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Online Fame Distracts 9th-Grader Who Built That Clock Mistaken For A Bomb (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: This week the Washington Post ran a long profile of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old boy whose home-made clock got him arrested after school officials and the local police mistook it for a bomb last summer. The Justice Department is currently investigating the incident -- while the school district is suing the Texas attorney general, and the boy's family is suing the school district. But Ahmed has just returned back to Texas, and spoke to the press -- including a local Fox news affiliate which later broadcast a commentary saying his family was obsessed with fame and plotted the arrest.
Over the last year Ahmed's read everything that appeared online about him, but never responds because he doesn't want to give in to anger. The Post writes that while some kids at school called him ISIS Boy, "Sympathetic crowdfunders raised $18,000 for his education. He visited the White House, the Google Science Fair and the president of his home country of Sudan (a wanted war criminal, but Mohamed said it would be rude not to accept the invitation)." Though he'd like to return to the U.S. someday for college, he's been living in Qatar, where a government organization paid for private schooling for him and his sister. But the Post says he still sometimes imagines what his life might've been like if the incident had never happened. "By now he could have invented something new -- not just a clock that only took him a few minutes to put together from parts in his family's garage, which was full of '90s-era electronics from when his uncle ran a chain called Beeper Warehouse."
Over the last year Ahmed's read everything that appeared online about him, but never responds because he doesn't want to give in to anger. The Post writes that while some kids at school called him ISIS Boy, "Sympathetic crowdfunders raised $18,000 for his education. He visited the White House, the Google Science Fair and the president of his home country of Sudan (a wanted war criminal, but Mohamed said it would be rude not to accept the invitation)." Though he'd like to return to the U.S. someday for college, he's been living in Qatar, where a government organization paid for private schooling for him and his sister. But the Post says he still sometimes imagines what his life might've been like if the incident had never happened. "By now he could have invented something new -- not just a clock that only took him a few minutes to put together from parts in his family's garage, which was full of '90s-era electronics from when his uncle ran a chain called Beeper Warehouse."
So what does a Micronta clock have to do with Heathkit?
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The photos show a circuit board printed with "Micronta" which is a Tandy/Radio Shack trademark.
Yes, he took apart an alarm clock, made it look like a Hollywood bomb, and claimed he "invented" it. He is a liar, a swindler, and a piece of shit human. He tried to play the media with his pity party. Then he left the country. Good riddance! But someone left the door open and the vermin got back in again.
A dingo ate my sig...
This is actually true of most people who get their 15 minutes of fame these days. I mean shit, the black lives matter movement is all over the media, but they don't give a shit about an actual black life unless it involves all of 1) a gun 2) a cop 3) a stolen case of cigarettes, a stolen bike, or a stolen car. But, that's the world we live in today: The best way to get presidential involvement is to be a liar, a cheater, or a petty thug who happened to receive an overzealous (but in many cases, deserved) response. And everybody reading this knows it.
Probably not.
Certainly not. The only reason this boy enjoyed any fame at all is because he simultaneously satisfied several fetishes of the American Left. He was a minority child from a Muslim family who appeared to be interested in a technical or scientific subject. An electronic clock is not the sort of thing that will get you the blue ribbon at your state science fair, but that didn't matter to the politicos. Here was a politically correct family to use as a prop and they took full advantage, although arguably the family tried to take advantage too. Like so many things on the Left it's the appearance, not the merit or lack thereof that matters.
And I bet you are a moron.
Why was this labeled flamebait? It's exactly what happened.
It is not what happened. What actually happened is a sequence of events that could have happened to any of us when we were kids.
A 14 year old kid took a clock apart and put it back together. The word "invention" was thrown around (he may or may not have used the word himself; this is unclear), but the kid was absolutely clear about his motives: he wanted to understand how it worked. Many, many Slashdotters can relate to this. This happened to me when I was a kid.
He was proud of himself and took it to school to show it off to a world which isn't very impressed by such things. He was told to put it away but couldn't help himself. Many, many Slashdotters can relate to this. This happened to me when I was a kid.
What most Slashdotters can't relate to is having the cops called on you and being the subject of a viral shitstorm for doing this. This did not happen to me when I was a kid. The kid is not an inventor. He might be a genius (his measured IQ may well be in the top 2%), or he might not be. The central point is that he is one of us, and we take care of our own. When normal geek childhood is criminalised, that's news for nerds and stuff that matters.
There has been a lot of talk (with no actual evidence, I might add) that the kid's father somehow engineered this, or wanted an incident, or to make a point. Even if that were true, the point was indeed made. So many social media commenters (and sadly Slashdot comments have devolved to the level of social media commenters) concentrate on what the kid did wrong, and don't stop to ponder just why it's so easy for incidents like this to happen if your skin has a bit of melanin in it.
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Honestly, This is how bad it has become in the USA? This is considered invented?
That means the kids that actually learn Arduino programming and make sumo bots are Fucking Alien Technomancer Magicians!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
How about stop the initial overreaction in the first place and stop defending the initial overreaction?
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
A 14 year old knows the difference between building and inventing. Ask any 14 year old who invented the telephone, the car, or the cotton gin. They may not know the correct answers, but they know the meaning. Then, ask them who currently manufactures cars and telephones. Very different answers.
Your argument would work for a 5 year old, but not a 14 year old. Many 14 year olds are freshmen in high school and should have learned the difference between building and inventing back in elementary school.
He didn't even make the clock -- he removed it from its housing and placed it into another housing. He made a box for a clock... one he stated he specifically chose to disguise what it was.
No sane person would believe his story that he invented a clock and wanted to show it off to his teacher at school -- no, he pulled a clock out of its housing, hid it inside another housing on purpose to disguise it, and then showed it to kids knowing they'd think it could be a bomb. 14 year olds aren't innocent 'lil ignorant angels that don't know what words mean. They have sex, do drugs, lie their asses off to their parents and elders, sneak out of their houses at night, and yes -- make fake bombs for attention. Not ALL of them, obviously, but yeah... he's 2 years shy of driving and holding down a part-time job in most states, not a baby to be coddled and forgiven for doing something he damned well knew was stupid and made up lies to cover it up.
What was the stunt? Taking a non-bomb to school and waiting for the over-reaction from ignorant police? Seems the fix should be applied to the ignorant cops, not the child that taunted them. If the cops were competent, this would never have made the news. It would have been handled in a manner that didn't make a national event out of a clock.
Learn to love Alaska
The grand juries seem to disagree. How many of these cops have been convicted of manslaughter/murder? I think the unacceptable use of lethal force argument fails the test.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
He was most likely put up to it by his activist dad, particularly since he knew exactly what to say to the cops - he told them the truth, but in such a way that they would think he's lying. That's not something you know when you're 14.
Zimmerman wasn't a cop, racist or not, he was a member of a neighborhood watch, and ultimately, whatever you think about race, he should not have done what he did.
I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that the physical evidence and witness testimony fully supports his version of the events that transpired. And I don't know about you, but if somebody is slamming my head into pavement, and I had a gun on me, I would have done exactly as he did. Even the witnesses who were in favor of Trayvon Martin made this much clear.
They could have at least made him stand up in court and assert his affirmative claim of self-defense, but the prosecutor, nope, couldn't manage it.
You're quite uneducated, to be honest. No prosecutor anywhere ever can make the accused testify in their own defense; that would be a clear violation of the 5th amendment. And you know what? No defendant ever does unless either they're insane or they've literally run out of options. Why? Because the prosecutor will get to cross examine you, and during a cross examination a good prosecutor can make you look guilty of assassinating a pope that is still very much alive. The Zimmerman case was so airtight that they didn't even want to prosecute to begin with, as even the detectives who investigated the case honestly believed it to be justified homicide. There never, at any time, would have been any reason for Zimmerman "stand up" in court.
I wouldn't have put it that way, but you have a valid point. This is a kid who didn't do anything actually dangerous and was taken from a school in handcuffs. It was made worse because it's apparent it wouldn't haven't have happened if his skin had been light enough.
There seem to be a lot of comments talking about the will or intent of the kid, but honestly it shouldn't matter. We put our children in a government mandated situation where we have to trust the institution with rights otherwise reserved to parent. We expect, and have every right to expect, the institution to handle discipline with consistency and good judgement. It's absolutely justified that we should react with outrage when they fail to do it in such a spectacular fashion. Don't forget this kid was pressured by authorities to sign something admitting to something he didn't do without parental or legal defense.
I don't care what the kid did, kids do stupid stuff sometimes. I don't care what his parents did because having stupid parents shouldn't be an excuse to abuse kids. What I do care about is how the authorities put in charge of our children behave and in this case it was objectively terrible.
That's going to happen. Kids are going to do stupid stuff. Parents are going to do stupid stuff. Authorities are going to react badly. You can't and shouldn't expect to be able to prevent every kid from ever doing something stupid. You can only do so much to prevent parents from being stupid. What we can and must do is prevent authorities from doing stupid stuff, particularly those who are given the authority of force.
Something like I can spend all my points to mod down a BS article like this one. If, I dunno, 3 others also go all in to mod down, the article is removed.
Tho moding down one like this would take away all the double fun arguing BOTH the 'not an invention' and the 'did it to get self-SWATed' sided.
Ahmed is a genuine nerd, just as I was at his age. When I assembled and installed alarm systems from salvaged alarm parts I stated clearly and honestly that I had "built" them. To an electronics beginner even taking something apart and re-presenting it in a novel way gives great satisfaction. There is nothing fake-ass about any of it. It saddens me to read all these arbitrarily constructed harsh judgements here, which NONE of you would ever apply to your OWN children. At that age you have to compare the desire to handle and understand electronics to the act of doing nothing at all, watching television, or tunelessly strumming a guitar imagining you're a few songs away from screaming fame.
The totality of the response by the school was a surprise to the boy... who may have been aware that his project might stir some suspicion but the boy also honestly believed he could 'diffuse' such concerns with the power of his own words, and the simple fact that the truth was on his side. It was a small thing, and (maybe) fun to give a little push back to any alarm. The fact that his science teacher had seen and approved of the project underscores this.
Ahmed's father was another story. There was certainly a gleam in his eye as he participated in the project, knowing of the unique social forces and ugly escalating institutional response that was possible. Ahmed needs to come to the firm conclusion that his own father is an asshole. Please do not judge the kid for his father being an asshole.
If his father has not apologized to him at least privately, his father is a flaming asshole.
And some of the responses in this thread indicate the presence of flaming assholes as well.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) spent the night in jail when he was high school for doing this kind of thing, and didn't get to meet the president:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Exactly. It was a publicity stunt. It's no different than the Clinton campaign hiring Kahn to speak at their convention and then a few days later the guy decides that he doesn't want all the publicity... after the world learns that he was scamming green cards.