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 Frazzled wrote:
The yahoos are saying its a setup citing the dad. Even assuming that, it doesn't impact how everything went down.

Very much this, yes. I don't think it's worth looking into or speculating upon the motivations of the kid or his family because A.) it's probably impossible to prove in any meaningful way and B.) their motivations and alleged premeditation - for which there is no evidence, just speculation - are largely irrelevant anyway; the issue is how it was handled. Which is to say, poorly. All the monday morning quarterbacking in the world can't polish that turd.

Putting it bluntly, the only way that any kind of argument about this being a setup should be given credibility is if the school and police were in on this as well.

 Ouze wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The yahoos are saying its a setup citing the dad. Even assuming that, it doesn't impact how everything went down.

Very much this, yes. I don't think it's worth looking into or speculating upon the motivations of the kid or his family because A.) it's probably impossible to prove in any meaningful way and B.) their motivations and alleged premeditation - for which there is no evidence, just speculation - are largely irrelevant anyway; the issue is how it was handled. Which is to say, poorly. All the monday morning quarterbacking in the world can't polish that turd.

Agreed on all points.

 Ouze wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The yahoos are saying its a setup citing the dad. Even assuming that, it doesn't impact how everything went down.

Very much this, yes. I don't think it's worth looking into or speculating upon the motivations of the kid or his family because A.) it's probably impossible to prove in any meaningful way and B.) their motivations and alleged premeditation - for which there is no evidence, just speculation - are largely irrelevant anyway; the issue is how it was handled. Which is to say, poorly. All the monday morning quarterbacking in the world can't polish that turd.

That's quite dismissing, Ouze. Why would questions on the legitimacy of this event be without evidence or irrelevant? All I'm saying is the family has a history with Islamaphobia, and then this sequence of events happen -- unless we should just take this at face value whereas a curious kid got his dreams stomped out by the racist ISD and police of Irving. Hell, why was it done in that manner to begin with? It really does look suspicious in its entirety which was probably why the Engineering teacher told him to not show anyone. I'd say Irving took the bait quite nicely.

Of course, no one should deny the school went overboard but it's hard to say definitely this happened because he was Muslim and not because who recased and rigged device starting beeping in class.

Edit: A quick bit that's a bit funny.

http://funnyjunk.com/Time+to+meet+obama/movies/5691068/

Wow.

Just as a quick aside, here's an interesting article which popped up on one of my feeds. Fairly clearly, the clock wasn't actually something he made as such, he merely rehoused it and probably (depending on how he dismantled it) reconnected one or two wires.

 -Shrike- wrote:
Just as a quick aside, here's an interesting article which popped up on one of my feeds. Fairly clearly, the clock wasn't actually something he made as such, he merely rehoused it and probably (depending on how he dismantled it) reconnected one or two wires.

Looks like we've got a regular Thomas Edison on our hands!

Look guys, it's okay that the teacher and cops were stupid because the kid isn't even smart or talented!

This whole event has been amazing and yet not all that surprising.

 d-usa wrote:
Look guys, it's okay that the teacher and cops were stupid because the kid isn't even smart or talented!

This whole event has been amazing and yet not all that surprising.

Opposite actually.

 d-usa wrote:
Look guys, it's okay that the teacher and cops were stupid because the kid isn't even smart or talented!

This whole event has been amazing and yet not all that surprising.

Nah. It's not okay that the teacher and cops were stupid (well, everything that happened once the police arrived was stupid at the very minimum). On the other hand, it does make some of us feel like idiots that we couldn't even recognise the fact that damn near all of his invention was a mass-produced alarm clock!

In retrospect, the button board should have been a giveaway. Oh well.

 The Airman wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
The yahoos are saying its a setup citing the dad. Even assuming that, it doesn't impact how everything went down.

Very much this, yes. I don't think it's worth looking into or speculating upon the motivations of the kid or his family because A.) it's probably impossible to prove in any meaningful way and B.) their motivations and alleged premeditation - for which there is no evidence, just speculation - are largely irrelevant anyway; the issue is how it was handled. Which is to say, poorly. All the monday morning quarterbacking in the world can't polish that turd.

That's quite dismissing, Ouze. Why would questions on the legitimacy of this event be without evidence or irrelevant? ... ... .

Because without evidence anyone can invent any drivel they like.

 d-usa wrote:
Look guys, it's okay that the teacher and cops were stupid because the kid isn't even smart or talented!

This whole event has been amazing and yet not all that surprising.

Well, and the thing I said pages ago is that we don't really know what actually went on in the construction of it. He might have actually repaired something in it. Broken wire, blown capacitor, whatever. Then again, maybe he did just mount the internals in a pencil case. Hard to say.

Either way, the fact that this is a battle cry to somehow legitimize the treatment he received by some is distasteful to me.

 d-usa wrote:
Look guys, it's okay that the teacher and cops were stupid because the kid isn't even smart or talented!

This whole event has been amazing and yet not all that surprising.

Most of us have been pretty supportive of the fact that the situation was handled poorly, and have said so right here in this very thread!

 -Shrike- wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Look guys, it's okay that the teacher and cops were stupid because the kid isn't even smart or talented!

This whole event has been amazing and yet not all that surprising.

Nah. It's not okay that the teacher and cops were stupid (well, everything that happened once the police arrived was stupid at the very minimum). On the other hand, it does make some of us feel like idiots that we couldn't even recognise the fact that damn near all of his invention was a mass-produced alarm clock!

In retrospect, the button board should have been a giveaway. Oh well.

I think that the kid used the term "invention" in the same way that many of these "As Seen On TV" companies do; loosely and not realizing that rebranding something is not actually an invention.


Plus I'm not sure that he ever actually said that "I invented a new kind of home-made clock", as I was under the impression that he said he wanted to invent something and that he liked to tinker.

Serious question though: At what point does something become an "invention"?

I built a clock that uses an old Soviet VFD for a display. I am using loose capacitors, resistors, and mass produced ICs to handle the voltage step up and to duplex the signals sent to the VFD. I'm using an Arduino with code I DID write to handle it. I sourced most of these things independent of each other.

Did I 'invent', or even 'create' something, or did I cobble premade stuff together? Should I have fabbed my own ICs and poured the electrolyte into my own capacitors?

Presumably you are not a 14 year old.

I have no clue what 90% of that means, but I would say you created something?

In any regards, like I said earlier, most of the attention this kid has gotten from these tech companies is not strictly because "How dare they oppress a Muslim!" but because, realistically, this is a kid who(assuming the parents didn't build the thing and this isn't some elaborate ruse[!] to put Islamophobia in the limelight) deserves to have that sense of wonder and the initiative to try to educate themselves outside of school rewarded.

Kilkrazy wrote:Presumably you are not a 14 year old.

No, I'm not a 14 year old, but why does that matter when you're trying to define the word? How many things do you need to replace or change or add before something becomes something new?

Kanluwen wrote:this is a kid who(assuming the parents didn't build the thing and this isn't some elaborate ruse[!] to put Islamophobia in the limelight) deserves to have that sense of wonder and the initiative to try to educate themselves outside of school rewarded.

This is both my hope and assumption of intent.

@Killkrazy: On one hand you have the family with a history for trying to make a case for Islamaphobia and have their son go to school with a recased alarm clock inside of an aluminum case showing it to his teachers when he was told not to by his Engineering teacher.

On the other hand, you have a Muslim teenager who was inventive and wanted to show off some electronic work to his instructors and got pounced on because of Zero Tolerance and because of his his name, skin color and religion.

Honestly it looks like this was a set up. There was no reason to put it into a metal case or show the teachers to begin with. While this whole situation is ridiculous, the staff did the right thing in alerting the authorities since Ahmed failed to say, "Hey! Ask <Engineering teacher>, they know it's just a clock!". Again, the police statement is actually reasonable if you actually read it, figuring that it's not simply a clock because, hey, the display is inside the case and the format is rather ridiculous.

If the kid was just socially unaware (I highly doubt that), then definitely an apology is in order and it's unfortunate he got trounced for bringing electronics to school.

The thing that pisses me off above all in this ridiculous event is it seems for whatever reason, no one contacted the engineering teacher. Surely Ahmed would have asked someone to have contacted this person.

What gets me is that all of the analyses of the clock and its workings are still based on the same picture that we've had since Day 1. I have yet to see any other pictures of the clock that show any real details.

Relapse wrote:
Very true. This is why playing up a racist angle, making it seem he's the only kid who ever got caught up in stupid school and police decisions is losing people that would otherwise be solidly in Ahmed's camp.

Hold up a second there. That other people have been screwed around by zero tolerance nonsense is a fair argument, but it isn't a complete argument. We can recognise that while still recognising the very high probability that people's perception of his religion played a part in this nonsense.


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 d-usa wrote:
Look guys, it's okay that the teacher and cops were stupid because the kid isn't even smart or talented!

This whole event has been amazing and yet not all that surprising.

Yeah. Like with a lot of these things, the event itself is much less damning than the justifications that are made afterwards. That's the bit that tells you how lots of people really think.

 The Airman wrote:
@Killkrazy: On one hand you have the family with a history for trying to make a case for Islamaphobia and have their son go to school with a recased alarm clock inside of an aluminum case showing it to his teachers when he was told not to by his Engineering teacher.

On the other hand, you have a Muslim teenager who was inventive and wanted to show off some electronic work to his instructors and got pounced on because of Zero Tolerance and because of his his name, skin color and religion.

Honestly it looks like this was a set up. There was no reason to put it into a metal case or show the teachers to begin with. While this whole situation is ridiculous, the staff did the right thing in alerting the authorities since Ahmed failed to say, "Hey! Ask <Engineering teacher>, they know it's just a clock!". Again, the police statement is actually reasonable if you actually read it, figuring that it's not simply a clock because, hey, the display is inside the case and the format is rather ridiculous.

If the kid was just socially unaware (I highly doubt that), then definitely an apology is in order and it's unfortunate he got trounced for bringing electronics to school.

And what about the police performing an illegal interrogation, with collaboration from the school?

You seem to have missed that part out.

Also, that "history of trying to make a case for Islamophobia" was the father confronting someone over their "putting the Quran on trial" and then burning it.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 The Airman wrote:
@Killkrazy: On one hand you have the family with a history for trying to make a case for Islamaphobia and have their son go to school with a recased alarm clock inside of an aluminum case showing it to his teachers when he was told not to by his Engineering teacher.

On the other hand, you have a Muslim teenager who was inventive and wanted to show off some electronic work to his instructors and got pounced on because of Zero Tolerance and because of his his name, skin color and religion.

Honestly it looks like this was a set up. There was no reason to put it into a metal case or show the teachers to begin with. While this whole situation is ridiculous, the staff did the right thing in alerting the authorities since Ahmed failed to say, "Hey! Ask <Engineering teacher>, they know it's just a clock!". Again, the police statement is actually reasonable if you actually read it, figuring that it's not simply a clock because, hey, the display is inside the case and the format is rather ridiculous.

If the kid was just socially unaware (I highly doubt that), then definitely an apology is in order and it's unfortunate he got trounced for bringing electronics to school.

And what about the police performing an illegal interrogation, with collaboration from the school?

You seem to have missed that part out.

Also, that "history of trying to make a case for Islamophobia" was the father confronting someone over their "putting the Quran on trial" and then burning it.

There is some argument it was constitutional. There are also strong arguments it wasn't constsitutional as he requested his parents and was not read Miranda rights despite the involuntary detention for hours prior to arrest.

And it gets a little weirder
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ahmed-mohamed-clock-bomb-media-narrative-ian-tuttle

Maher's take, which they reference in the article, was interesting:

 d-usa wrote:
Look guys, it's okay that the teacher and cops were stupid because the kid isn't even smart or talented!

This whole event has been amazing and yet not all that surprising.

What a loser kid. I hope he drops out and starts selling dope like 95% of teenagers do according to my Uncle Darrel, but not my other Uncle Darrel or Uncle Larry.




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 Frazzled wrote:
And it gets a little weirder
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ahmed-mohamed-clock-bomb-media-narrative-ian-tuttle

The Po-Po and the school are 100% in the wrong for how the kid was treated. However, I'm getting a Westborro feeling from Dear Old Dad, now...

They should have water boarded his little ass to get him to turn over his cell buddies. That kid knew exactly what he was doing.

The Po-Po and the school are 100% in the wrong for how the kid was treated. However, I'm getting a Westborro feeling from Dear Old Dad, now...

indeed, we may be at the intersection of Setup Street and Police And Admin Were Stupid Avenue


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 usernamesareannoying wrote:
They should have water boarded his little ass to get him to turn over his cell buddies. That kid knew exactly what he was doing.

Did you buy this Radioshack radio on credit or cash! Talk! you making us look stupid as sin-is that accidental or intentional!

Honestly, when our school systems suspend children for eating their pop tarts into the shape of a gun, treating this teen as they did sounds reasonable, if only by comparison.

I assume his intentions were innocent, but the fact of the matter is that it was a suitcase with a bunch of wires and what looked like a timer. If you had left that in a subway or tried to bring it onto a plane, you'd have started a full-blown, 5-alarm panic, regardless of the owner's ethnicity (though, I'm sure it didn't help in this case).

I mean, I've heard far more ridiculous overreactions in our school system than this. And it seems clear that the cops were quickly able to determine it wasn't a bomb, and the real issue is whether or not he meant is as a hoax, which is difficult to prove one way or the other.

About the only thing I feel as if the cops really screwed up is by temporarily denying the kid access to a laywer or his parents, which is non-trivial, granted. But it's not like they beat him with billy clubs or shot him or something.

At any rate, massively overreacting to weapons, or perceived weapons (including pop tarts and even finger pointing), is pretty rampant in our school's zero-tolerance policies, which are also called zero-sense policies, and for good reason. And at least relative to some other stories I've heard, the school's reaction seems almost reasonable.

And also, what possible reason would the UN have to host him? This doesn't seem like international-level worthy news, imo.