“Oh My Gosh You Idiots Are Afraid of a CLOCK?!”
One of the reasons I like economics is that you get inside of everybody’s head and try to explain their behavior as the outcome of rational (though perhaps gravely mistaken) choice. I also like novelists who merely describe what the various characters–even the “bad guys”–did and why, from their individual perspectives, without banging me over the head with moral condemnation about it.
OK so in this context, it doesn’t really work to post selfies of you holding a kitchen wall clock and saying, “I took this to work. #IStandWithAhmed.”
No, if you really want to do an apples to apples comparison, try to walk through the lobby of your office past the security guards with this inside your bag, and have it beep just as you pass them so they ask you to take it out:
Is it really so inconceivable that at a school–where all the faculty and staff have no doubt been subjected to countless drills on how to handle an active shooter situation etc.–a teacher would report this and they’d call the police?
It should go without saying that I don’t think the kid should’ve been arrested, and I’m sure he was treated worse because of his ethnicity and name. But all of a sudden half my Facebook feed has turned into bomb squad veterans on this one.
So, what you’re saying is: when you strip them of their casing, clocks look just like bombs?
Certain types of clocks with wires hanging out, and put into a case, then yes.
Ahhh, so if you strip the casing off an electrical device, the wires will hang out. Hmmm. But wait, that would mean underneath our clothing we are all just walking around naked! Gasp!!
This is the bit of the story I found hilarious:
Figures.
I never got on with my English teachers either.
Perhaps the engineering teacher would have been a good first stop rather than the police.
You are expecting way too much common sense on the part of an English teacher.
Electrical tape, pocket watch, a few lengths of wire, and some hot dogs and you can make a very convincing looking bomb. At least from a distance.
I watched an interview where the kid said that he did something or other to make it less threatening looking. That could have been a poor choice of words after the fact but I suspect he knew he was taking a risk.
You are quite right: on the one hand, they over-reacted. On the other hand, it was not in the least crazy that they would be cautious about this device.
Large bureaucracies tend to make people hyper-cautious: you might get fired if you let something slip past you, but if you are way too hyper about checking everything, you will inconvenience a lot of people, but keep your job.
Cautious, yes. Cautious enough to take him to “the office”, yes.
Escalate several different times *after* getting further information and context? Er, that’s pushing it.
Gene, I’m actually glad that you were specific in saying “bureaucracy” here. It reminds me of how Mises handled this issue economically in his essay of the same name (i.e. process, rules, procedures, etc).
“the outcome of rational (though perhaps gravely mistaken)…”
The origin of the mistake is often irrationality. If we jump off a building because we believe we can fly, that is rational. The belief that we can fly is a mistake; it is irrational to believe so with very good evidence to the contrary and no evidence to support it.
So such a jump is the outcome of a rational (although gravely mistaken) belief. It is also the result of irrationality.
“The belief that we can fly is a mistake; it is irrational to believe so with very good evidence to the contrary and no evidence to support it.”
But if you are mistakenly evaluating the alleged “very good” evidence (as we often do), is it still irrational? I don’t think so.
“But if you are mistakenly evaluating the alleged “very good” evidence (as we often do), is it still irrational?”
It depends why you are mistaken about the good evidence. Lets take it as true for the sake of argument that people cannot fly unaided. We have quite good evidence that this is the case – theories of gravity, mechanics etc. We also have good evidence from our senses – we have never seen anyone fly nor heard reliable reports of others having done so.
In the face of this we have almost no evidence that we can fly. Perhaps we have a confident feeling that we can do it. This is evidence, but not very strong, since we also have quite strong evidence that people can suffer delusions and mistaken beliefs. Thus our belief in our ability to fly is not very sytrong, and can clearly have other interpretations than our actual ability to fly.
Now, you may mistakenly evaluate the “good” evidence as you say, and this may not be irrational.
For example, you may have total memory loss, so be unaware of the good evidence. It may then be rational to believe your feelings of flight ability, and perhaps even irrational not to.
But apart from ignorance, I cannot think of a rational reason to disregard the good evidence.
You may believe that your perceptions of your own abilities are stronger evidence than the actually are. You would then be rational to believe you could fly, but this is itself based on an irrational belief.
I think, most people who are not under the influence of drugs jump off of buildings with the very rational belief that they will not fly.
I agree, they mostly do.
I must admit it looks like a perfectly normal clock to me. At a glance I’d say the display and main clock board came out of something else (possibly a desk clock, maybe old microwave) and then it looks like it’s been adapted to work from a battery. The tape around the transformer might be a bit of an electrical hazard, I’d probably be a little cautious about a metal box without any earth line, but … this is Texas.
One would presume the old aluminium case was just something the kid could find to bolt it into, and I mean, I’ve seen a lot of other improvised boxes, that isn’t the worst.
Not inconceivable at all, but what it tells you is those drills are absolutely useless, and get people into the habit of mindless “keep busy” activity without doing the slightest thing to improve anyone’s safety.
I used to travel a bit more than I do now, and what I noticed about all that bomb sniffer technology at airports is that they “randomly” chose me every time. There’s no point getting angry at the people trying to do their job, but they are really really bad at it, and I got to feeling kind of sorry for them because they were obviously hiring people who had no hope of getting any sensible job. I was sitting with one other guy killing time at an airport (is that still legal?) anyway seems to be what happens at airports, you wander around with nothing to do waiting for your flight. So we sat and watched people getting “randomly” chosen and didn’t take long to see some obvious patterns… they mostly selected adult men, and bigger guys got selected more than smaller guys. In other words, instinctively people “randomly” feel threatened by physical strength, and that’s about as hind-brain as it gets.
Do you think a genuine terrorist would find it a challenge to get around such security measures?
Astoundingly, there are still a lot of offices in Australia where you can walk in and not see ANY security guards. True, in some of those cases the security guards do watch you walk in, but what I’ve noticed is that 75% of the security industry are Muslims here, and the other 25% are Russians … that’s ignoring the fill-in jobs at the airport, and I think those are some government initiative to reduce the welfare payments, I’m talking about places where the security actually matters.
Surely every nefarious plot has to come from either the Muslims or the Russians right? Who else is left after that?
There’s one really good thing about not needing to hang around airports anymore… you can have a bit of a joke now and then. 🙂
Hi Tel, That looks like a desk clock through and through. It is very common for them to have 9volt battery backup. That brings me to the most unsettling part of this whole debacle. There was nothing worth showing to his engineering instructor, except, possibly the hole he made to mount the display otherwise he just took the case off a desk clock and threw the rest of the parts in the box. No creativity, no ingenuity, just the arrogance to think he made something. I’m not trying knock him but there are actual talented kids his age and younger that really make things who find little if any support for their talents and this bomb hoaxer is being lauded for an achievement on par with a participation trophy. America, achieving excellence and equality by an ever lowering bar.
He was only 14. You don’t necessarily need to have something of patentable quality to show it to your teacher.
It is concievable that he was aware of the resemblance to a bomb even before he showed it to the engineering teacher.
Capter 46 of the Texas penal code says “”Hoax bomb” means a device that:(A) reasonably appears to be an explosive or incendiary device; or(B) by its design causes alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or a volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies.”
Don’t know if this is the same all over the USA.
“He was only 14. You don’t necessarily need to have something of patentable quality to show it to your teacher.”
I absolutely agree with that. I’m not saying he should have invented something. I am saying he didn’t build anything. It is not beyond a 14 year old to actually build a clock from parts, case or no case. That is actually an achievement. I don’t have a problem with him taking a fully complete unit and just transferring it to a new case but it doesn’t look like he made any attempt to secure and tidy-up the insides, which would be an actual achievement. There are kids doing much more interesting things than that piece of crap(the clock not the kid) one of them should be invited to meet the Conmander and Cheat.
Honestly, I think he knew all along what it looked like and so doesn’t deserve the hero treatment or he is a doofus and doesn’t deserve the hero treatment.
Harold, based on quote you provided from the Texas penal code it certainly appears to meet criteria A and B. Although, that is vague enough to apply to every youngsters backpack.
“Although, that is vague enough to apply to every youngsters backpack.” And probably their laundry basket too. I agree it is very vague. The test of “reasonableness” and “by design” are open to wide interpretation.
He may have known all along that it looked like a bomb, but I don’t know for certain. Nor does anyone else as far as I can tell. If he did, he does not seem to have deliberately causes distress – by leaving it in the hall for example. His treatment was an overreaction.
To try to redress the overreaction of handcuffing and arresting him, people have responded by overreacting the other way, which I guess is pretty much what you were saying.
Hey they are taking that little faker to meet a real terrorist, what a treat.
Zing!
Don’t worry folks. Obama, the arrester of whistleblowers, and drone killer of innocent civilians, has invited this lad to the White House as a gesture in telling the country that he wants us to not be afraid to contribute to the country’s technology…so that he can find better ways to arrest whistleblowers and drop better bombs on innocent people.
But they still arrested him after they’d established it wasn’t a bomb.
I know, crazy, right? It’s not like he was a kindergartner kissing a little girl.
It wouldn’t have even been a story had they not arrested him and suspended him after it was determined to not be a bomb.
What i dont get is that the engineering teacher already cleared the package as a clock. Why didnt that teacher just talk to the others about that package? Or to the cops?
its so weird. this is such a small thing which would have been cleared up had the engineering teacher just advocated for his/her student.
OK, all of you pointing out that it wasn’t, in fact, a bomb: The reason they were mad at the kid and he got arrested, was that they claimed he had engaged in a bomb hoax. So your comments fail to take into account the motivation of the evil characters in this story.
Again, I’m not defending the ultimate outcome, I’m just saying, let’s at least evaluate the situation as it actually happened. If you say, “What an idiot, Darth Vader thought cutting off Luke’s hand would crush the rebellion,” I’m going to end up saying stuff that will make you think I’m rooting for Vader.
That explanation by them made no sense though. He brought it in and showed one of his teachers the thing. Then the teacher told him to not show anyone else. Accusing him of a bomb hoax after that is absurd. Plus if they really believe he was doing a bomb hoax he would’ve been a lot more than arrested and suspended 3 days.
I can imagine the kid making it to look like a bomb, and thinking in that muddled up 14 yr old way that it would be cool show it around, and other people would think it looked like a bomb too, and think it was cool, and maybe he was a bit cool too for having it. (or hot, or whetever the approriate temperature is these days).
He may have been aware that this bomb / clock mix up could not be acknowledged, so he could not actually say it looked like a bomb to anyone. Showing he engineering teacher was OK, and got the response that it looked like a bomb. Tick that. Having the english teacher discover it when it beeped in the bag may have been accidantal, or may have been part of the ill conceived plan. “Hey, did you see that Ahmed yesterday -it looked like he had a bomb in school! Yeah, right in the English lesson!”
If the above is accurate, he was aware that it looked like a bomb, but never intended it to be a “hoax” bomb. Foolish he may have been, a terrorist he was not.
An appropriate response would be to tell him the serious nature of bomb hoaxes, and explain that whilst he may not be guilty of one, it would be a good idea not to come so close in the future.
He would then have got the appropriate reward for the clock (from the engineering teacher) and the appropriate punishment for the potentially distressing bomb-like appearance of the clock (a mild ticking off, excuse the pun).
Instead he gets arrested, handcuffed and fingerprinted – an inappropriate punishment for his deception over the bomb-like appearance of the clock.
In response, he gets invited to the white house etc – an inapproprtiate reward for the ingenuity of assembling (or re-assembling in a new case) a clock.
Or maybe he had no idea it looked like a bomb.
Bob,
There was zero reason to think he meant it as a hoax bomb. He didn’t leave it ticking in a hallway. He didn’t tell people it was a bomb. He told them it was a clock. And it is a clock.
In response, he was interrogated for an hour by five police officers, was denied his legal right to talk to his parents, was hand cuffed, take to the police station, and fingerprinted. If it wasn’t for the media outrage, I’m sure that the local DA would be drafting BS charges against him as we speak. The authorities in this case acted horrendously, and I’m a bit taken aback that you don’t see that.
I haven’t read anything that gives a context. So we have:
1. Reporters who do not know how to report;
2. School teachers who should have enough knowledge of their students to know if one is likely to cause bodily harm (remember that this falls in the realm of science and explosions which are within the realm of teacher-supervised learning);
3. the police who have to rely on the expertise of teachers.
Given what we know: the police absolutely did the correct thing (i.e. the school was entirely at fault in calling the cops. Blaming anyone’s actions on racism/islamophobia is wildly irrational; Steve Jobs made his computer in the garage so this student is not Steve Jobs.
An entirely believable explanation:
Someone is at least as good at playing the social media PR game as he is at making a clock.
An invitation to the White House? Half of silicon valley trying to get him as an intern? For making a bulky, probably obsolete, clock with what looks like 1980s technology?
Steve Jobs made his computer in the garage so this student is not Steve Jobs.
Clearly the kid needs to be arrested for identity theft.
“If you say, “What an idiot, Darth Vader thought cutting off Luke’s hand would crush the rebellion,” I’m going to end up saying stuff that will make you think I’m rooting for Vader.”
Count Dooku is a second Sith that cut off the hand of a Rebellion member (Anakin).
I think the evidence is leaning in our favor.
You’re not a Sith-lover, are you?
Imagine if he was a Japanese kid taking pictures of ships in Galveston in 1941.
Something smells here. There would be so many other ways he could have gone about what he did, yet he chose this way. I think he set the school up. He is trying to prove a point.
Nobody would be so supportive if he brought a toy gun to school or fashioned a real one. Doesn’t anyone remember Carbine Williams. While incarcerated for the murder of a deputy, he built four semi-automatic weapons that changed weapons design and may have helped win a war. Fascinating story.
I do not think this kid was into advancing anything but an agenda.
In other news:
Syrian Teen Builds Clock, Beheaded For Witchcraft
http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/09/teen-clock-science/
Language caution
One more and I’m done:
Josiah is shocked that I am not condemning the cops on this. Well, I *did* say in the OP, “It should go without saying that I don’t think the kid should’ve been arrested.” I thought my anti-blue-wall street cred had already been established on this blog.
I am specifically responding to people on social media saying stuff like, “Figures, an English teacher!” and “The principal and other administrators involved should be fired and sterilized. I hope they haven’t already bred.”
For the people saying, “Oh you idiots, that’s just a timer, you need an explosive too!” OK, so if the kid’s bag opened in English and an unloaded handgun fell out, I suppose the English teacher should’ve said, “Oh you! Take that harmless device back home, and don’t forget your composition on your summer vacation. Kids these days, bringing in completely innocuous items to school that would startle the untrained observer…”
Good point.
I think analogizing a clock to an unloaded gun is absurd.
A lot of IEDs are cell phones attached to explosives. Does that make a cell phone the equivalent of an unloaded gun?
You say you don’t think the kid should’ve been arrested. Yet if he’d brought an unloaded gun to school he would’ve been arrested and charged. So again the analogy doesn’t make sense.
The issue here isn’t that I don’t understand the administrators POV. I think I have a pretty good idea what there perspective was. I understand the POV of administrators who suspend students for having a pop tart that’s shaped like a gun too. It’s a perspective that’s based in ignorance and wrongheaded thinking.
I am not sure of their perspective either. They appear to have believed the device was NOT actually a bomb. So their motivation seems to have been to get the student arrested for a hoax. It seems pretty obvious that the student was not actually perpetrating a hoax bomb scare, so why did they want to escalate this so far? It makes little sense.
Once they were called, the police must investigate. It seems over the top to jump straight to arrest etc. That makes little sense also, but is perhaps more understandable since the school authorities must have viewed it seriously to call them in the first place, and under certain readings of the law (“by its design causes alarm or reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency or a volunteer agency organized to deal with emergencies”) could be infringing the law.
Uhhh, it was Texas.
C’mon that was Maryland. Don’t you know anything about state’s rights?
It’s fine to panic over (what looks like) a gun falling out of a kid’s backpack.
It’s fine to confiscate it and take him to the office on that basis.
It’s not fine to haul him off in cuffs after you have time to confirm that (say) it’s actually a harmless prop that the same teacher asked him to hold on to.
You don’t have enough information to make that call, Silas, if by “fine” we mean “the cops followed the law” (which is what half my FB feed wanted Kim Davis to do, after all).
If they thought he intentionally brought that device in to make people think, even for a split second, that it was a bomb, then they were supposed to arrest him. (I believe that’s what was going on, I might be wrong about the nature of the applicable statutory law.)
That’s why it is not nearly as decisive as you and others think, to say, “Oh they realized it was harmless so why didn’t they send him back to class after spending 18 man-hours on the issue?”
Look, if he brought in red sticks filled with salt that had “TNT” on them, would everyone be mocking the administration and police for chastising the kid?
Shoot I forgot I said I was done with this…
“Oh they realized it was harmless so why didn’t they send him back to class after spending 18 man-hours on the issue?”
I think that’s a telling point. They couldn’t just let it go because they’d spent so much time on it.
If your FB followers are sticklers for the law, then they can’t also find fault with the horrors of Communism. If the law makes you poor, well, it’s the law.
We *don’t* want cops, or anyone else, to blindly follow the law.
I think this might be a case of you having a lot more FB friends than the rest of us, and thus be exposed to more absurd positions that people take on a given issue. I would agree completely that anyone thinking the teachers are stupid for even having any concerns about that clock are being ridiculous. I think it is perfectly reasonable to have concerns when looking at it (which is why the one teacher told him not to show it off).
Most of us have probably been shielded from the type of person you’re critiquing. All I see on my feed is people ripping apart the arrest and suspension after they talked to the kid. That was a crazy end result to the situation, although not surprising considering some of the other stories you hear like the kid that got suspended for writing a story about killing a dinosaur with a gun.
Fair enough Dan. I realize often I am responding to very particular arguments on issue X, and then people assume I must hold the opposite position when I don’t.
It’s a weird story all around. According to Make Magazine, this is very likely a desktop clock that the kid gutted and mounted in a pencil case, resulting in something that looks a lot like a Hollywood bomb but not at all like a real bomb.
Then after the engineering teacher told the kids not to show it to anyone else, he went to his English teacher. My guess is that he’s just a week meaning nerd, but I can see why the school would be confused.
I think the generally accepted definition of “socially awkward” is anyone who attempts to get their English teacher interested in some clock they just mounted in a pencil case. Perhaps that sounds line an easy mistake to make, but most people have this sort of sixth sense that warns them to avoid potentially disastrous relationships. A small fraction of people seem tragically unable to defend themselves and walk right into it.
Hey, maybe the kid has a future in sitcom?
I and my friends were a smart asses growing up, and I imagine a lot of 14 year-old boys are still smart asses. I think it quite likely that Ahmed knew precisely how people would react on seeing his device and this is why he delighted in showing it to everyone. Even being arrested and suspended, he probably laughing his ass off as I write since he got exactly the reaction for which he was looking.
Yup, looks just like a time bomb to me. You can tell it’s a time bomb because every time bomb I’ve ever seen has had those seven segment numeric displays counting down the time. Of course the only time bombs I’ve seen have been in the movies or on TV and after about the first five years of watching things like James Bond, Mission Impossible, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Bat Man, Wonder Woman, The Hulk, The 6 Million Dollar Man, I Spy, Mod Squad, McGiver, Alien and dozens of Sci-Fi movies where the spacecraft self-destruct sequence is activated I eventually came to realize that those seven segment displays on time bombs were not a vision of reality, they were just a story-telling device whose purpose is to tell us just how little time our hero has to save the day.(Yes, I was a slow learner. I was probably 11 when this reality hit me) So, in this one instance I must disagree with you Dr. Murphy. Ahmed’s clock should only look like a time bomb to someone that has made the mistake of thinking TV and Hollywood does a good job of depicting real life. Has anyone asked the bomb squad veterans on facebook what percentage of real life time bombs actually have seven segment count-down timers attached to them?
Capt J Parker, you’re right, what he brought in didn’t look like an *actual* bomb, it looked like a “movie bomb”–just like the cop said. And so, if the cops really thought he had brought in a non-bomb that would make the average person think it was a bomb, then they would
(A) Not evacuate the school
and
(B) Get mad at the kid.
Which is what they did, and yet a bunch of people on FB think the above are contradictory.
Very good point. Looks like I’m Still a slow learner, Dr. Murphy. OTOH, the discussion on my local public radio station today said Ahmed brought in the clock to show his engineering teacher but somehow an English teacher eyeballed the thing and blew the whistle. I guess I’m just a little disappointed that an English teacher, of all people, was not able to spot an improvised literary device when s/he saw one.
Heh good one Capt. Parker. My understanding is that he first showed it to the engineering teacher, who said it was neat but not to show it to anybody else, and then it beeped when it was in his bag in English class. It was downhill from there.
When you get to the bottom of the hill they send you to the President’s office.
No, I’m not a bomb squad technician, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.
I stopped going to Holiday Inn when every room had a bomb on the table next to the bed.
Did they charge you for throwing the clock out the window?
That would be pretty off-putting, I agree.
Except that the TSA would not find it amusing, I would absolutely love to wait one year so you all forget about it, then arrange it so the next time you h8ers fly somewhere, a man who looks stereotypically Muslim sits next to you on the plane, and pulls out an exact replica of this kid’s device. I want to catch it on film how you all have the IMMEDIATE REACTION of congratulating the man on his clever clock.
Last thing: I think the cops are idiots for arresting the kid. I don’t think the English teacher did anything wrong. I’m not as sure about the principal etc., because it’s possible they were doing what their legal department said in such cases to avoid millions of dollars in lawsuits.
I think the push back you’re getting is due to people feeling embarrassed that they have to live in a world where such fears are not completely unwarranted.
Better for those people to blame the “overreacters” than admit that they can be blown up by homemade bombs.
It is possible for bombs to go off in US schools. After all, the state has all but disarmed them by law anyway. Prime targets for psychos.
“I think the push back you’re getting is due to people feeling embarrassed that they have to live in a world where such fears are not completely unwarranted.”
You couldn’t have put it any better. The problem is also that they are not ready to think this through and ask questions like ‘What aspect of how society is “organised” today leads to the use of such random violence targeted at unknown and usually innocent, harmless people becomes a legitimate tool for the attainment of political goals?” I believe the reason they do not ask these questions is that the answer is rather discomfiting, especially to worshippers of The State and its magical powers.
Don’t you hate it when that happens and then he turns out to be Jewish? The stories I could tell… talk about making an ass out of U & ME.
Anyhow if I did happen to meet a full grown adult holding what looks like a child’s science project in a completely inappropriate context, the first thing I would say would be something like, “How did you get that through the nudie scanner? Are you an FBI patsie or something?”
Sitting on aircraft, you need to be quick with the light hearted icebreaker lines.
I thought he looked Indian. I was badly wrong.
I think the cops are idiots for arresting the kid. I don’t think the English teacher did anything wrong. I’m not as sure about the principal etc., because it’s possible they were doing what their legal department said in such cases to avoid millions of dollars in lawsuits.
Remember, the principal knew it wasn’t a real bomb. Hence the not evacuating, etc. So did he think he’d be facing millions in lawsuits over a hoax bomb (one that never was and now never could be used as a hoax bomb)?
The reality is that he might face lawsuits over how he did handle the situation, so if he reacted how he did because of fear of lawsuits, that would be ironic.
Oh, I would totally think he was trying to blow stuff up.
I just thought it was amusing that the “looks like a bomb” argument could justify the belief that most clocks are potential bombs, and that we should ban clocks.
😀
On the up side, a clock ban could fast-track the end of Daylight Saving Time.
And what if the next time it is ‘a bomb’? Can people sight, ‘Well we didn’t want to get in trouble because of that one kid.’
Look personally I can tell the difference simply by looking at it, but I know engineering. He placed it in a casing that did not make it look like a clock.
I disagree with ‘arresting’ him, I do not think you needed to do that. but we arrest kids because they bring toy knives to school because they look like real knives.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3439725/Student-dressed-as-Rambo-arrested-over-plastic-toy-knife.html
Schools are unfortunately damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Schools are unfortunately damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Yes, you want there to be negative consequences when a school screws up both by overreacting and by underreacting. If you only punish one type of error you’ll end up encouraging the other type.
It was thought to be a hoax bomb, not a real bomb.
Yeah, a lot of people seem to find it super obvious why that kid took apart a digital clock, mounted its innards in a pencil case, placed some visible wiring which wasnt actually connected to anything, and set the timer so that the alarm went off during the middle of a class. Apparently this is just such typical kid stuff, the kind that everyone should just know about, that it’s beneath them to explain it beyond sighing about how easily explainable it is and how all you idiots who think this weird, purposeless, bomb looking creation might have been created to look like a bomb are such idiots.
teqzilla you are my proxy from now on when I argue with Josiah.
Holy crap, Bob and Grane Peer are right:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-on-the-medias-latest-chump-out/
This was probably deliberately meant as a hoax bomb. And the kid’s Sudanese (Arab/Black). I thought he was Pakistani.
E. Harding,
Let me see if I understand. The kid’s dad makes a clock that looks like a bomb and has his kid take it to school, knowing that the school would call the police and have him arrested, sparking a social media backlash that would get the president to tweet about it and invite the kid to the White House, all so that the father could get a photo with the president to use in his next campaign for president of Sudan.
And to think he would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for the Scooby Gang.
Josiah, are you saying the fact that the kid’s dad debated Terry Jones, doesn’t change your view one iota that this was totally a case of a kid innocently making a school project and nincompoop / racist adults just not appreciating science?
Also
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-of-the-mohamed-familys-zany-sense-of-humor-twin-towers-transportation-corp/
This might be the biggest giveaway of the kid’s father’s classiness (or lack of it). And it hasn’t been at all mentioned by the mainstream media. Yet.
I mean, seriously, would you let your brother get away with naming his company “Twin Towers Transportation”? I doubt it.
Josiah, are you saying the fact that the kid’s dad debated Terry Jones, doesn’t change your view one iota that this was totally a case of a kid innocently making a school project and nincompoop / racist adults just not appreciating science?
It would only make a difference if you think the clock was a hoax bomb (in which case the arrest would have been appropriate). Is that you position now?
Josiah it’s all or nothing with you isn’t it? I think it’s possible the kid originally brought in a clock, but then was being coy about it later. I really don’t know.
Doesn’t sound so far-fetched, given what actually happened. I think it’s the most likely version of events, and that the clock was probably (~60-70%) intended by someone to be a hoax bomb.
The clock was simply taken out of its case and put in a box.
Hey Dr. Murphy, thought you’d find this article valuable:
http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering-ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/
Okay, this is looking more like a set-up.
Mind you, it isn’t that there wasn’t something to exploit. But showing up with something that looks a lot like every hollywood briefcase bomb the first school day after 9/11… My initial sympathy for the kid is gone.
https://twitter.com/IStandWithAhmed/status/644179809170509824/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw