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."

Comments

So let's just say that this article is true...

[bmo]

... 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.

--
BMO

Full of bad reporting

[bangular]

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...

Re:Genius ? Really ? No, Sir.

[dpidcoe]

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 ?

You answered your own question with your first sentence. According to analysis in TFA, he took apart an LED clock (a Micronta 63756 to be exact) and transplanted it into a pencil case. I had an old LED alarm clock (since replaced by my phone) that plugged into a 120V source, but also took 2 AA batteries as a backup source so that you wouldn't lose your alarm if the power went out. The oddities of the design are due to whatever engineer came up with it in the 70s.

Re: I liked the cartoon that read:

[Darinbob]

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).

Re:I liked the cartoon that read:

[Beeftopia]

From what I can see there is nothing special about him or what he did, he is just some cheeky kid who used a very naive way of getting attention and it got out of hand. All this talk of discrimination etc. seems like a beat-up and the poor kid will pay the price in the long run for all the manipulating adults have done to politically capitalise on his prank.

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.

Re:I liked the cartoon that read:

[is as us Infinite]

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.