#IStandWithAhmed (or Inventing While Muslim is a thing?)

[RavenSky]

Except for the cop that leaned back in his chair and said "figured it would be you" to a kid who has never been in trouble with the law or the school.

Or maybe the cop was talking about reality--from a history of encounters that weren't enough to cause an arrest.

except that he wasn't.

Ahmed Mohammed, by ALL accounts, is an excellent student who has not ever been in trouble with the schools or the law. If you think different, provide a CITATION instead of slandering yet another brown-skinned child.

 

[RavenSky]

Which brings us to the "hoax bomb" excuse.

EXCEPT the kid never said it was bomb. He always said it was a clock. If it is a clock AND the kid says it's a clock, where is the hoax?

You are going around in circles, this was addressed a few pages ago. If someone did make a hoax bomb, and when caught, claimed it was a clock, why should the police take his word for it? Note that it wasn't found due to Ahmed strapping it into a vest and shouting Allah Akbar... it was found when the alarm (or something else) started beeping and the teacher asked him to take it out.

Unrelated to that point, someone figured out based on the photo what model the clock was exactly:

Barbos was right, it was just an existing clock in a new case. I know it's bad to put down kids for trying, but come on, this isn't some undiscovered technical genius, it's a kid who's taking his first steps taking stuff apart and seeing how it works. I fear the hullabaloo around the incident might actually be detrimental to his hobby: imagine being invited to white house to meet some of the top scientists in the world, when all you did was take apart an alarm clock, but nobody seems to realize it and they're hailing you as the next Leonardo Da Vinci or something? That's got to be a lot of pressure for a 14-year old kid.

So which is it?

You think he should have been arrested for a "bomb hoax" when he was not in any way attempting to fool anyone that it was a bomb?

Or do you simply think he should be arrested because his science engineering project did not meet your lofty standards?

 

[JonA]

Police should reply seriously to any claim of a possible bomb, especially on the grounds of a public school.

To do otherwise would be entirely irresponsible.

Teachers should immediately report anything they suspect to be a bomb.

To do otherwise would be entirely irresponsible.

The only problem here is that the teachers were idiots and their ability to discriminate a clock from a bomb was apparently no better than other teachers' abilities to discriminate a fountain pen from a knife.

 

[Jayjay]

You are going around in circles, this was addressed a few pages ago. If someone did make a hoax bomb, and when caught,

But he wasn't caught. He volunteered the information to his engineering teacher when he got to school. AND this even is NOT a hypothetical. THIS actually happened. So put the ifs away. We won't be needing them.

The engineering teacher wasn't the one who called the cops, it was the English teacher. Who only noticed the clock when it started beeping in Ahmed's bag. Or do you have some other chain of events here?

I'm not the one who started with iffing. You specificly asked, that if the school and the police thought it was a bomb, why didn't they evacuate the premises? But from all the reports, it seems clear that nobody ever claimed that they thought it was a bomb. Just that it "looks like a bomb" or that it could be a "hoax bomb" or possibly a trigger mechanism for a bomb.

claimed it was a clock, why should the police take his word for it?

Why shouldn't they? What did this kid do to say he was lying? Other than the crime of possessing a clock while Muslim, what did this kid do to warrant what happened to him?

I'm not saying that the kid was lying, because we know he wasn't. And he did absolutely nothing wrong. But your argument that when a police or a teacher sees a kid with something suspicious, even if it may be suspicious only because of idiocy or utter prejudice, it's not as if they would take the word of the person possessing said object at face value.

If you were to find a student with a small bag of white powder, and he says it's just talc. Do you believe him and let him go without investigating? If you find a kid with something you think is part of a gun (like, clip from AK-47 I mentioned earlier), do you believe him when he says it's a pencil holder or whatever? You already answered that one, and you would have indeed taken the kid to the principal's office and gotten to the bottom of it. But the point is that you wouldn't have just taken his word for it, if you think he's messing with something you think he shouldn't be messing with.

Unrelated to that point, someone figured out based on the photo what model the clock was exactly:

http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/clock3.jpg

Barbos was right, it was just an existing clock in a new case.

Which has what to with what except supposed adults trying to piss on a 14 year old kid?

It has absolutely nothing to do with it. Which is why I started the paragraph with the words "unrelated to that point".

I know it's bad to put down kids for trying, but come on, this isn't some undiscovered technical genius, it's a kid who's taking his first steps taking stuff apart and seeing how it works. I fear the hullabaloo around the incident might actually be detrimental to his hobby: imagine being invited to white house to meet some of the top scientists in the world, when all you did was take apart an alarm clock, but nobody seems to realize it and they're hailing you as the next Leonardo Da Vinci or something? That's got to be a lot of pressure for a 14-year old kid.

as opposed to the police pressure of treating him like the next Osama Bin Laden.

Who's treating him like that now?

 

[Jayjay]

You are going around in circles, this was addressed a few pages ago. If someone did make a hoax bomb, and when caught, claimed it was a clock, why should the police take his word for it? Note that it wasn't found due to Ahmed strapping it into a vest and shouting Allah Akbar... it was found when the alarm (or something else) started beeping and the teacher asked him to take it out.

Unrelated to that point, someone figured out based on the photo what model the clock was exactly:

Barbos was right, it was just an existing clock in a new case. I know it's bad to put down kids for trying, but come on, this isn't some undiscovered technical genius, it's a kid who's taking his first steps taking stuff apart and seeing how it works. I fear the hullabaloo around the incident might actually be detrimental to his hobby: imagine being invited to white house to meet some of the top scientists in the world, when all you did was take apart an alarm clock, but nobody seems to realize it and they're hailing you as the next Leonardo Da Vinci or something? That's got to be a lot of pressure for a 14-year old kid.

So which is it?

You think he should have been arrested for a "bomb hoax" when he was not in any way attempting to fool anyone that it was a bomb?

Or do you simply think he should be arrested because his science engineering project did not meet your lofty standards?

Where did I say he should have been arrested at all?

 

[laughing dog]

According to this site (Ahmed transferring out) Ahmen Mohommed is transferring out of MacArthur High School:

Days after administrators called for the arrest of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed for bringing in what they suspected was a “bomb” (actually a homemade clock), MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, said that it would “certainly welcome” the teen back to school.

“We're confident that we can continue to provide him with an excellent education,” a school spokeswoman told ABC News.

But Ahmed’s family says the freshman is not at all interested in returning to MacArthur. His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, said Thursday that Ahmed will transfer out of the high school; the family is “still deciding where he will go next,” reports The Associated Press.

Reportedly the school has not lifted the suspension nor apologized for its reactions.

Gee, I wonder why he is going to transfer.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

So which is it?

You think he should have been arrested for a "bomb hoax" when he was not in any way attempting to fool anyone that it was a bomb?

Or do you simply think he should be arrested because his science engineering project did not meet your lofty standards?

Where did I say he should have been arrested at all?

He should not have gone through any of this bullshit. Period.

 

[Ford]

But he wasn't caught. He volunteered the information to his engineering teacher when he got to school. AND this even is NOT a hypothetical. THIS actually happened. So put the ifs away. We won't be needing them.

The engineering teacher wasn't the one who called the cops, it was the English teacher. Who only noticed the clock when it started beeping in Ahmed's bag. Or do you have some other chain of events here?

I must be missing something here.

The English teacher called the cops directly? Thinking the kid actually had a bomb?

Because something started beeping in his backpack?

What sort of person is paranoid enough to think that a beeping coming from a backpack means it is laden with explosives? Especially if the backpack in question belongs to a kid?

Or alternately, what sort of teacher - upon hearing the beeping, asking "hey what's that in your bag?" and receiving the answer "just a science project" leaps to the conclusion that it's a bomb and calls the cops?

The "chain of events" should really be called a "chain of dumb fuckery," which began when the English teacher assumed that the beeping from the Muslim kid's bag must be some sort of bomb. The chain of dumb fuckery continued when said kid (and his bag) wound up in the office where it should have been found out that his terrorist bomb-making skills had not just fallen short, but never in fact existed because he'd made nothing more than a fucking clock. Then the cops show up, cuff the kid, and arrest him on the charge of attending a school with (apparently) some of the dumbest teachers and administrators in the country.


And what the fuck is wrong with these police officers? The kid clearly was not a threat, didn't have a bomb, didn't have anything remotely bomb-related, hadn't done anything to get himself in trouble prior to this, and didn't do anything wrong here. He was not violent, not a threat to anyone, and his "bomb" was just a clock (and not a very good one, apparently). Why the cuffs? Why the arrest? I mean, the school is clearly run by idiots, but you'd think that the cops would have managed to figure out that a kid with a science project didn't need to be cuffed and arrested.


You'd think. Which is what nobody did that day.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Or maybe the cop was talking about reality--from a history of encounters that weren't enough to cause an arrest.

except that he wasn't.

Ahmed Mohammed, by ALL accounts, is an excellent student who has not ever been in trouble with the schools or the law. If you think different, provide a CITATION instead of slandering yet another brown-skinned child.

He obviously has stolen stuff and is a trained MMA fighter. LP's instincts are never wrong when it comes to authorities over stepping their bounds.

 

[barbos]

Unrelated to that point, someone figured out based on the photo what model the clock was exactly:


Barbos was right, it was just an existing clock in a new case.

Yes, I was right, I totally agree with that guy. Well, except about this clock being from the 70s.
Large LED displays were not common (if existed) in 70s.
I especially agree with this part:

If we stop and think – was it really such a ridiculous reaction from the teacher and the police in the first place? How many school shootings and incidents of violence have we had, where we hear afterwards “this could have been prevented, if only we paid more attention to the signs!” Teachers are taught to be suspicious and vigilant. Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb.

Also, a lot of people would like to point out inconsistencies in hoax-bomb theories, why would he show it to his engineering teacher? why would he say this? why would he say that? He is a 14 year old kid, they don't think the way you think. Even adult don't always think straight, and kids do and say stupid shit all the time.
There is a good chance it was in fact a prank, and showing this "clock in a case" to engineering teacher did not stop it, so 14 year kid would not had been wrong thinking that showing it to his engineering teacher would not stop his prank.
As for putting down a kid I am not so sure what is worse, putting down (deservedly) or running around average (or even dumb) kid and creating completely unrealistic expectations. Also there are 14 year olds who are actually smart kids who watch this story and say "what the fuck?!"
What kind of message do they get from all this?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Yes, I was right, I totally agree with that guy. Well, except about this clock being from the 70s.
Large LED displays were not common (if existed) in 70s.
I especially agree with this part:

If we stop and think – was it really such a ridiculous reaction from the teacher and the police in the first place? How many school shootings and incidents of violence have we had, where we hear afterwards “this could have been prevented, if only we paid more attention to the signs!” Teachers are taught to be suspicious and vigilant. Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb.

Also, a lot of people would like to point out inconsistencies in hoax-bomb theories, why would he show it to his engineering teacher? why would he say this? why would he say that? He is a 14 year old kid, they don't think the way you think. Even adult don't always think straight, and kids do and say stupid shit all the time.
There is a good chance it was in fact a prank, and showing this "clock in a case" to engineering teacher did not stop it, so 14 year kid would not had been wrong thinking that showing it to his engineering teacher would somehow stop his prank.
As for putting down a kid I am not so sure what is worst putting down (deservedly) or running around average (or even dumb) kid and creating completely unrealistic expectations. Also there are 14 year olds who are actually smart kids who watch this story and say "what the fuck?!"
What kind of message do they get from all this?

Green is not your color.

And why is an adult, I assume you are an adult, spending so much time running down a kid? What started off as pathetic is starting to appear pathological.

 

[barbos]

Green is not your color.

And why is an adult, I assume you are an adult, spending so much time running down a kid? What started off as pathetic is starting to appear pathological.

That's between me and my psychotherapist
Seriosuly, I totally agree with that engineer Jayjay linked. And I am lot like him - no electronic device leaves me unassembled. This must be why we think alike.

 

[RavenSky]

So which is it?

You think he should have been arrested for a "bomb hoax" when he was not in any way attempting to fool anyone that it was a bomb?

Or do you simply think he should be arrested because his science engineering project did not meet your lofty standards?

Where did I say he should have been arrested at all?

Then what, exactly, are you trying to say?

No one here is taking the position that the school officials should "just" take the word of the student that it was not a bomb, but it is 100% clear from their actions and words that they themselves KNEW it was not a bomb. That is why the police tried to pin "hoax bomb" on him... except he never tried to portray the clock as a "hoax bomb" either. In order for it to be a "hoax bomb" someone needs to try to play a hoax. Ahmed Mohammad did not try to fool anyone into believing it was a bomb. He maintained at all times that it was a clock.

 

[Angry Floof]

I haven't heard anyone hail the kid as a genius, just as a kid interested in building gadgets, i.e., interested in science and engineering. To most of us science lovers, that interest should always be rewarded and fostered, and never punished, even if the kid isn't all that bright.

 

[barbos]

I haven't heard anyone hail the kid as a genius, just as a kid interested in building gadgets, i.e., interested in science and engineering. To most of us science lovers, that interest should always be rewarded and fostered, and never punished, even if the kid isn't all that bright.

look at the title of this thread and titles of all news about him.
He was hailed as inventor and creator of the alarm clock

 

[Angry Floof]

I haven't heard anyone hail the kid as a genius, just as a kid interested in building gadgets, i.e., interested in science and engineering. To most of us science lovers, that interest should always be rewarded and fostered, and never punished, even if the kid isn't all that bright.

look at the title of this thread and titles of all news about him.
He was hailed as inventor and creator of the alarm clock

Oh for fuck's sake. :laughing-smiley-014

 

[TSwizzle]

I'll bet there is more to this than meets the eye. He stuck a clock in a pencil case. One would think he had invented a time machine the way people are fawning over it. NASA material ? Yer having a laugh.

 

[Jayjay]

Where did I say he should have been arrested at all?

He should not have gone through any of this bullshit. Period.

Agreed.

 

[Jayjay]

The engineering teacher wasn't the one who called the cops, it was the English teacher. Who only noticed the clock when it started beeping in Ahmed's bag. Or do you have some other chain of events here?

I must be missing something here.

The English teacher called the cops directly? Thinking the kid actually had a bomb?

Because something started beeping in his backpack?

No, nobody thought it was a bomb. Only that it "looked like" one.

What sort of person is paranoid enough to think that a beeping coming from a backpack means it is laden with explosives? Especially if the backpack in question belongs to a kid?

Or alternately, what sort of teacher - upon hearing the beeping, asking "hey what's that in your bag?" and receiving the answer "just a science project" leaps to the conclusion that it's a bomb and calls the cops?

I could not find any reference that Ahmed would have referred to the clock as a science project. Just a clock. Possible "invention", but that word is from his interviews later.

Second, the English teacher did not think that it was a bomb when he heard it beeping. Rather:

He kept the clock inside his school bag in English class, but the teacher complained when the alarm beeped in the middle of a lesson. Ahmed brought his invention up to show her afterward.

“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said.

So he didn't even take it out during the class apparently. But anyway, minor inaccuracies in your understanding of the events aside, the point is that nobody thought it was a bomb. You keep repeating that as if it's an established fact that everyone is claiming that the English teacher or someone else thought it was a bomb, but I cannot find any reference in any of the reports that anyone would have made such a claim.

 

[Ford]

But anyway, minor inaccuracies in your understanding of the events aside, the point is that nobody thought it was a bomb. You keep repeating that as if it's an established fact that everyone is claiming that the English teacher or someone else thought it was a bomb, but I cannot find any reference in any of the reports that anyone would have made such a claim.

So he was cuffed and arrested because...?