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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

#211

Post by eldude »

nadams wrote: post #121

If anyone is actually surprised by the administrations intelligence - I should remind you of 3 events: - A teacher confiscates Linux CDs claiming that the student was essentially distributing illegal copyrighted software - because no software is free [1] - A system administrator was fired for installing/running seti@home on school computers. There is a lot of controversy about this case - but I read one news article…

Exactly. Exploiting his race to further a political narrative as the author has done, is both intellectually feeble and misdirects away from the real issue: authoritarian government behavior targeted at school children.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#212

Post by riebschlager »

What's incredibly sad to me is all the kids whose parents wouldn't let them leave the house with a homemade clock.

"What are you doing? If you take that to school they'll think it's a bomb!"

Even Ahmed's engineering teacher advised him not to show his clock to any other teachers. Fear and suspicion are the default now. That's heartbreaking.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#214

Post by tremon »

kailuowang wrote: post #151
userbinator wrote: post #21

Apparently 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…

I think you overestimate the intelligence of the authority in this particular case. I think this is more a case of collective stupidity than authority turning people to mindless sheep. What worried me is where is the engineering teacher he first showed the clock to? He or she could've clarified everything in 5 seconds.

I'd say this is a case of collective stupidity punishing original thought. So I would phrase this exactly as "collective stupidity in authority turning people to mindless sheep".

And why would you have to be an engineering teacher to presume innocence here? This is a school; anyone involved should have been able to clarify everything in 5 seconds, even without the child explaining himself.

Welcome to 'murrica, kid. You better learn to censor yourself.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#216

Post by ojgeojgaew »

s_q_b wrote: post #169
sp332 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupidity does not adequately explain why they are considering bringing charges of a "hoax bomb", or sent this letter home with the other students: http://www.irvingisd.net/cms/lib010/TX01917973/Centricity/Do... [PDF] Therefore, malice.

Once authority figures make a decision, they fear backing down from it, because they (unfortunately often correctly) believe that doubling down will force the far less well-funded citizen to fold, usually in exchange for a less severe "punishment."

This isn't limited to authority figures. Most people, when faced with evidence that they were publicly wrong, try to save face by doubling down on their original convictions.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#217

Post by tremon »

benevol wrote: post #207
userbinator wrote: post #21

Apparently 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…

I find it striking that you almost never hear about such behavior occurring in Europe (correct me if I'm wrong). Any ideas why things seem to be very different there?

Because adults in education over here are still capable of independent thought, probably.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#218

Post by jcromartie »

samsnelling wrote: post #161

QOTD from dallas news article: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dall... "He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again.” what a place of learning!

That's always the lesson from these sorts of things: don't try, don't explore, or possibly don't trust people in authority to know anything.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#219

Post by DannyBee »

ausjke wrote: post #105

I have kids at school and I'm actually for the responses from the teachers, yes it's overacting and could be dealt with _much_ better, but being overly alert on this is better than ignorant. and it's better to show it at his house instead of at school for things like this I feel.

"but being overly alert on this is better than ignorant."

Please cite any evidence that this is true in practice.

Seriously.

The long-term cost to treating kids like this is probably vastly higher than any possible damage caused by the threats. (IE i would even expect it causes more kids to die younger over time)

Humans are very good at significantly overestimating the risks they can easily reason about, and significantly underestimate the ones they can't.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#220

Post by notNow »

What really strikes about this story is the fact that Ahmad was the party who came forward to the teacher and notified him of his invention and even demoed it but that wasn't enough for the school staff to deter suspicions since and this elementary school logic level if he were intent on doing harm, he would have concealed completely the fact that he built such a device and kept the info to himself without sharing with anybody till the operation is carried out.

But apparently everything is indeed BIGGER in Texas and this applies to stupidity, ignorance and prejudice as well.

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