You think they were going to perform a full forensic analysis of it before they called the cops?
Who's asking for a "full forensic analysis"? How about just a quick look to notice that there is nothing *other* than electronics. To make a bomb, you have to have, you know, something that can go boom.
how do we know he hadn't developed some kind of invisible explosive? or maybe he had figured out how to ignite the nitrogen in the atmosphere, using Radio Shack components? can never be too sure with those lesser races, devious as they are.
Post hoc justification. Police knew it wasn't a bomb when the police dragged him out of school, they admitted that.
They tried to claim that it might be mistaken for a bomb if left under a car, but it wasn't left under a car.
So what left now? Try to pretend his dad is a bit dodgy?
At what point would the police say "this is dumb, its not a bomb it has no explosive mechanism on it... our job is to arrest and prosecute actual *crimes*, not humor fantasists who watch too much TV"?
And at what point will the school board step in and remove these people who show such poor judgement and can't admit their mistake? Who would actually pay attention to them if they now claimed another bomb, given their history of mindless claims?
An adult needs to step in and remove these children from the role they are not grown up enough to have!
correct procedure would have been to haul the teacher and whoever else in for making a false threat.
Check the device, treat the device as a bomb until you're sure it's not--yes.
Arrest the kid, put the kid in custody, prosecute the kid even though the device is proven harmless--no.
Honestly, I don't think they could've come up with a better way to push the kid towards actually becoming a terrorist if they'd sat down and worked it out on their fingers for two weeks.
but you know, all those muslims hate us for our freedoms.
Building a clock is not a crime. However, bringing a homemade clock to school, in a pencil box and having the alarm go off in class, I think, is something that can be reasonably assumed to cause concern. Inciting panic and causing public disturbances ARE crimes - the clock and its maker did both.
So now it's this kid's fault that everyone around him is fucking hysterical?
if he'd been a "white" kid carrying a gun, the NRA and the entire rightwing would be backing his rights to selfprotection.
POTUS already knows about this, and has invited Ahmed to bring his clock to the White House.
Perhaps he'll also write "WTF were you thinking" letters to the chief of the Irving PD, and to the principal of the school.// JADE HELM is over, but Texans still finding ways to look stupid
If one of my kids was in that classroom, and some kid with Mohammed in his name was carrying around some random circuitry in a box, I'd refrain from calling the teacher and the cops stupid. I'd call them diligent. These people were on the ball.
There is absolutely no 100% guarantee that this kid wasn't carrying around a bomb. Even if only 10% of Muslims are 'radical' that means there was a 10% chance this kid wanted to martyr himself that day. Wake up. There are literally millions of radical Muslims in the world who would love to kill you if you don't believe the same way they do. And you think Christians are a problem?
given that precisely zero muslim kids, carrying random circuitry in a box or not, have ever killed anybody in an american school; whereas good Christian "real Americans" have slaughtered kids by the carload, I'd say your mental risk assessment device needs recalibration.
Then at least the cops should have taken the time to check to see if there was a CRIME committed before taking the poor kid into custody. That being, you know, their job and all.
Last I checked, building an alarm clock is not a crime. Having it go off in class is disruptive, but also not a crime.
At the very least some sincere apologies are owed the kid from the 'adults' involved.
Min
there's a certain disconnect here. if you really suspect a bomb, wouldn't you evacuate the school, call in the bomb squad, get a bomb sniffing dog, drop the offending device in a barrel full of water, etc. etc. etc.? instead of just arresting the presumed mad bomber and taking the presumed deadly device in as evidence?
Last time I look, an actual bomb needed more than just a circuit board. I dare say that those other components (e.g. the actual explosive) might be a bit more important.
my thinking exactly. at what point does an integrated circuit look like plastic explosive?
It's not the amounts, it's the principle. If India can afford a space program and nuclear weapons, they can afford to provide clean water and shelter for their population.
if the US can afford to land a man on the moon, it can afford to provide medical care for their population.
All you need really is a means to propel the sun, gently enough that it won't perturb all the orbits of all the solar system too much. i bet trump could do it if he got elected.
I don't give a damn about homoeopathy. I care rather more about his attitude towards Britain' nuclear weapons programme. His threat to not renew the UK's SLBM system is a significant threat to European defence.
what about homeonuclearpathological weapons? you start out with one nuclear weapon and you dilute it down until you have a zillion weapons with no trace of the original nuke....
I don't like the idea of tax money being spent on something that is scientifically verfiable as completely wrong. And I also don't want people with serious illnesses not getting proper medical treatment.
However, people have the freedom to do stupid things, and homeopathy is relatively harmless. I mean, it's just expensive tap water. Also, it's a placebo, and placebos have been shown to have some limited effectiveness.
Remember diamond water? I should start selling silicon water. It's special water that's been infused with computer antivirus software by having had it in a water-cooled rig. The imprint of the antivirus software on the water has great antiviral effects in humans.:)
Trouble is, if you go after homeopathy because it's obviously no better than placebo, then you have to go after other useless things like surgery for back pain, which costs a lot more. and then you've got the surgeons on your case and they're well-heeled Republicans, not a bunch of Green party hippies like the homeopathic prescribers.
As opposed to the US system where she wouldn't have been able to afford to pay and the insurance company would've found an excuse to void the policy she'd been paying into for a decade and so she couldn't even get on a list in the first place?
Great. That's much better.
Sacrificing an individual to keep costs down is exactly how the US healthcare system works, that's exactly what happens when you throw capitalism and profit into the mix - you have to grow profits by maximising the amount of people who pay and how much they pay and minimising the amount of people you actually treat in practice.
Gotta love the arguments against not even universal care in the US, just adding a few tens of millions to the insured via the ACA/Obamacare; that the system can't deliver that much extra care and costs will go up and waiting and blah blah.
so, the argument would be that our system is inherently incapable of its fundamental purpose, i.e. delivering health care to the American public, if more than a fraction of them could afford it, and at the same time "we have the best system in the world".
Most homeopathic "medicines" are unpatented herbal potions
Nope. Homeopathy != herbal remedy, natural medicine, or whatever else. It is something very specific. If it contains anything else but water (on top of whatever it takes to make a pill or whatsnot) and negligible traces, if any, of active ingredient, it isn't homeopathy
Indeed.
I once got a copy of a early treatise by J. B. S. Haldane, who later went on to make significant contributions to the fields of physiology, genetics, etc., on the method of action of enzymes, and in its complete wrongheadedness one can discern the thinking behind homeopathy. The gist of his hypothesis was that the enzymes serve to alter the structure of the water they are dissolved in, such that the water in its altered state facilitates hydrolysis of glucose, or whatever the enzyme does. Luckily, in later life he abandoned this dead end concept in favor of the current and well established view of enzymes as molecule sized machines, but homeopathy operates on a similar theory; whatever you put into the water in the first place alters the properties of the water in some way, so that you can then dilute it until your original substance is no longer present but the altered water persists. Lovely theory, but no evidence whatsoever that there is any truth to it.
Slashdot Mirror
You think they were going to perform a full forensic analysis of it before they called the cops?
Who's asking for a "full forensic analysis"? How about just a quick look to notice that there is nothing *other* than electronics. To make a bomb, you have to have, you know, something that can go boom.
how do we know he hadn't developed some kind of invisible explosive? or maybe he had figured out how to ignite the nitrogen in the atmosphere, using Radio Shack components? can never be too sure with those lesser races, devious as they are.
"His dad sounds like an interesting character "
Post hoc justification. Police knew it wasn't a bomb when the police dragged him out of school, they admitted that. They tried to claim that it might be mistaken for a bomb if left under a car, but it wasn't left under a car.
So what left now? Try to pretend his dad is a bit dodgy?
At what point would the police say "this is dumb, its not a bomb it has no explosive mechanism on it... our job is to arrest and prosecute actual *crimes*, not humor fantasists who watch too much TV"?
And at what point will the school board step in and remove these people who show such poor judgement and can't admit their mistake? Who would actually pay attention to them if they now claimed another bomb, given their history of mindless claims?
An adult needs to step in and remove these children from the role they are not grown up enough to have!
correct procedure would have been to haul the teacher and whoever else in for making a false threat.
Check the device, treat the device as a bomb until you're sure it's not--yes.
Arrest the kid, put the kid in custody, prosecute the kid even though the device is proven harmless--no.
Honestly, I don't think they could've come up with a better way to push the kid towards actually becoming a terrorist if they'd sat down and worked it out on their fingers for two weeks.
but you know, all those muslims hate us for our freedoms.
It was a circuit board in a pencil case.
A) You can see the whole thing. B) A Pencil case is not large enough to house anything with much power even if it were for some reason explosive.
To call in the police? Absurd.
it was f fiendishly clever bomb. he was going to expose an electrolytic capacitor to a voltage higher than it was rated for!!!
or they would have evacuated the school and sent in the bomb-squad. They knew it wasn't a bomb the entire time.
exactly. at what point did the bomb disposal squad arrive? which of the cops wore their bombproof armor when inspecting the device? what the hell?
Building a clock is not a crime. However, bringing a homemade clock to school, in a pencil box and having the alarm go off in class, I think, is something that can be reasonably assumed to cause concern. Inciting panic and causing public disturbances ARE crimes - the clock and its maker did both.
So now it's this kid's fault that everyone around him is fucking hysterical?
if he'd been a "white" kid carrying a gun, the NRA and the entire rightwing would be backing his rights to selfprotection.
POTUS already knows about this, and has invited Ahmed to bring his clock to the White House.
Perhaps he'll also write "WTF were you thinking" letters to the chief of the Irving PD, and to the principal of the school. // JADE HELM is over, but Texans still finding ways to look stupid
If one of my kids was in that classroom, and some kid with Mohammed in his name was carrying around some random circuitry in a box, I'd refrain from calling the teacher and the cops stupid. I'd call them diligent. These people were on the ball.
There is absolutely no 100% guarantee that this kid wasn't carrying around a bomb. Even if only 10% of Muslims are 'radical' that means there was a 10% chance this kid wanted to martyr himself that day. Wake up. There are literally millions of radical Muslims in the world who would love to kill you if you don't believe the same way they do. And you think Christians are a problem?
given that precisely zero muslim kids, carrying random circuitry in a box or not, have ever killed anybody in an american school; whereas good Christian "real Americans" have slaughtered kids by the carload, I'd say your mental risk assessment device needs recalibration.
Yeah.
Brown skin, muslimish-sounding name, Texas... My own first thought was: "Well, at least they didn't just summarily shoot him."
thems was librul texuns.
Then at least the cops should have taken the time to check to see if there was a CRIME committed before taking the poor kid into custody. That being, you know, their job and all.
Last I checked, building an alarm clock is not a crime. Having it go off in class is disruptive, but also not a crime.
At the very least some sincere apologies are owed the kid from the 'adults' involved.
Min
there's a certain disconnect here. if you really suspect a bomb, wouldn't you evacuate the school, call in the bomb squad, get a bomb sniffing dog, drop the offending device in a barrel full of water, etc. etc. etc.? instead of just arresting the presumed mad bomber and taking the presumed deadly device in as evidence?
Last time I look, an actual bomb needed more than just a circuit board. I dare say that those other components (e.g. the actual explosive) might be a bit more important.
my thinking exactly. at what point does an integrated circuit look like plastic explosive?
any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a bomb.
Waging "war on poverty" through cash infusion hasn't worked. Shooting the money into space has a better ROI.
shooting poor people into space, best ROI of all. power the lunar mission with slave labor.
It's not the amounts, it's the principle. If India can afford a space program and nuclear weapons, they can afford to provide clean water and shelter for their population.
if the US can afford to land a man on the moon, it can afford to provide medical care for their population.
"First of all, there are tons of things to mine in space."
Just as there is on Earth. Looked up the spot price for ore recently?
""Ever" is a long time."
The Periodic Table of Elements has "ever" been the same since the Big Bang.
virtually unlimited source of vacuum in space. would make thermoses more efficient.
All you need really is a means to propel the sun, gently enough that it won't perturb all the orbits of all the solar system too much. i bet trump could do it if he got elected.
Did you hear about the guy who forgot to take his homeopathic medicine? He died of an overdose.
shouldn't that be underdose? (neither response makes sense, but underdose sounds funny)
Noooooooooooo. One of the base "principles" of homeopathy is the more you dilute the "medicine", the stronger it becomes.
No, I'm not making this up. It's one of the key tenets of homeopathy and homeopathic 'theory'.
ooooh now i get it. jeez, i really am an idiot
I think that the sooner Scotland can get away from the rest of the UK the better.
Well, thing is though, Scotland voted to stay.
smart people, those scots. why, they could dig a trench at the border for years and years and still not be able to cut themselves loose.
I don't give a damn about homoeopathy. I care rather more about his attitude towards Britain' nuclear weapons programme. His threat to not renew the UK's SLBM system is a significant threat to European defence.
what about homeonuclearpathological weapons? you start out with one nuclear weapon and you dilute it down until you have a zillion weapons with no trace of the original nuke....
It's no bloody use right now!
* We can't maintain one-boat-at-sea at all times, because they're falling to bits - they can't even complete readiness drills reliably
* We can't use it anyway : From the House of Commons Defence Select Committee (in 2006) : "the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it"
In short, it's just a way to siphon money into the pockets of defence contractors.
Jeremy's heresy is that he wants to use those resources to build infrastructure to better all our lives instead of just a few rich warmongers.
canadian naval maintenance guys are buying repair parts on ebay http://www.theglobeandmail.com...
but as the saying went, http://www.northernsun.com/ima...
What utter bullcrap.
Did you hear about the guy who forgot to take his homeopathic medicine? He died of an overdose.
shouldn't that be underdose? (neither response makes sense, but underdose sounds funny)
I don't like the idea of tax money being spent on something that is scientifically verfiable as completely wrong. And I also don't want people with serious illnesses not getting proper medical treatment.
However, people have the freedom to do stupid things, and homeopathy is relatively harmless. I mean, it's just expensive tap water. Also, it's a placebo, and placebos have been shown to have some limited effectiveness.
Remember diamond water? I should start selling silicon water. It's special water that's been infused with computer antivirus software by having had it in a water-cooled rig. The imprint of the antivirus software on the water has great antiviral effects in humans. :)
Trouble is, if you go after homeopathy because it's obviously no better than placebo, then you have to go after other useless things like surgery for back pain, which costs a lot more. and then you've got the surgeons on your case and they're well-heeled Republicans, not a bunch of Green party hippies like the homeopathic prescribers.
As opposed to the US system where she wouldn't have been able to afford to pay and the insurance company would've found an excuse to void the policy she'd been paying into for a decade and so she couldn't even get on a list in the first place?
Great. That's much better.
Sacrificing an individual to keep costs down is exactly how the US healthcare system works, that's exactly what happens when you throw capitalism and profit into the mix - you have to grow profits by maximising the amount of people who pay and how much they pay and minimising the amount of people you actually treat in practice.
Gotta love the arguments against not even universal care in the US, just adding a few tens of millions to the insured via the ACA/Obamacare; that the system can't deliver that much extra care and costs will go up and waiting and blah blah.
so, the argument would be that our system is inherently incapable of its fundamental purpose, i.e. delivering health care to the American public, if more than a fraction of them could afford it, and at the same time "we have the best system in the world".
Nope. Homeopathy != herbal remedy, natural medicine, or whatever else. It is something very specific. If it contains anything else but water (on top of whatever it takes to make a pill or whatsnot) and negligible traces, if any, of active ingredient, it isn't homeopathy
Indeed.
I once got a copy of a early treatise by J. B. S. Haldane, who later went on to make significant contributions to the fields of physiology, genetics, etc., on the method of action of enzymes, and in its complete wrongheadedness one can discern the thinking behind homeopathy. The gist of his hypothesis was that the enzymes serve to alter the structure of the water they are dissolved in, such that the water in its altered state facilitates hydrolysis of glucose, or whatever the enzyme does. Luckily, in later life he abandoned this dead end concept in favor of the current and well established view of enzymes as molecule sized machines, but homeopathy operates on a similar theory; whatever you put into the water in the first place alters the properties of the water in some way, so that you can then dilute it until your original substance is no longer present but the altered water persists. Lovely theory, but no evidence whatsoever that there is any truth to it.
Actual exchange:
I love political debate on Slashdot.
On slashdot? that's the public discussion of policy in the US in a nutshell.
Here in the US we have made homeopathic marriage the law of the land. England should too. Homeopaths have just as many rights as everybody else.