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'Clock Kid' Ahmed Mohamed and His Family To Leave US, Move To Qatar
theodp writes: The curious case of Ahmed Mohamed, the 9th grader who was cuffed for scaring school officials with what turned out to be a repackaged digital clock, has taken yet another twist with news on Tuesday that the 'Clock Kid' and his family will move to Qatar. Less than 24 hours after Ahmed met President Obama at the White House, the family issued a news release saying, "After careful consideration of all the generous offers received, we would like to announce that we have accepted a kind offer from Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) for Ahmed to join the prestigious QF Young Innovators Program, which reflects the organization's on-going dedication to empowering young people and fostering a culture of innovation and creativity." Prior to the announcement, some in the press sensed something was amiss when the President seemed to give Ahmed the cold shoulder on Monday after personally inviting Ahmed to the White House for "Astronomy Night." Last month, Ahmed enjoyed a decidedly warmer welcome at Google, where he was literally put front and center before the Google Science Fair winners (including Grand Prize winner Olivia Hallisey, who came up with a novel way to detect Ebola), and enjoyed a meet-and-greet with Sergey Brin.
Remove casing from a Wallmart clock
get invited by Google and President
Fucking genius, durrrr.
It was a mass produced clock, not any "invention".
OK, lets be 100% honest about this kid. This entire thing was a setup by his FATHER to get attention for his "cause". His father is a well known activist and Imam who plans these types of events. Now that the whole thing has been exposed as a fraud the father is moving. Of course the media never follows up, and the public never learns the truth.
Remove casing from a Wallmart clock
get invited by Google and President
Fucking genius, durrrr.
It was a mass produced clock, not any "invention".
Unfortunately true. He is not a particularly bright kid and is being unduly celebrated. He took apart a clock. While we should celebrate kids taking apart clocks, we shouldn't call it an invention.
The invention turned out to be nothing of the sort, and supposedly his sister had been trying to stir shit up w.r.t. Muslim oppression.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Because clearly he deserves more recognition for reassembling a clock than Olivia does for discovering a new way to detect Ebola...
No you forgot, he set it up like a suitcase bomb to get attention. Much more inventive than just taking it apart. Getting attention is the only route to success in America.
I took apart 2-3 clocks growing up. Where's my medal?
Remove casing from a Wallmart clock
get invited by Google and President
Fucking genius, durrrr.
It was a mass produced clock, not any "invention".
Don't forget the part about meeting with the leader of...Sudan, of all places. Yeah, he lost my support and all hope of my thinking he's interested in fairness and equality after that.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Ahmed didn't just not invent anything, he disobeyed a science teacher who saw the clock and told him not to show it to anyone else in the school. Ahmed plugged in the clock and set an alarm to go off during his English class. The mess of unsecured components and wires was dangerous when plugged into 110V AC, if not scary for what it might be. The English teacher quite understandably freaked out.
Ahmed's father had to have known the clock was not the invention of his son, yet he set up fundraisers.
Last November, Ahmed's father registered a company named Twin Towers Transportation.
Obama should be ashamed of his rush to judgement, as should Google.
Good Riddance.
It appears this family has tried this grab for attention more than once, with the daughter at least once....
So, they finally got their 15min of fame, and now let's just be happy to have them out of the country and back where they want to be in the first place.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This is not about it being an invention. This is about him doing something interesting for his age and at the very least he did some re soldering there and instead of getting a pat on the head from his teachers, they overreacted the police. On top of that, he was illegally questioned by the police since his parents were not allowed to be present even after he asked for them. They made this kid feel like an isolated second class person and to be honest, I can't imagine a more effective way to turn this kid into an actual terrorist.
The attention he got was more about undoing the damage than rewarding any actual genius.
Wait, "half-nigger piece of shit" gets modded "Insightful"? WTF has happened to this site?
Yep.... I hate to say it, but I think a LOT of us just got fooled on this one, at least initially. As techie "geeks", we *wanted* to believe this was all about a young, brilliant kid getting held back by "the system".
In reality, it's shaping up to look like this was all a political ploy.... Research the background of the kid's parents and you'll start to see what I mean.
IMO, this was all part of a preconceived plan to scare people at school by bringing in a suspicious-looking device and then cry discrimination when called out on it.
Sorry, but you need to be part of a celebrated group, re-assemble your clock into something that some people say resembles an IED, and then have the school go apeshit and overreact to it.
Only *then* you can get your medal... but you'd better hurry up, the political landscape will most likely change in the next 18 months.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm not sure why everyone is so focused on whether he 'invented' the clock. Who cares? The real issue was the absurd over-reaction of the school administrators and police. Their conduct was pathetic, embarrassing and possibly illegal. I don't care if this kid's father is the biggest douche this side of the Mississippi, its nothing next to the cowardly mindlessness of those school authorities.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
You could have correctly pointed out that this was a publicity stunt without using the moronic racist claptrap.
Undeserved praise as a way of atoning for undeserved punishment does not show that we are more enlightened. In fact, it exposes further ignorance on our part.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Merely a sign of the times we live in. Politicians cater to the press, and the press is only loosely based on reality. But mostly on what sounds like a good story to sell a point. Journalistic integrity is dead and the self titled historians have decided instead to become fantasy writers. In this case, the poor oppressed muslim boy genius image is a winner because it's something to throw into the face of "islamophobes" in a day of islamic terrorism and the islamic invasion of Europe. Look - not ALL muslims are bad! Poor little kid got oppressed by our nasty school system it's not his fault he's a genius.
And then the President (with abysmal ratings) decides to stick his oar in and see if he can salvage any credibility. But fools rush in where angels fear to tread. No one bothered to check to see if his "story" is actually true. Turns out it's not. But it DOESN'T MATTER because we'll just ignore the facts and bury any naysayers under a torrent of racism accusations. And if they don't shut up after that, we just have to direct our PC sheep towards them in the ultimate social DDOS attack. People love to hate and if you start pointing out facts you might just find yourself being the next Emmanuel Goldstein or worse, dragged before a court on hate-crime charges. Welcome to the Brave New World.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Kid experiments with electronics. Local government wrongly detains him and accuses him of being a t'rrist. President demonstrates that's exactly how we're not supposed to act by inviting him to the White House instead of a jail cell.
As pointed out before: The kid 'invented' a bigotry-detector.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I fully expect the teachers to check it out, that's just being responsible I might even expect them to confiscate it for safety reasons (those transformer connections look a bit suspect to me) or based on the fact that he was disrupting class with it. What I don't expect, would be for them to take him out of school in handcuffs and then illegally question him without his parents present or for that matter, having the principal send a letter to all of the parents implying the kid was potentially dangerous.
Yep.... I hate to say it, but I think a LOT of us just got fooled on this one, at least initially. As techie "geeks", we *wanted* to believe this was all about a young, brilliant kid getting held back by "the system".
I'm a geek, and nothing about how I reacted to the first story has changed. It doesn't matter at all if he built the clock from scratch, from parts or just took one apart. This is a kid, taking a clock apart is fun, it should be encouraged. Showing up with clock parts in a pencil case and immediately show it to your teacher and tell exactly what it is should not in any civilized country lead to a 14 year old being handcuffed and questioned while denied access to parents.
The fear Americans let overrule the freedoms you used to have seems very disproportionate to the actual threat.
There are certain things you don't do....If you're muslim, you don't bring anything to school that can be mistaken for a bomb... if you're anybody you don't bring anything to school that can be mistaken for a bomb really, but especially if you're muslim.
it shouldn't matter yada yada yada, but it does.
Thank you for your recipe for how to ensure that systemic prejudices remain in place, that the world never changes for the better.
To be blunt, this is the same attitude a bunch of white people had in the 1950s and 1960s when they said, "If you're black, you don't vote. You don't sit in the front of the bus. You don't eat at lunch counters. It shouldn't matter yada yada yada, but it does."
Is Ahmed some sort of boy genius? Eh, I doubt it, but the simple fact is that NO ONE, Muslim or otherwise, should have to just sit back and tolerate endemic racism. And if it were my kid that you were telling that that's just "the world we live in," well, you and I would have a problem. Maybe you were a liberal, but if you think that this is okay, that it's Ahmed who should have to change, then it is most emphatically not the left that's moving away from you.
Not saying you're right, not saying you're wrong but can you please cite some references? I did a (quick) Google and didn't find anything untoward.
Yes, it's not a proper invention but he's just a normal boy, taking things apart. From reading some posts here, you'd think he'd lied about having cured cancer and then been humiliatingly debunked.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
If you're muslim, you don't bring anything to school that can be mistaken for a bomb...
And don't forget, if you're a girl, you don't wear provocative clothing that invites rape.
this is the world we live in.
This is the world we made!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
... but you'd better hurry up, the political landscape will most likely change in the next 18 months.
How so? The US will still be run by the ultra-rich, privileged upper-class aided by their well-fed lackeys, the lobbying companies. Oh, you mean the puppets office will be different? Doesn't really count.
He had the clock on display for 6 classes, and only on that last one did the teacher say she was uncomfortable with him having something that looked a lot like a home-built bomb (to a non-expert) and to put it away. He refused.
This was pure trolling for attention, not some poor kid oppressed by the System.
He had the thing beep on purpose during english lesson. That is: he discreetly took it out of his bag during the lesson, opened it, plugged the adapter to a power outlet, and set it to beep. Then he was purposely evasive in his answers to the english teacher.
The whole event was plain race-baiting.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Everybody knew it wasn't a bomb. The evidence is clear: nobody evacuated, and the bomb squad wasn't called in.
Therefore, it did not look like a threat, and reactions as if it looked like a thread were incorrect.
At this point, anything that proves that these SJW's are stupid is the best thing possible. So I salute those two guys who trolled SJW's and showed the entire world that they're nothing but hyper-emotional individuals that only do stuff because it "makes them feel good" while ignoring actual problems.
Om, nomnomnom...
Do you think if he was a white kid he would have been invited to the White House? I think a little racist claptrap is appropriate in this case.
And now he'll be a tool of rich, anti-Western Islamists.
US Immigration should fingerprint, "iris scan", and "DNA swab" the entire family as they leave the US.
You know, just in case one or more of them reappear on "the world stage" in a different role.
Just sayin.....
True. The boy should get a medal for having innocuously shown the school and local 'authorities' to be xenophobes.
Exposing Systemic Xenophobia in the USA. That is what this entire affair has been about from the start.
It worked.
If you're being stifled by women or people whining on the Internet the chances are you just suck at life.
The Internet I couldn't give two shits about. It's when they dox your ass and start harassing you (and especially your employer) in real life that a pretty important line gets crossed.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?