In school I learned a gesture in which you hold three fingers perpendicular to one another to work out the direction of the Lorenz force on a charge particle. "If you're positive, you're right," so you pick the right or left hand based on positive or negative particles. Your index finger points in the direction of the field. The thumb indicates the direction of particle motion, as if it's hitchhiking. The middle finger indicates the direction you push. The teenagers were invited to come up with their own mnemonic justification for this one.

Is this gesture now prohibited?

This story doesn't bother me at all as long as Amaka is doing the reporting. I'm j/k. This is the same principle why my wife wants to see Gravity, a film about space junk starring George Clooney, with me.

I agree with all the comments that we're going crazy trying to protect our kids from all perils. Being afraid of kid making a finger is absurd. If the index finger and middle finger are proscribed, how long before the other three digits are banned, say for simulating hitchhiking?

My 5 y/o boy runs through the house playing like he's the US army chasing evil-doers. His parents are both liberals and feel like we're in the show "Family Ties".

I'm a fierce believer in letting people alone.

This crazy shit makes me nuts! I don't know who's worse..the rule makers or the enforcers. Wait...yes I do to.

good grief. this is a result of 1) our litigious society. We need a major overhaul of the court system. 2) out and out political censure

I take it as a further emasculation of masculine behavior. Boys have been playing such games since time immemorial and few, if any, have been killed by a finger gun. The only thing this will is create a society of nancys, good for nothing except servile and subservient behavior to anyone who has a dominating personality. It also weakens a nation to the extent no one knows how to fight back when threatened and can be successfully cowed into compliance.