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Ahmed Mohamed, His Clock, and the Curious Turn of Events
New submitter poity writes: After the news first broke of the 9th grader getting cuffed for scaring school officials with what turned out to be a digital clock, Ahmed Mohamed has experienced a surge of popular support — hailed as a genius and a hero, with college scholarships, internship offers, and even an invitation to the White House by President Obama himself. Now, amid rumors of possible racial discrimination lawsuits against the school and local police, some people have begun to more deeply scrutinize the details of the case, especially on the tech side with regard to the homemade clock in question. Recently, a writer at the creative site Artvoice posted a remarkable analysis of Ahmed's clock project, which raises new questions about the case and the manner in which people and the media alike have reacted. The linked analysis posits that Ahmed's clock started out as another clock, rather than a box of parts, and Ahmed can be said to have repackaged rather than "invented" a wholly new clock, but acknowledges that "none of us were there and knows what happened."
... and go with what happened.
They didn't evacuate the school, or even the room. They didn't call the bomb squad. They did everything *but* treat the purported "possible bomb" as a bomb.
It wasn't about whether it was a bomb or not, it was about humiliating the brown kid.
If it was a bomb, and it did explode and take out the administration office, Uncle Chuck Darwin would have been smiling. But it wasn't, so it's not even close to a Darwin Award, but rather a damn good example of straight-out racism.
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BMO
I'm gonna be bold, but he didn't invent shit. At best, from the picture, the "clock" seems more to be a commercial product hacked up in a different case. Why would he add 2 source of power (9V battery + main) ? Why do this on 2 different boards linked up by ribbon cables ?
OK if a $color kid brought in a suitcase with wires sticking out, which he plugged in and it making a noise and then refused to answer questions what is was exactly, I suspect he would have received the similar treatment.
While I generally support him, the media has been TERRIBLE at reporting this story. The LA Times had a very popular article that kept comparing him to Steve Jobs. JOBS!??! Don't they mean Woz?! The police also release misleading photos making it look like it was the size of a suitcase (it was waaaay smaller than that). I guess once the mass media gets their hands on something their only concern is ad clicks...
I am not sure where this this kid is a Genius came from. He does have interest in technology and figuring out how things work.
When I was in 4th or 5th grade I had a cheap Atari/Sega/Amstrad PC joystick that broke. So I took it apart and I realized it was a simple design, so I played with making contacts with the wires and I saw what happened, then I made a cardboard Game pad that didn't work well. Then I went to Radio shack got some push buttons and drilled holes in some spare Plexiglas and made a game pad, actually the joystick supported one button, and the game pad supported two buttons by seeing what the other wire that wasn't used did.
Now I am not trying to brag, taking part a clock and finding how to trigger the same functionality takes the same amount of skill. It isn't Genius stuff, but it takes curiosity on how things work and try to get things working again.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I would love to see the congregation of the Mosque he attends to speak out against the prejudice against Muslims. They could get out and have a march protesting against it.
At the same time, this march of Muslims should speak out against Islamic terrorism and the sort of extremism that their religious brethren in the ISIL areas, and the Boko Haram practice in the Middle East, and Africa. Burning folks alive in cages, auctioning off 12 year old girls for sex slavery . . . this is what Islam is all about.
Will you get out a crowd of Muslims to come out and condemn this . . . ? No way. That's what Islam is all about. Ask Hilary Clinton or Carly Firorina what they think about that.
I used to play with a chemistry toy set as a child. Nope, can't do that anymore, because of Muslim Terrorists. I used to be able to fly in planes, without any security hassles. Nope, that doesn't work anymore, because of Islamic Terrorists. Now, I can't even take a train in Europe, without the threat of Islamic Terrorists. The EU is being teared apart, because of Islamic Terrorist migrants.
One of the pillars of Islam, is supposed to be "Charity" . . . the rich Islamic Gulf States shit on that.
So why would one have anything against folks that want to institute Sharia law in Texas . . . ?
Without all this Islamic aggression against the West, nobody would care about a digital clock.
American Muslims need to get together, and fight Islamic terrorists. Well, otherwise, they should be surprised what they get.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
... realized yet that his father is an activist? Ran twice for president of Sudan (from the US!)? Debated that FL pastor who burned a koran?
I knew this was too "perfect" the first whiff of it I got, and the more details come out, the more right I was.
How is it anti Jewish or anti Christian to point out that all witches must be killed? Anything anti semetic in pointing out that every living thing in Jericho was commanded to be killed, man, woman, child, animals. Or the law in Deuteronomy that if you're caught raping a virgin you must pay her father and marry her? And also in Deuteronomy, if someone convinces one of your family to follow another god, you should kill them? If everyone followed the letter of their religious texts, I'd be pretty afraid of Jews and Christians also.
As far as Europeans go, they're not nearly the liberal hippie types that Americans like to think they are. There are plenty of people we'd classify as rednecks over there, there's a very racist and homophobic segment all over, etc. Generally Europe has seen to not have had a big race problem in the past because the countries were very homogenous for a very long time (but always an underlying anti-semetic and anti Roma nastiness).
I didn't get the impression that the boy is cheeky or that this was a prank.
It just seems like he's a precocious kid interested in how things work and he wanted to show one of his teachers. Unfortunately, teachers' detectors are up for school violence (remember the child who was penalized for chewing his Pop Tart in the shape of a gun?) and the rise of radical Islam (Islamic gunmen attack the "Draw The Prophet" 40 minutes away in Garland Texas) resulted in this situation.
It's a tricky situation. However, calling the cops seems slightly absurd. They didn't think it was a bomb by the fact they didn't evacuate the premises and bring a bomb robot to blow it up. If the authorities find a credible threat, they bring in a bomb robot and blow up whatever the threat is. That didn't happen.
As far as taking things apart and putting them back together, Henry Ford did that sort of thing. This might have been simpler, but the boy correctly put it together in a different way.
Get ready for a wall of text. All of this happened in a small town in Washington state, for reference.
I've had similar things happen to me for dicking about with electronics and I'm as white as you can get.
I had my desk and backpack searched in grade school because "some kids" reported me to the principal talking about fireworks (It was July) and told him I was looking up bombs on the computers (Electromagnets are apparently bombs). Of course I had random PCBs from shit I took apart in my backpack and that was damning enough evidence to call my parents and suspend me for a week (For "Disrupting the learning environment, a copout term when you piss off school administration but technically didn't break any rules). Cops were threatened but weren't called.
I was also (Without my parents knowledge) placed into a "special" class, consisting mostly of the "slow" kids where we got to talk about our feelings (By pointing to an expression on a plush cube). This was run by the school counselor.
According to her it was wrong to enjoy the things I enjoyed at the time (Average kid stuff for the most part. Drawing guns, playing video games, playing with soldering irons). I learned a few years ago after talking with my parents that she literally told them that I would be the next "Columbine kid" if they didn't put me on drugs to "fix" me (They didn't).
Same thing in middle school, again was looking up AVR tutorials in the library and a number of kids would come up behind me and yell out "IS THAT A BOMB!?" and variations of that. Again, all of my stuff searched, escorted by security, etc. Suspended for a few days for "abusing school computer privileges" because "School computers are not for learning whatever you want, your activities must relate to classwork".
In highschool I finally got a break, amazing teacher who had a back room lined with soldering irons and breadboards. We even started a F.I.R.S.T. robotics team before I graduated.
So please, don't give me bullshit about this only happening because of the color of his skin. Blame the school's lack of understanding and zero tolerance policies. Blame the culture of fear in this country, don't buy into this stereotypical "LOOK! LOOK! AMERICANS ARE RACIST" crap.
If anything, I would bet the only reason this story has taken off is because he was brown and race politics are all the rage these days.
There are a lot more victims of "Zero tolerance" policies than what you see in the news, stories like this and the poptart gun kid are more common than most people think.
I'll be honest, my reading is that he's writing it to deflate the groundswell of support for Ahmed. He straw-man's Ahmed's statement that he invented it, as you describe, and then goes on to talk about how the teachers actually weren't responding absurdly. It's an article intended to give points of support to those who want to argue against the commonly expressed opinion that Ahmed was targeted absurdly and unfairly. It does this partly by whittling away at Ahmed's 'credibility' as a young inventor.
It's definitely contrary to my viewpoint, but I think that's what's going on here.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. . . . . . . .
It was a fucking clock. His engineering teacher could have verified it. Second, if they were really concerned why the fuck was the bomb squad and fire dept not called? They kept that kid for two class periods interrogating him without a lawyer and his parents. The principal trying to force him to write some kind of written confession. Again, without his parents. Do you think that was reasonable? Jeezus.
Also speculating what the kid was up to? Really? Why not just give him the benefit of the doubt?
Cuz in 'Murika we do not given the benefit of the doubt to kids with Muslim-sounding names (whatever that means) and/or suffer from Dermal Hypermelaninetis (a condition clearly documented in the "Take Our Country Back" medical manual.)