They can probably change the title to "14 YO boy arrested for not being white and having the name Ahmed Mohamed".
14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
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Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#62Apparently the authorities have determined that the best way to stop terrorism is to discourage any manifestation of personal intelligence, so that the population turns into mindless sheep. "If you don't know how to make a clock, you won't know how to make a time bomb" is their reasoning. It is seriously disturbing. I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of "hacking", only this i…
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Stupidity is not an excuse for being an asshole.
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#63> The newspaper quoted a police spokesman, James McLellan, as saying that Ahmed never claimed his device was anything but a clock, and the police have no reason to think it was dangerous.
But officers still did not believe Ahmed was giving them the whole story.
“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” Mr. McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.
“It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?”
Duh, the thing tells the time. And are they saying that if I don't explain why I made something it can be presumed to be a bomb? (especially given "and the police have no reason to think it was dangerous.")
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#64In the article it mentions that his engineering teacher advised him to hide it from the other staff. Which is confusing to me. The teacher obviously knew it wasn't a bomb and obviously knew the other staff would misinterpret this. So why didn't the teacher preempt this whole thing by advising the school that "Yes, this kid brought in a clock to show me. No, it's not a bomb no matter how scary it looks."
It must be one hell of a clock if a teacher actually told the student to hide it from plain sight!
EDIT: A picture of the actual device is here.
http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/dallas-county/2015/09/1... https://archive.is/Q0OLb
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#65The look on the kid's face in that first photo says it all, really. Welcome to Earth, kid. These will be your fellow human beings. Enjoy your stay.
Hell, the kid has a NASA shirt, is a thin nerdy type and brought a science project to school to show it off (instead of whatever illegal things kids bring to schools these days).
I really, really hope someone will pick this up and offer that kid some kind of internship somewhere, if only to keep his moral and spirit up.
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#66It is definitely profiling and I bet his race had a lot to do with it. But I think the same thing would've happened if I had brought such a device to school - having been a super dark dressed goth in school, the fear would've been it's a bomb. Schools are generally very very extra worried about everything these days, suspending him was unnecessary but with it only being three days I don't see it being a terrible thin…
> Schools are generally very very extra worried about everything these days
Maybe in the US, but where I live, and I guess that's going to be the case in most countries, no one would ever think that this "suitcase" could be a bomb, regardless of the person's appearance. It's saddens me to see a country becoming more and more paranoid and living in fear.
As an example, we used to chase each other in school with BB-guns (here they don't have the orange marker distinguishing them from real guns). When a teacher saw us I'm sure the thought that these could be real never ever crossed their mind.
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#67It is definitely profiling and I bet his race had a lot to do with it. But I think the same thing would've happened if I had brought such a device to school - having been a super dark dressed goth in school, the fear would've been it's a bomb. Schools are generally very very extra worried about everything these days, suspending him was unnecessary but with it only being three days I don't see it being a terrible thin…
You really mean suspending him is not so terrible because it was only 3 days? I hope I'm misunderstanding you. The child learns to not trust anyone and that his best intentions are twisted into punishment. I'm pretty appalled by this.
To explain myself,
in a Texas Highschool I was sentenced to In School Suspension INDEFINITELY with my laptop confiscated for having shortcuts to directories on the network that I "shouldn't have had access to." After about a week of that I'd had enough, asked for OSS - got it, which I thought was enough but apparently wasn't. They ended up wanting to reassign me to an "alternative school" (the type with a dress code, specific hours, locked down no talking etc). I managed to get "homeschooled" for 3 months (re: no school work completed) and somehow still managed to actually graduate High School. It was the most ludicrous situation I'd ever been in for navigating a folder hierarchy in Windows.
3 days is lovely.
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#68More discussion here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10226196
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#69Apparently the authorities have determined that the best way to stop terrorism is to discourage any manifestation of personal intelligence, so that the population turns into mindless sheep. "If you don't know how to make a clock, you won't know how to make a time bomb" is their reasoning. It is seriously disturbing. I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of "hacking", only this i…
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
In this case, we're dealing with malicious stupidity. Edge of the razor?
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#70Students all over the country should bring digital clocks and circuits to school this week as a protest.