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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."
He took a click out of its casing and took it to school at the suggestion of his father, hoping to start a racial incident. They succeeded.
By now he could have invented something new
Probably not.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And I bet you are a moron.
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.
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
While repackaging a digital clock may not appear to take much in the way of technical skill to the minds of most of the highly technologically literate folks here at slashdot, truthfully even that is still something that most people would not necessarily think of ever trying to build, or at least not without following some instructions.
Yep, most people would not think to repackage a clock because it ALREADY CAME IN A PERFECTLY GOOD CASE. There is no invention here, unless you want to claim that choosing to paint your room a different color, or changing the screen door on your home is invention.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Welcome to the internet. It's full of stuff that is intended to make you angry. Most kids don't learn this until they're much older.
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.
It wasn't made to look like a bomb. At most, it was made to look like an idiot's conception of a bomb: A circuit board with scary glowing red clock display. Anyone who actually gave it three seconds of thought would realise that it's missing any form of explosive. Even the school officials knew it wasn't a bomb, because if they had thought it was a bomb they would have immediately confiscated the device, physically kept him away from it, evacuated the building and called in the bomb disposal experts. This is not what they did: A teacher confiscated the device, he was sent before the principle, and local law enforcement were summoned to question him. They then arrested him for instigating a bomb scare. At no point in the process did any individual actually believe the device to be a bomb. Everyone involved was just concerned that someone else might think it could be a bomb.
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>
Right - so convinced were the teachers and school administrators and police that:
The teacher picked up the bomb and walked with it to the office,
The administrators stood around the bomb and never evacuated the building,
The police never sent the bomb squad to the school,
just like happens everytime a suspected bomb is found in a school building.
Ahmed was arrested because he refused to answer any questions about either his 'invention' or his intentions until the police took him in to custody.
BTW, it's kind of interesting to note we're what, a year out and STILL the Dept. of Justice is still 'investigating' this case... What's the hold-up? They are only investigating an event that transpired over the course of 4 or 6 hours - how long can it take?