>I'd love to hear this more nuanced explanation.
I suspect his fellow passenger's account would bear little resemblance to either the Washington Post's spin on events, or how Menzio himself chose to interpret the matter on his Facebook page.
Reading between the lines, it would appear that Guido Menzio was pointedly and gratuitously rude to his neighbor when she attempted to initiate friendly conversation. He responded to her questions with curt non-answers, and remained pointedly focused on his work. Overly talkative people can be severely annoying, but that did not justify Guido Menzio's overt rudeness to his neighbor. He could have saved a lot of trouble with a little diplomacy.
> I also don't understand how one mistakes calculus for the script of a foreign language.
From the Washington Post article, it appears that the woman complained to security that Guido Menzio was intensely doing math, so clearly she did not mistake a differential equation for 'terrorist writing'. It was not the math that unnerved her, but his behavior.
>You also comment else where about Menzio's picture, where he wears a "Yasser Arafat" scarf.
I was wrong about the "Yasser Arafat" scarf. The article doesn't suggest that he was wearing one at the time. Again, there is no indication that Menzio's appearance was the cause of the incident, but rather his behavior.