken in believing this story and the Miami Herald has given up real news as satire pays more.

*edit*Crossing my fingers hoping the family voluntarily submitted to a search and no warrant was issued.
 
HonestJoe

HonestJoe

Well-Known Member
Curious George said:
If that warrant read, "Johnny told Sally that Diego said Henry said Matt's older brother said he would shoot Eli with a radical," then I am embarrassed for the judge who signed off on such a warrant.
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It obviously won’t have been anything like that but I think your reaction demonstrates a fundamentally flaw in public (largely media-fed) attitude.

If the authorities investigate someone but they turn out to be innocent, the authorities are attacked for being invasive and authoritarian (as in this case). If they don’t investigate someone who goes on to commit some serious crime, the authorities are attacked for being incompetent or lazy (as they did regarding the internet post by the Florida shooter). The information the police actually receive at the time though can be pretty much exactly the same in either scenario though. It’s a classic no-win scenario for them.
 
Curious George

Curious George

Veteran Member
HonestJoe said:
It obviously won’t have been anything like that but I think your reaction demonstrates a fundamentally flaw in public (largely media-fed) attitude.

If the authorities investigate someone but they turn out to be innocent, the authorities are attacked for being invasive and authoritarian (as in this case). If they don’t investigate someone who goes on to commit some serious crime, the authorities are attacked for being incompetent or lazy (as they did regarding the internet post by the Florida shooter). The information the police actually receive at the time though can be pretty much exactly the same in either scenario though. It’s a classic no-win scenario for them.
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Those are perhaps two very different extremes that you are posing. It is the protection against unreasonable search and seizure that I suggest needs to be respected. That doesn't prohibit the police from investigating. It was the lack of investigation that was criticized in the second instance and the potential quickness to search in the first. There is a middle ground.
 
Kuzcotopia

Kuzcotopia

If you can read this, you are as lucky as I am.
HonestJoe said:
There’s a major irony in you accusing others of stupidity when you think this has anything to do with students not knowing what the symbol was.

The reporting is clear that they knew what it was but one said it also looks like a gun, another joked about shooting him and the rumour mill got out of hand to the point that the police received a report of a student threatening the shoot up the school.
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Yeah, I didn't read the article. So you can get me for that too.

Guilty as charged.
 
HonestJoe

HonestJoe

Well-Known Member
Curious George said:
Those are perhaps two very different extremes that you are posing. It is the protection against unreasonable search and seizure that I suggest needs to be respected. That doesn't prohibit the police from investigating. It was the lack of investigation that was criticized in the second instance and the potential quickness to search in the first. There is a middle ground.
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I agree but I think that in most cases, the police do find the middle ground. The problem is that they could do exactly the same thing in the face of exactly the same evidence but be treated entirely differently in the media depending on whether the suspect ends up being innocent or guilty.

If the police had fully investigated the Florida shooter for his internet post (before the shooting obviously), I have absolutely no doubt that they would have been open to attack from the media as “over-reacting to some poor kid making a stupid joke”. That investigation might have prevented the shooting but obviously nobody would know that.
 
Curious George

Curious George

Veteran Member
HonestJoe said:
I agree but I think that in most cases, the police do find the middle ground. The problem is that they could do exactly the same thing in the face of exactly the same evidence but be treated entirely differently in the media depending on whether the suspect ends up being innocent or guilty.

If the police had fully investigated the Florida shooter for his internet post (before the shooting obviously), I have absolutely no doubt that they would have been open to attack from the media as “over-reacting to some poor kid making a stupid joke”. That investigation might have prevented the shooting but obviously nobody would know that.
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I think that is a possibility, but a slim one. Investigation doesn't need to require getting a warrant to search. There are steps one can do prior...they are so unobtrusive that the media wouldn't even take notice.
 
Wu Wei

Wu Wei

ursus senum severiorum and ex-Bisy Backson
I am beginning to wonder what will happen it the start to study Pi...that one even has a trigger

b2723a54b80e3a039441bb3cacff21b9--pi-math-memorial-tattoos.jpg
 
Skwim

Skwim

Veteran Member
Wu Wei said:
I am beginning to wonder what will happen it the start to study Pi...that one even has a trigger

b2723a54b80e3a039441bb3cacff21b9--pi-math-memorial-tattoos.jpg
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Definite sexual overtones. I see black labia being penetrated by a white penis.

.
 
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