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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.
Yawn...The family monetizes its 15 minutes of fame.
Worker's Paradise!
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Among the OPEC nations, Qatar has the lowest "survival" oil price. Saudi Arabia has the lowest production cost, less than 5$ a barrel. But the government has so many obligations, borrowings, interest obligations etc etc, it needed oil to be at 105$ a barrel to survive. Other countries were even higher. Sensing the danger fracking is posing to OPEC, Saudi Arabia decided to take care of itself first. It built a large fund slowly to weather the storm and dropped the oil price. It was hoping it would stabilize at 80$ a barrel, making fracking not worth the investment, while stretching its reserve funds. But it took all other OPEC nations by surprise, there was no concerted action, no help from Saudis for immediate budget needs, so all hell broke loose and oil went south all the way to 40$ a barrel. It is hurting them all. But least hurt nations are Qatar, its survival price was about 60$ a barrel last Dec, and Saudi Arabia because it built a reserve fund and its production costs are so low.
OPEC is hoping fracking will stop, inventories will dwindle and the oil price will go back up. But fracking does not need large lead times. The fracking leases already bought have been paid for, and new leases are coming in at low prices. So if oil goes back over 60$ fracking will start to thaw and it will keep oil below 80$ all the time.
It is bad for global warming, renewables and all that, but for sustained economic growth there is nothing like low energy prices. Qatar might be the only country there to become an Arabian Singapore. So this invitation to the clock kid seems a natural fit for them. The clock kid's dad was a Presidential candidate in Sudan. Not some impoverished African, he got connections too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
PS: In 1979, I disassembled my mother's one and only (analog!) alarm clock (It was a GE - came with an AM/FM radio) to see how it worked.
I was extremely careful about it, but that didn't stop her from issuing an ultimatum: re-assemble it into full working order, or get my ass beat into oblivion. I had three minutes to spare once I demonstrated it's functionality to her satisfaction.
My reward was to get it back and keep it after she went out and bought another one; I think I added a couple of little speakers to it and a small amplifier (courtesy of an old Radio Shack 120-in-1 electronics kit). Sounded like pure crap, if I recall.
(Strangest part of it all? I still have the damned thing...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
> What better source do you need than the actual photos of his arrest and the clock?
It is not in dispute that the kid tinkered with and soldered the guts of a radio shack clock. What is in dispute is that the father put him up to it with a plan to gain publicity.
This is standard conspiracy-theory bullshit - you are assuming that what happened after the event was planned. That's borderline insane - the idea that anyone could have foreseen the series of events and deliberately kicked them off is on the same level of as believing that your lucky numbers will win the lotto.
So the appropriate response to a kid with something that looks like a bomb is to ask him to "put it away", and only then if he refuses, call the cops and have him arrested?
It makes no sense that "put it away" is an appropriate response if they thought it actually might be a bomb. In this scenario, evacuating the whole school and calling the bomb squad might make more sense.
It makes no sense to cal the cops and have him arrested if they knew it was not a bomb.
Maybe the kid and his whole family are trolls. My question is why is this school so fucking dumb.
... ran off the greatest minds on the planet at the time.
America made great strides because of the "brain drain" caused by persecution.
Next up:
All white spelling bee participants with watered-down list of words.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.