14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School • Hacker News Board

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

#841

Post by rebootthesystem » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:54 PM UTC

hdctambien wrote: post #785

rebootthesystem wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your girlfriend feels she is a better teacher and deserves more she needs to help start a movement to de-unionize schools. We should not have incompetent dinosaurs teaching our kids. We want brilliant, dedicated, hard working, up-to-date teachers who are worth every penny they earn in front of our classrooms. And, yes, they should make $150K per year or more. And, no, it's not free money. They have to be that good…

There are no teacher unions in Texas. Texas can not only get rid of incompetent teachers, it can also get rid of any teachers that rock the boat or question the administrators or make someone look bad by going an extra mile for a student. Public schools will never pay $100k+ to someone to teach Computer Science, so how will they ever get someone that actually knows Computer Science to be a teacher[0][1]? Instead they…

Well, the other thing we need to do is look and treat schools differently.

To me every dollar legitimately (with a HUGE emphasis on the legitimate part) spent in schools is a valuable investment in the future. I hope that is a statement that cannot be disputed.

However, we've performed badly enough and have wasted so much money that we are in a situation where someone who thinks teachers ought to be able to make $150K per year would be laughed out of the room.

We are slowly destroying our country from the inside. And a big part of that is in how we are not educating our kids. And perhaps even our population in general. I mean, the fact that the Theory of Evolution is cause for debate in the US is down-right shameful and a sad indication of just how backwards some of our population is in their thinking.

The problem of schools and education is simple. It get's complicated when we are not united in an understanding of what our objectives should be.

What are they? In my view: science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and entrepreneurship. Arts belong in school as well but we are not going to float the boat on arts alone. STEM+E need to be our strong suit and our kids need to be exposed to the arts in order to see, feel and experience the beauty in the human condition.

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

#842

Post by danjayh » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:54 PM UTC

Anyone have any actual technical details on what Mohamed built? Judging from the pics I've seen, it's clearly a commercial PCB. I'm wondering if maybe he worked out a power supply or display driver himself or if he simply re-homed a commercial clock into a cooler case... I don't expect that anyone in the 'news' actually cares enough to go into detail.

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

#843

Post by rebootthesystem » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:55 PM UTC

cschneid wrote: post #768

rebootthesystem wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your girlfriend feels she is a better teacher and deserves more she needs to help start a movement to de-unionize schools. We should not have incompetent dinosaurs teaching our kids. We want brilliant, dedicated, hard working, up-to-date teachers who are worth every penny they earn in front of our classrooms. And, yes, they should make $150K per year or more. And, no, it's not free money. They have to be that good…

:-/ Yeah, deunionizing would be great.... Private school teachers get paid much less than public [1], with the bonus of being fired any time. Instead, when school districts attempt to bust the teachers union, they do it in order to funnel money to charter schools, often religious [2]. These charter schools have selective admissions, and often won't keep children with any sort of difficulty [3], which artificially rai…

Please see my other comment [1]. I don't disagree with your points. I think the problem is much bigger than what we can discuss here.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10229785

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

#844

Post by msandford » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:56 PM UTC

taco_emoji wrote: post #823

msandford wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying that if you apply that argument inductively, then nobody should be able to do anything because there will always be someone to object to it. Public money can't be used by anyone for anything because someone will have a problem with it. You do see how that could be, don't you? I am in group X and I object to things that you value in group Y. You in group Y object to things that I, in group X, value. What d…

> I'll give them credit for not demanding that science not be taught, just that they wanted their pet theory taught too This was largely demonstrated to be a ruse by so-called "Intelligent Design" proponents in the Kitzmiller v Dover trial[0]. I would respectfully suggest that you haven't really looked into the evidence that carefully if you question the degree of rigor that underpins evolutionary science. Large part…

Look I'm not suggesting that evolution is completely unfounded or anything like that. And I agree that we're witnessing it unfold with antibiotic resistance and the like.

But what I am saying is that physics has a lot more rigor for the claims by virtue of how it works, and what people are looking for there. Evolution is punctuated equilibrium and human beings haven't directly witnessed this to the same degree that people have in physics.

I think the direct witnessing aspect is important, even if others may disagree. The reason I think it's important is that there are other possible though highly improbable explanations for various physical phenomena we see on earth.

If there really was a "guy in the sky" he could have absolutely made a bunch of stuff and "planted the evidence" all over the place to fool people. But if also for some reason, he always handled the laws of physics just the way things are now, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

To me it's kind of like the people who suggest that we should try and see if reality is just a simulation being run in a computer. The odds -- at least in my mind -- are absolutely astronomical against. But just because it's a "crazy idea" and there's "no way" it could be true doesn't mean I get to dismiss it offhand and maintain my intellectual integrity.

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

#845

Post by eldude » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:56 PM UTC

elektromekatron wrote: post #802

eldude wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You falsely conclude that I have a singular (implicitly subjective) "real issue", to which I "offer" "no other explanation." In fact, despite your projecting, by "real" / "original" issue, I meant the mistreatment of children by authority in schools, which is both the context of the parent comment and the original article from which the TechCrunch article derives. Again, for clarity, I am asserting that the original…

"All my comment served to do, was concisely articulate the issue of the preceding contexts, which is self-evident when reworded to be less generic" I doubt you could concisely articulate anything if your preceding contexts depended upon it.

> I doubt you could concisely articulate anything if your preceding contexts depended upon it.

Umm.... My "preceding contexts depended upon it"? First, as stated, the preceding contexts were not mine. Second, concisely articulating someone else's stance or summary, or a current context, while not easy, is trivially simple.

Here's an example: Contents of Moby Dick => "A whale fishing allegory about the idolization of man's desires and its limitations."

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

#846

Post by rebootthesystem » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:56 PM UTC

panzagl wrote: post #678

rebootthesystem wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More funding will attract more teachers, creating a stronger candidate pool Without the ability to get rid of bad teachers as quickly and easily as one can fire bad engineers in the private sector money isn't going to fix a damn thing. It might even make it worst. Fix that part first.

In Colorado teachers can be fired at the drop of a hat (or, more likely, not be asked to come back next year). I can assure you this hasn't kept the state off of the bottom of the academic performance lists.

You are right. The problem is far more complex.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10229785

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

#847

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:57 PM UTC

pfooti wrote: post #790

maratd wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it funny how you completely ignored the most important aspect of the equation. The student. The students are choosing to attend those charter schools. People choose things that are better for themselves. Not always, but often enough that you can safely assume it's true for the majority. Why are they doing that? Could it be, that in spite of everything you mentioned ... charters are a better option for the stud…

For what it's worth, I'm not usually one to do credential comparisons and stuff, but I'm going to prefix this with: I got a Ph.D in science education over ten years ago from UC Berkeley, and have been working in and around the world of education, schools and schooling for that entire time. I happen to also do technology stuff, so in addition to being deeply engaged with this content, I develop software and hang aroun…

> Charters are just vouchers in disguise

That depends; there are lots of different kinds of charters. Charters are public schools that have some exceptions -- enshrined in a particular charter, hence the name -- to the generally-applicable rules for public schools in the jurisdiction. These can be exception in terms of administrative process, specialty curriculum, alternate non-geographic admission criteria, etc.

They can also be exceptions in that the whole operation of the school is contracted out to a private entity, making it essentially a private school where tuition is entirely publicly paid for a cherry-picked student population with less accountability to the public than is usually the case with public schools. But that's not always the case.

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

#848

Post by vonmoltke » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:57 PM UTC

LesZedCB wrote: post #330

lallysingh wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about private school is that the student and parents are customers.

the unfair thing about private school is only people who have money can go, thus increasing the social gaps.

My wife went to a private boarding school in New York that was paid entirely by scholarship money.

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

#849

Post by danjayh » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:58 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #752

mynameishere wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an odd picture. Not sure why you didn't link to a real source. This seems to have a similar looking circuit board: http://fusion.net/story/197958/irving-texas-police-arrest-mu... But then this article has a completely different picture: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/15/student... If it was really mounted in that case in your picture, it's indeed a little funny looking. I mean, all of this pol…

> And who "invents" a clock anyway? It's sort of already-done. Clocks use a variety of circuit blocks - you need something to keep time; you need something to display that time; you can add other features. With just "keep time" and "display time" you still have a variety of different methods. You can count mains frequency; you can use crystals and dividers. Displays can be 7 segment LEDs or LCDs or binary or analogue…

I don't think it was even that. From the pics, it looks like he liberated a commercial clock from its housing and put it in a different case. Unless it had battery backup, he may have soldered in a 9V battery connector, but since it still has a power cord I kind of doubt it.

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

#850

Post by elektromekatron » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 8:58 PM UTC

eldude wrote: post #816

elektromekatron wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it is the kid himself is who is saying it. http://mic.com/articles/125400/texas-police-officer-to-ahmed... Now given you are getting all high and mighty bandying around terms like defamation, you going to go calling him a liar?

EDIT: I believe you are misunderstanding the meaning of my previous comment based on its use of indefinite pronouns and how it was physically structured relative to the quote block. Rather than rehash it here, please re-read it.[1] EDIT 2: Looks like my Edit window timed out. I meant to also update this line as follows: Neither the original DallasNews article nor the TechCrunch article makes any such assertion about…

My, how gracious of you.