231–240 of 994 posts
Well this is what happens when you blare Islamophobia from all the twenty-four hour "news" channels.
No, this is what happens when you have stupid police and school officials that are tough on everything. There are enough outrageous cases in the last year for students of a lot of different backgrounds.
http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2015/03/20/anti-muslim-sent...
> Children are encouraged “specifically [to] not bring items to school that are prohibited.” What, clocks? Or the NASA t-shirt he was wearing? ( https://i.imgur.com/PMgDR7m.jpg )
Why is he handcuffed?
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-American-police-always-handcuff...
You can't legislate intelligence. Yesterday I went to my daughter's school's open house. When I entered, I was cornered by an administrator and told I had to sign some paperwork before I left. It was the computer policy. After I signed it, the admin said my daughter had to sign it too. She's 4.
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…
If you look at the average funding per student by state, Texas isn't doing so hot [1], especially for being the second largest state [2]. There's definitely more to it than just funding, but I think that would be a good starting point.
[1] http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may0...
[2] http://www.ipl.org/div/stateknow/popchart.html
(edit) More recent funding figures, from 2013: http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-educa...
I'd love to send this kid a gift certificate for some free waterjet and laser cutting. Does anyone know how to get in touch with the family?
here is a google doc where you can tell them just that yourself (:
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No, it's as stupid as it sounds and your trying to rationalize stupid. She's 4.
you're, and he/she really isn't trying to rationalise it, just explain the thinking of the (stupid) people behind it. I don't think anyone is arguing that the child in question is 4.
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And then you will complain when they bring charges against you.
For something like this, "I never imagined the authorities could possibly be this stupid" ought to be an affirmative defense.
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Ermmm... why? Would you be "slightly concerned" if Matt Jones brought that to school? Or Alice Jackson?
Because he's profiling, it's a survival instinct. He sees on the news daily about Muslims using bombs and blowing things up and he's associating it with this kid. He believes statistically that Ahmed is more likely to be carrying a bomb than Alice. Is this true? I don't know, maybe it is? It's the same reason I am cautious when I walk alone downtown at night and a stranger approaches me. I act differently because I k…
If people paid attention to statistics, this wouldn't be an issue: Terror is so exceedingly unlikely to kill you that it's a rounding errro. In the US you're more likely to get killed by lightning.
Part of the problem is that the risk has been blown out of all proportion.
This is the crux of the issue: > “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." Creative people don't need to have a good reason to make something. They create things because there is joy and satisfaction in creating things. It's a shame Mr. McLellan had such a boring childhood.
It's a clock, you know, for telling the time, because if I made a sundial and brought it in, it wouldn't work because of the walls and roof.