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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

#521

Post by jimktrains2 »

watty wrote: post #60
JosephRedfern wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> He sees on the news daily about Muslims using bombs and blowing things up

Did this happen with the Irish in the US during the Troubles?

Same reasons Italians and Germans weren't interned to the same extent the Japanese were during the 2nd World War: They can't be told apart from "proper" folk as easily. You can pick out most Arabs, but it's much harder to pick out most Irish.

Still a travesty. We need to move beyond hatred, especially of people we've never met.

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

#522

Post by [deleted] »

masteryupa_ wrote: post #341
mattkevan wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a variant of Clarke's third law which applies here: "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."

@mattkevan could you provide a citation for this? A quick search nets Arthur C. Clarke's three laws, with the third reading: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - 1973, Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

[deleted]

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

#523

Post by burkaman »

kmfrk wrote: post #407
jameshart wrote: post #371

A story. So, this thirteen year old kid with a Syrian father once got flagged up by Hewlett Packard because he was ordering electronic components. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next... Yeah, Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job, he got hooked on making stuff, wound up founding a company out of his garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak, and created the biggest electronics company in the world. Thank goodness h…

Of course, people would rather that part of his heritage weren't brought up, leaving us with Michael Fassbender portraying him on the big screen.

Really, that's why? Or is it because most people would rather watch a movie where the actors look like the characters? I don't know of any Syrian actors that look like Steve Jobs. And I definitely don't know of any Syrian actors who could play him as well as Fassbender could.

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

#524

Post by briandear »

Someone1234 wrote: post #193
Navarr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

What is wrong with American schools? The more I read the more disturbing it is. Where is the proportionality and common sense?

Have a look at the political leanings of the teachers unions and the administration and you have your answer.

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

#525

Post by scottshea »

cldwalker wrote: post #515

If you're angry with the school's horrible reaction to this, let Jose Parra, http://www.irvingisd.net/Page/3010 , know: (972) 600-5001 / jparra@irvingisd.net. He can fire the principal of that school - Dan Cummings

Hey they were recently acknowledged for their use of cutting edge technology!

http://www.irvingisd.net/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&Domain...

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

#526

Post by [deleted] »

mikeash wrote: post #429
powertower wrote: post #249

There is likely more to this story. I'm basing this on 3 facts: 1. In 2015 it's highly unlikely that you could build a home-made clock that would be of the size and shape resembling a bomb - that is, unless it was made to look like a bomb. 2. Ahmed, his father, and anyone else with a phone camera (that is on Ahmed's side) would have posted a picture of the clock, or given a full description of it (size, shape, etc),…

You're assuming that it actually looked like a bomb. It clearly did not. (There are pictures linked elsewhere in this comment thread, so you can see.) What happened is that a bunch of complete idiots thought it looked like a bomb, only because they have no idea what a bomb looks like, and they are additionally ignorant of their own ignorance.

[deleted]

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

#527

Post by jessaustin »

happyscrappy wrote: post #238
mikeash wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For something like this, "I never imagined the authorities could possibly be this stupid" ought to be an affirmative defense.

They have certain obligations by law and you would certainly pay a fine for wasting their time. A judge would not have much sympathy for a clown.

What do the cops ever do with their time that isn't a waste? They only rarely and incidentally protect anyone from any actual threat. Mostly they hassle, ticket, menace, and otherwise inconvenience the public. If they all went on strike next week, violence and mayhem would decrease.

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

#528

Post by chimeracoder »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #492
nether wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biological father. His (adoptive) father was white, and Jobs didn't look middle eastern , the key part. There's a whole spectrum of skin tones within ethnicities that affects how you are treated in the US more than where your parents originate.

> Jobs didn't look middle eastern Jobs didn't look stereotypically middle eastern.

> Jobs didn't look stereotypically middle eastern.

No kidding. Many people in the Middle East are completely "white", by every definition.

In fact, it's amusing that the word "Caucasian" has been corrupted into a euphemism for "white", given where the word comes from....[0]. (Most people who are Caucasian aren't even white!)

While we're on the topic, the most pale and fair-skinned people I've met in my life were not European; they were Indian (Kashmiri). People have this notion of what regions stereotypically map to which skin tones, and this doesn't actually reflect reality at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus_Mountains

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

#529

Post by msandford »

dragonwriter wrote: post #507
msandford wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public schools also do plenty of dumb things. It's not as though charter schools have a lock on this. A lot of people want "vouchers" so that private schools are more affordable. And plenty of private schools have a good track record, while having similar per-pupil costs as public schools. If it costs $1000/student/month irrespective of if a child goes to a public school or a private school, why does the state really…

> If it costs $1000/student/month irrespective of if a child goes to a public school or a private school, why does the state really care which one the child attends? Because it doesn't cost a flat amount per student. The fact that funding is fixed per student doesn't mean that all students are equally costly to educate, and private schools that don't have a universal acceptance mandate impose selection criteria which…

That's quite an interesting point. It's similar to the reason why insurance companies won't cover pre-existing conditions, isn't it?

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

#530

Post by vkjv »

LesZedCB wrote: post #323
baldfat wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People HATE TAXES. People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children in school or never had children in school. We under value in society 1) Education (We make fun of smart people who lack social graces) 2) Science (Scoff at all science and under fund Space Programs) I ran for local School Board in my city. We are a school district with over 90% qualify for free lunch and extreme poverty. Parents pick Chart…

I would happily pay 40-50% income taxes if our system was much more socialized like some of our European counterparts.

I would happily pay 10-15% income taxes if our system was much less socialized like some of our European counterparts.
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