14yo Arrested Bringing Homemade Clock To School

http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering-ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/

this whole story is *** stupid

If we stop and think – was it really such a ridiculous reaction from the teacher and the police in the first place? How many school shootings and incidents of violence have we had, where we hear afterwards “this could have been prevented, if only we paid more attention to the signs!” Teachers are taught to be suspicious and vigilant. Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. Everyone jumped to play the race and religion cards and try and paint the teachers and police as idiots and bigots, but in my mind, they were probably acting responsibly and erring on the side of caution to protect the rest of their students, just in case. “This wouldn’t have happened if Ahmed were white,” they say. We’re supposed to be sensitive to school violence, but apparently religious and racial sensitivity trumps that. At least we have another clue about how the sensitivity and moral outrage pecking order lies.

I think the whole event – and our collective response, with everybody up to the President chiming in, says a whole lot about us. We don’t care that none of us were there and knows what happened, we jump to conclusions and assume we’re experts. We care about the story, but we don’t care about the actual facts. Headlines and click-bait are far more interesting than thinking for ourselves. We like to point out other any bit of perceived injustice or discrimination we can find – it’s practically a new national past-time. We like playing victim, and we like talking about victims – so much so we sometimes find victims where none really existed. We also like to find somebody to blame, even when there’s nobody at fault. We like to play social justice warrior on our Facebooks and Twitters, posting memes and headlines without digging in behind the sensationalism, winning bonus sensitivity points in the forms of likes and re-tweets. Once group-think kicks in, we rally around hash tags and start shouting moral outrage in a deafeningly loud national chorus. The media plays us like a fiddle, and we don’t even notice we’ve all been had.

That article kind of highlights why I was never into facebook or social media as a whole.

Usually the comments you find are enough to keep sensible people away.


and *** your hashtags!

Well, like the article stated, it's more about group-think and mob mentality. It gives people an excuse to stop thinking, or to stop thinking critically.

That said, they think things through quite differently with a mob mentality - so it's not always a knee-jerk reaction, but people following suit because it's popular. And people have a desire to follow what's popular... even if it takes a little while to gain momentum.

There's still that knee-jerk reaction most people make when reading the story.

It's being aware of it and not going straight to that conclusion that separates those who act on impulse (like most people in this thread) and those who can think critically.

Usually the knee-jerk reaction is the one people fall for, because it's the first one made and they don't even bother to think things through. That would take effort, and that's something they don't want to do. It's better to hate and forget than to think and remember.

Agreed and, yes, I on occasion fall with the same knee-jerk reaction also.

I'm not proud of it, and I try my best to stem it, but it happens. Meh, I guess that means I'm human too *sadduck*

Yet it literally isn't. You are sounding like that.

I know you automatically disagree with everything you see, but, yes, he literally disassembled and re-assembled an old clock.

http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering-ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/

this whole story is *** stupid

I think the whole event – and our collective response, with everybody up to the President chiming in, says a whole lot about us. We don’t care that none of us were there and knows what happened, we jump to conclusions and assume we’re experts. We care about the story, but we don’t care about the actual facts. Headlines and click-bait are far more interesting than thinking for ourselves. We like to point out other any bit of perceived injustice or discrimination we can find – it’s practically a new national past-time. We like playing victim, and we like talking about victims – so much so we sometimes find victims where none really existed. We also like to find somebody to blame, even when there’s nobody at fault. We like to play social justice warrior on our Facebooks and Twitters, posting memes and headlines without digging in behind the sensationalism, winning bonus sensitivity points in the forms of likes and re-tweets. Once group-think kicks in, we rally around hash tags and start shouting moral outrage in a deafeningly loud national chorus. The media plays us like a fiddle, and we don’t even notice we’ve all been had.

Now did the guy build a PCB from scratch and program a microcontroller to handle the 7 segment display? No, nor would I expect most 14 year olds to have the means to.

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins found himself at the centre of controversy on Sunday when he questioned the motives of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old boy who was arrested and detained in Texas when a teacher thought a clock he had made was a bomb.

Dawkins did not dispute that Mohamed should not have been arrested, but questioned whether the boy had truly “invented” the clock, as has been reported. He tweeted:


Mohamed, whose parents are from Sudan, was arrested, handcuffed and questioned by five police officers at MacArthur high school in Irvine on Monday. He was then suspended for three days.

He told MSNBC he was not allowed to call his parents and was accused of carrying a hoax bomb. He said: “I felt like I was a criminal, I felt like I was a terrorist. I felt like all the names I was called.”

He added: “In middle school I was called a terrorist, called a bomb maker, just because of my race.”

In a controversy that largely played itself out on Twitter, Mohamed then received overtures from Silicon Valley tech companies, support from Hillary Clinton and an invitation to the White House from President Obama.


Ahmed Mohamed is tired, excited to meet Obama – and wants his clock back
Read more
On Friday, Mohamed spoke to the Guardian. Such national attention was “worth it, once you realize what you’re fighting for”, he said, adding that that fight was “not just for Muslims … but for anybody who has been through this”.

Dawkins, the author of books including the groundbreaking The Selfish Gene, the bestselling The God Delusion and the memoir A Sense of Wonder, is a leading critic of religious belief and an advocate for rational thought.

On Sunday, the emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford said he was simply looking for the truth of the Texas schoolboy’s story.

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In a tweet, the scientist linked to a YouTube video entitled Ahmed Mohammed [sic] Clock is a FRAUD, in which user Thomas Talbot alleges Mohamed’s clock “is in fact not an invention. The ‘clock’ is a commercial bedside alarm clock removed from its casing”.

In his tweet, Dawkins said: “If this is true, what was his motive? Whether or not he wanted the police to arrest him, they shouldn’t have done so.” His next tweet said of the video: “This man seems to know what he’s talking about.”

Subsequent tweets, issued against a growing storm of online protest, said: “Assembling clock from bought components is fine. Taking clock out of its case to make it look as if he built it is not fine. Which is true?

“Yes, there are other reasons why a boy might take a clock out of its casing & pretend he’d made it. Trying to impress teachers, for instance[.]”

Linking to an artvoice.com blogpost entitled Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s clock … and Ourselves, Dawkins tweeted: “If the reassembled components did something more than the original clock, that’s creative. If not, it looks like hoax.”

Dawkins eventually retreated. He devoted tweets to questioning police motives and tweeted a reference to the new leader of Britain’s opposition Labour party: “Sorry if I go a bit over the top in my passion for truth. Not just over a boy’s alleged ‘invention’ but also media lies about J[eremy] Corbyn.”

In an answer to a Twitter user who wrote: “I think you too frequently confuse ‘truth’ with ‘obsessive and unnecessary dedication to accuracy’”, Dawkins wrote: “That could well be true, in which case I apologise. I guess I’m a bit sensitive about being among the many fooled.”

He subsequently retweeted President Obama’s White House invitation to the boy.

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That's what breadboards are for; PCBs are for manufacturing. A clock is one of the most rudimentary things you could expect an electrical engineering student to do, so it's pretty surprising that's not what he did and rather simply disassembled and reassembled a manufactured clock to look like a stereotypical bomb.

I have no idea what his motive was and I'm skeptical of anyone who claims to, but it's hard to imagine being he seems to be a bright kid that he wasn't aware of what he was doing at some level.

So the more info that comes out about this story the more it appears to have been done intentionally.

I saw that video Dawkins linked to. He makes a good case on how non-creative the clock was.

Microsoft sent him a ton of stuff

He got something called a cube?, a surface pro 3, a laptop and a bunch of other stuff

Quick search brought up this image of the device that's supposedly from the police press conference:


I can see it being mistaken for a bomb given that I have no idea what a bomb would actually look like.

He brought it in because his father, an anti-islamophobia activist with political ties to the Sudan, wanted to turn it into a media issue.

He was arrested because it was allegedly a bomb HOAX.

Sec. 46.08. HOAX BOMBS. (a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly manufactures, sells, purchases, transports, or possesses a hoax bomb with intent to use the hoax bomb to:
(1) make another believe that the hoax bomb is an explosive or incendiary device; or
(2) cause alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies.
(b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

Well, like the article stated, it's more about group-think and mob mentality. It gives people an excuse to stop thinking, or to stop thinking critically....

Wow, so the entire state of Texas doesn't have a single bomb squad that could easily tell in seconds if the item was an explosive? Oh, and let's just go ahead and bury the statement from the kid's teacher that said "cool clock, just don't show anyone".

Does it look a bit suspicious? A little perhaps. Is it worth detaining a 14 year old nerd wearing a NASA t-shirt? Nooooope. Great way to villainize a kid, give the smart one a hard time and a reason (in his head) to do something bad later on.

SMH, are we this big a chickshits in America?

Nothing points to this being done "intentionally" other than prejudice and hatred, unless they have a blog post or something of him asserting as such.

He makes a good case on how non-creative the clock was.

Wow, so the entire state of Texas doesn't have a single bomb squad that could easily tell in seconds if the item was an explosive? Oh, and let's just go ahead and bury the statement from the kid's teacher that said "cool clock, just don't show anyone".

Does it look a bit suspicious? A little perhaps. Is it worth detaining a 14 year old nerd wearing a NASA t-shirt? Nooooope. Great way to villainize a kid, give the smart one a hard time and a reason (in his head) to do something bad later on.

SMH, are we this big a chickshits in America?