'See Something,Say Something.'
- Thread starter muttly
- Start date
Quite possibly he did think it had some semblance to a bomb, but knew that it wasn't. But he apparently told him not to show it other teachers. It was inside his pencil case so most of the wiring wasn't visible unless he opened it.
But then the buzzer from the clock went off and piqued interest of the teacher regarding the accompanying case.
Either way JAIL!
Quite possibly, but I'm not going to speculate on what may or may not be there, to fill in the blanks with that I want them to be.
I suppose it's possible that more information might be released about all this, but it was covered pretty thoroughly in the press conference on Wednesday by Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd (and later in a TV interview where he explained in more detail how the police did a commendation-worth job on all this) when he read the statue about hoax bombs noting that anything that it intended to cause alarm, or could cause alarm, can be considered a hoax bomb. He then went on to say that the officers quickly determined that the device wasn't a bomb and at no time did have they had evidence of intent to cause alarm. Still, he pointed out, again, that anything that causes a reaction of any kind by police still fits the statue.
The actual Texas statue:
Sec. 46.08. HOAX BOMBS.
(a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly manufactures, sells, purchases, transports, or possesses a hoax bomb with intent to use the hoax bomb to:
(1) make another believe that the hoax bomb is an explosive or incendiary device; or
(2) cause alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies.
So intent is still the criteria, despite the astonishingly broad wording of section 2.
But he admitted in the press conference and in the interview that they had no evidence that there was any intent when they arrested him.
He showed it to his English teacher, told her it was a clock (didn't hint that it might be a bomb), showed her it was a clock, demonstrated to her how it was a clock and after that she said, "It looks like a bomb to me."
"She thought it was a threat to her," Ahmed told reporters. "It was really sad that she took the wrong impression of it."
The problem is most of the points he brings out are based on assumption or on incorrect facts. Which is ironic since he mentions more than once how he doesn't do that. He's got at least 7 logical fallacies in his article with which he uses to draw his conclusions, and for that matter, the entire article is a logical fallacy as he states for the primary premise that "Ahmed Mohamed didn’t invent his own alarm clock. He didn’t even build a clock" and proceeds to dissect the clock to prove it is, in fact, a clock, and that Ahmed assembled the parts in an inventive way. Basically, the author of the piece doesn't like the fact that Ahmed didn't design the circuitry and handcraft the circuit board and components in a manner in which he would have done it. And he's far to focused on semantics. He sardonically laments the fact that the circuitry contains a battery backup which wouldn't be present in a home project (unless, of course, you're reusing existing circuitry that already has that).
Despite a 14 year old's use of the word "invention," nobody think he designed his own circuitry and printed circuits and the LED display and with that invented a clock. It doesn't really matter where he found the parts. He could have used any timer circuit, and any display. He put a few parts together, located inputs and outputs and soldered it together so it would work. He likes to tinker with electronics, which is the seed of engineering and invention. Whether or not Ahmed is an engineering genius (he's not), or whether or not his clock is even interesting, is not the story. The story is whether or not a pretty typical kid "invention" really warranted "OMG it's a bomb" arrest, handcuffs, and illegal interrogation, or whether it was an hysterical over-reaction.
After a certain amount of coyness, while the author pretends to be doing a "Just the facts, ma'am" technical analysis, using "physics, logic, and methodology" he eventually reveals his agenda - 'I'm not islamophobic, and to prove it I'm going to focus on this part, instead, and defend moronic idiocy. Because of my fine fake logical fallacies, it is therefore proven that at no time did race, religion or bigotry play even a small role in this. It was just smart, prudent work on the part of everyone concerned.'
It's food for thought, if you don't think too much.
The funny thing is, if anyone at the school, including the English teacher, actually thought it was a bomb, which is the entire purpose of a hoax bomb, they would have evacuated the school. If they thought it was a hoax bomb and thus presented no danger to the students, then the letter they sent out to parents is disingenuous horse hockey. Knowing that it wasn't a bomb, and knowing there was no evidence whatsoever that there was any intent to cause alarm by it being a hoax bomb, knowing that at no time was anyone in any kind of danger, the school went ahead and suspended him, anyway. Why? I mean, we know the police handcuffed Ahmed "for his own safety," but why suspend him for doing absolutely nothing wrong?
The only other factor in all of the is, as RLENT put it, MOOSLIM!
Draw your own conclusions from that.
On a completely unrelated note, I see that Moot now has a selfie stick.
So an over-reaction like this could have only happened to a "MOOSLIM"?
How soon we forget. School Flips Out Over a "Gun Shaped" Pop-Tart. Suspends 7yr. old. ⋆ Doug Giles ⋆ #ClashDaily
Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban talked to Ahmed and also talked to school personel.
This is what he said:
NBA owner Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks told Maher he spoke with school employees in Irving, Texas, who said Mohamed got through six periods of school before there was any trouble.
“One of the teachers, an English teacher apparently, said ‘Look, you’ve got to put it in your backpack because it’s going to make people nervous and it’s making me nervous,’” said Cuban. “And again, second hand, he wasn’t responsive [to instructions] at all.”
Prankster gonna prank.
This is what he said:
NBA owner Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks told Maher he spoke with school employees in Irving, Texas, who said Mohamed got through six periods of school before there was any trouble.
“One of the teachers, an English teacher apparently, said ‘Look, you’ve got to put it in your backpack because it’s going to make people nervous and it’s making me nervous,’” said Cuban. “And again, second hand, he wasn’t responsive [to instructions] at all.”
Prankster gonna prank.
How soon we forget? We didn't forget. You gotta pay closer attention, I've mentioned it twice already in this thread, here and here. My comment that "the only other factor in all this" was in the context of directly responding to the Food for Thought" article that you posted. My position in this thread has been very consistent, namely that this was an overreaction due to moronic idiocy by imbeciles all around.
Actually, what he said was:
Cuban said that Mohamed is a “great kid,” and “this is once removed, right, so I talked to the people in Irving, Texas, that work with people at MacArthur, the school. And I said, ‘What happened? What did you hear?’ This is, again, secondhand. He said, the kid, Ahmed, took the clock, put it in the first class. Teacher said, ‘Great. Looks great. It looks great.’ Kid picks it up, takes it to the second class. Teacher said, ‘Okay, whatever. It’s great. It’s great.’ Ahmed didn’t really comment, from what I heard. Takes it to the third class, same thing. Then he got to a point, again, secondhand, where one of the teachers, an English teacher, apparently, said, ‘Look, you’ve got to put it in your backpack, because it’s going to make some people nervous, and it’s making me nervous.’ And again, secondhand, he didn’t — he wasn’t responsive to it at all. And so, it took six classes before anything happened.”
He mentioned 4 times that it was second hand, which should give you a clue that it's probably not accurate, because he's hedging hard. He didn't talk to school employees, he talked with people he knows that work with the school, not at the school or for the school, but who has dealings with the school. He asked them what they had heard. So, Mark Cuban tells the real story of Ahmed’s school day, that he heard from someone who heard something. He's not even quoting the English teacher, he's quoting what he he thinks she said based on what he heard from somebody else who thinks that what the she said. Meanwhile, we have an actual first person account of what was said.
In any case, Cuban also said that it was ridiculous that Ahmed was arrested. "It's ridiculous. All someone at the school had to do was think."
According to Mark Cuban, who heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody, yeah.
So Mark Cuban's opinion about anything regarding this incident should be taken with a grain of salt. Including his comment that it's ridiculous that he was 'arrested', since he doesn't know all the facts. It very well had been a prank perpetrated by 'Honest' Ahmed and his activist father.
RLENT
Veteran Expediter
RLENT
Veteran Expediter
Might wanna work on your reading comprehension ...
A grain of salt? No. An entire salt mine would be closer. His opinion means exactly the same as yours does, or mine, or Obama's, or Mark Zuckerberg's, or Bill Maher's, or Kim Kardashian's.
Yes.
It also may very well have been a communications device used to contact the inhabitants on Seti Alpha V, but there's no evidence for that, either.
Guilty as charged - I tend to scan threads that I haven't followed from their outset, especially when they have lengthy posts.
Maybe I missed this point too, but if so I'll restate it anyway: where was the parental supervision when this kid was making this thing? I believe if my wife or I had seen one of my kids making a similar device to take to school - especially in this age of hysterical over-reaction by half-witted educators - we would have put a stop to it. Couldn't he have just as easily mounted the parts to this elementary clock on a display board with all the components clearly labeled?
Regardless, considering his age the skeptic in me can't help but wonder if he might have been testing the limits just a little bit.
He's been tinkering with electronics stuff for years. I'm sure he finally got to a point where he didn't need a lot of parental supervision to tinker. As a kid I used to build model airplanes and ships, the kind where you get all the parts in a kit and then glue them together and put the decals on. Only I went full-out with it and sanded the parts for perfect fit, painted them, you name it. It quickly got to the point where my parents pretty much out me on ignore. I could have been huffing the crap out of that glue, they'd never know.
I think the whole point of it was to build it inside the pencil case. One could argue (and it may very well be all that he did) was take the innards out of the original clock case and reassemble them in a different case to show that it could be done.
Possibly, but people into electronics tinkering, which is apparently this kid, tend to be totally nerd-focused on the tinkering. In his interviews Ahmed has been very shy and quiet on most subjects, like he's clueless and doesn't know what to say, but when they talk about electronics and science he's all up in it. Mark Cuban's comments point to that, when he said Ahmed is a "super smart kid, science geek. We talked about science, but while I’m talking to him on the phone, as I ask him a question, ‘Tell me what happened,’ because I’m curious, right? His sister, over his shoulder, you could hear, listening to the question, giving him the answer. So, I don’t know all the details of what happened, but what I do know, when I talked to him about science, when I talked to him about magnets, when I talked to him about creating things, he was very, very engaged.”
Someone testing the limits would likely be a little more cognizant of the limits they are testing.
His parent is a political activist. He tested the limits with the consent of his father. Job well done son.Guilty as charged - I tend to scan threads that I haven't followed from their outset, especially when they have lengthy posts.
Maybe I missed this point too, but if so I'll restate it anyway: where was the parental supervision when this kid was making this thing? I believe if my wife or I had seen one of my kids making a similar device to take to school - especially in this age of hysterical over-reaction by half-witted educators - we would have put a stop to it.
Regardless, considering his age the skeptic in me can't help but wonder if he might have been testing the limits just a little bit.
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RLENT
Veteran Expediter
Facts not in evidence ...