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

[barbos]

Not only does he invent clocks, he builds more complicated stuff, like CPU's...and soldering them. I guess he has his own wafer fab facility in his bedroom!

Stop harming me or I am suing you and internet for $15mil

 

[Arctish]

Not only does he invent clocks, he builds more complicated stuff, like CPU's...and soldering them. I guess he has his own wafer fab facility in his bedroom!

Nice twelve second sound bite. That doesn't look like a quote mine at all much if you squint just right.

Where's the rest of the interview? Does it contain the part where he says his clock was a simple construction that only took him about 15-20 minutes, thus refuting barbos' contention that Ahmed thought it was something amazing?

 

[thebeave]

Not only does he invent clocks, he builds more complicated stuff, like CPU's...and soldering them. I guess he has his own wafer fab facility in his bedroom!

Nice twelve second sound bite. That doesn't look like a quote mine at all much if you squint just right.

Where's the rest of the interview? Does it contain the part where he says his clock was a simple construction that only took him about 15-20 minutes, thus refuting barbos' contention that Ahmed thought it was something amazing?

Well, if you insist, here's the whole interview:



Ahmed says early on that it took him 10 or 20 minutes to make his clock. I don't think the poor clueless host quite gets that Ahmed just dumped the clock guts in a pencil case. He seems perplexed that Ahmed could construct a complex looking device like that (his first clock, by the way) in such a short period of time. Its awkward and painful to watch him get bamboozled by the kid, in front of millions. This is what I mean when I said earlier that the people who are not familiar with electronics design and construction are the ones who are the True Believers in this kid.

You might like the part where he talks about the trauma of his arrest and getting his civil rights violated. Keep your tissues handy... its a heartbreaker.

 

[angelo]

Next thing, clock boy will claim he invented the internet, and take the glory for that away from Al Gore.

 

[zorq]

And stop calling it a clock.

It fits all the definitions of a clock.

It tells time. It is a clock.

IT TELLS TIME.
IT IS A CLOCK.
IT TELLS TIME!
IT'S A CLOCK!

Your claim that it's a hoax bomb on the other hand is ridiculous.
Hoax bombs must be designed to fool people into believing they are bombs. Ahmed's pencil case never fooled anyone into believing it was a bomb. NOBODY. Why didn't it fool a single person who looked at the actual pencilcase? Not anyone at all?

Let me help you. It's because it lacks a very important part that could cause people to confuse it for a bomb. Namely something that looks explosive. That's right. Nothing on or in the pencil case looks remotely explosive.

If you think his pencilcase clock looks like a bomb you are a bigger idiot than everyone who looked at the pencil case clock on the day of Ahmed's arrest.

If you don't think it looks like a bomb because you can't identify anything that looks explosive then you have proven that it can't be a hoax bomb.

It's is missing the only think that could make ANYTHING look like a bomb.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

It does not appear to be a random sample.

Besides all that, even if Ahmed's work borrowed from an existing circuit, it does not absolve the teachers, staff, and police of violating his civil rights.

He was asked a few questions at the school, and brought to a juvenile processing center for what seemed like a hoax bomb.

This is a kid who regularly brought in electronic devices in previous years of school. He brought in things far more sophisticated in previous years at least according to his middle school teachers who were shocked of his arrest.

That's a civil rights violation of the same caliber as having cops pull you over and make you blow the alcometer because they think you are driving erratically, and then letting you go when finding out you're not drunk.

I think people should stop whining about trivial bullshit like this. There was no harm done, the kid was compensated by the public already, and there is no evidence of him being singled out because of race or religion except in his family's narrative.

I hope you don't mean that I am whining. I just find the hatred for Muslims in my country to be dangerous and here on the Internet only slightly annoying. I mean you have someone in the thread saying everyone in Ahmed's family are "pieces of shit."

 

[angelo]

I simply find this amazing, the fact that some here are apologists for this fraudster!

 

[barbos]

He was asked a few questions at the school, and brought to a juvenile processing center for what seemed like a hoax bomb.

This is a kid who regularly brought in electronic devices in previous years of school. He brought in things far more sophisticated in previous years at least according to his middle school teachers who were shocked of his arrest.

you mean like CPUs he invented and soldered?

That's a civil rights violation of the same caliber as having cops pull you over and make you blow the alcometer because they think you are driving erratically, and then letting you go when finding out you're not drunk.

I think people should stop whining about trivial bullshit like this. There was no harm done, the kid was compensated by the public already, and there is no evidence of him being singled out because of race or religion except in his family's narrative.

I hope you don't mean that I am whining. I just find the hatred for Muslims in my country to be dangerous and here on the Internet only slightly annoying. I mean you have someone in the thread saying everyone in Ahmed's family are "pieces of shit."

I have hatred for useless blowhards and media whores. The fact that this particular family of blowhards/media whores happened to be muslims does not affect my hatred.

 

[Jayjay]

He was asked a few questions at the school, and brought to a juvenile processing center for what seemed like a hoax bomb. That's a civil rights violation of the same caliber as having cops pull you over and make you blow the alcometer because they think you are driving erratically, and then letting you go when finding out you're not drunk.

I think people should stop whining about trivial bullshit like this. There was no harm done, the kid was compensated by the public already, and there is no evidence of him being singled out because of race or religion except in his family's narrative.

No harm done?

He was taken out of school in handcuffs, interrogated by the police, and suspended from school because he brought a clock in a pencil case to show to his teacher.

Let's looka t those individually. Interrogated for something he didn't do, in school premises: Hardly remarkable, and understandable given the circumstances. Sometimes kids get accused or even punished for things they didn't do, and if that's just hour and a half of his life that he wants back that's hardly harmful.

Being handcuffed: standard practise when transporting someone to police station. The cops didn't really have a choice in this matter.

Taken out of school to the Juvenile detention center: where he was immediately handed over to his parents. No harm done. Ahmed even commented afterwards that "it was pretty cool".

Suspended from school: for doing something that is explicitly forbidden in student code of conduct. And if one week suspension is a grievous violation of Ahmed's civil rights, what about his parents pulling him out of the school entirely? Isn't that a far greater violation?

Nothing that was done to Ahmed was particularly outrageous, and the whole thing was over in a matter of a few hours. If he had been kept in jail overnight or tasered you might have a point, but what actually happened was hardly upsetting.

He did something so unremarkable that the involvement of the police is surprising, their arresting him is shocking, and the resulting media firestorm astounding.

There's enough bloodlust being directed at this kid and his family to choke a vampire.

His entire life was upended by adults who should have known better. But no harm done, right?

Meanwhile, the persons whose actions should be scrutinized, namely the school officials and the police officers, have escaped with little more than a cursory "well, maybe you could have handled this better".

If scrutiny should match the seriousness of the infraction, that's a reasonable response. Teachers and police can't function if they get fined $15 mllion every time they might falsely accuse someone. When I was 11, I was falsely accused for writing "Fuck" on my english class desk. Only me an another guy had sat there, and neither of us confessed, so we both got questioned and punished. Shit happens, but what do you think would have been the correct response? Should the teacher have been fired? Should I have been entitled to $15 million in compensation for mental damage?

Please. Kids aren't that fragile. Ahmed certainly isn't.

 

[Jayjay]

And stop calling it a clock.

It fits all the definitions of a clock.

It tells time. It is a clock.

IT TELLS TIME.
IT IS A CLOCK.
IT TELLS TIME!
IT'S A CLOCK!

Actually, because he removed the backup battery and the clock required AC power, it couldn't tell time anymore. At least not correct time. Only purpose that it could serve is to show a bunch of electronics in a box, with number display that says 00:00 when plugged in. And maybe play an alarm sound.

Your claim that it's a hoax bomb on the other hand is ridiculous.
Hoax bombs must be designed to fool people into believing they are bombs. Ahmed's pencil case never fooled anyone into believing it was a bomb. NOBODY. Why didn't it fool a single person who looked at the actual pencilcase? Not anyone at all?

Let me help you. It's because it lacks a very important part that could cause people to confuse it for a bomb. Namely something that looks explosive. That's right. Nothing on or in the pencil case looks remotely explosive.

If you think his pencilcase clock looks like a bomb you are a bigger idiot than everyone who looked at the pencil case clock on the day of Ahmed's arrest.

If you don't think it looks like a bomb because you can't identify anything that looks explosive then you have proven that it can't be a hoax bomb.

It's is missing the only think that could make ANYTHING look like a bomb.

So is this:

Yet, a casual viewer would immediately recognize that it was meant to look like a bomb despite having no explosive components.

 

[Jayjay]

He was asked a few questions at the school, and brought to a juvenile processing center for what seemed like a hoax bomb.

This is a kid who regularly brought in electronic devices in previous years of school. He brought in things far more sophisticated in previous years at least according to his middle school teachers who were shocked of his arrest.

Really? All I read was that he once pranked a teacher with a projector remote and being suspended for blowing soap bubbles in the bathroom. Nothing about building stuff and bringing it to school. But even if he did do it before, this was a different school, and different people who didn't know him.

That's a civil rights violation of the same caliber as having cops pull you over and make you blow the alcometer because they think you are driving erratically, and then letting you go when finding out you're not drunk.

I think people should stop whining about trivial bullshit like this. There was no harm done, the kid was compensated by the public already, and there is no evidence of him being singled out because of race or religion except in his family's narrative.

I hope you don't mean that I am whining. I just find the hatred for Muslims in my country to be dangerous and here on the Internet only slightly annoying. I mean you have someone in the thread saying everyone in Ahmed's family are "pieces of shit."

Do note that the internet outrage is solely due to the family's own attention whoring, but even then the reception has been by and large positive. He got several tv interviews, all favourable to him and his family, plenty of gifts from Microsoft and other companies, and even a scholarship to a school in Qatar. Few noises saying that he's a "piece of shit" are drowned in the wave of goodwill.

 

[thebeave]

And stop calling it a clock.

It fits all the definitions of a clock.

It tells time. It is a clock.

IT TELLS TIME.
IT IS A CLOCK.
IT TELLS TIME!
IT'S A CLOCK!

Your claim that it's a hoax bomb on the other hand is ridiculous.
Hoax bombs must be designed to fool people into believing they are bombs. Ahmed's pencil case never fooled anyone into believing it was a bomb. NOBODY. Why didn't it fool a single person who looked at the actual pencilcase? Not anyone at all?

Let me help you. It's because it lacks a very important part that could cause people to confuse it for a bomb. Namely something that looks explosive. That's right. Nothing on or in the pencil case looks remotely explosive.

If you think his pencilcase clock looks like a bomb you are a bigger idiot than everyone who looked at the pencil case clock on the day of Ahmed's arrest.

If you don't think it looks like a bomb because you can't identify anything that looks explosive then you have proven that it can't be a hoax bomb.

It's is missing the only think that could make ANYTHING look like a bomb.

Ahmed himself said in a taped interview that he wrapped a cable around the pencil box to make it look "much less suspicious". IMO, the cable doesn't really do that, but the fact remains that he himself acknowledged it was not completely harmless looking. Kinda odd that many of his supporters think it looks less like a bomb than Ahmed does. But, whatever.

I wonder if the reason why the school and police had an interest in this (i.e asking him a lot of questions about it and keeping him detained) is because they were trying to figure out the intent of a student creating something like this and bringing it to school. Clock guts placed in a pencil box. Its a non-sequitor and makes no sense. If it wasn't done to raise eyebrows, then why would a supposedly bright kid (who can build CPUs and solder them ) do this? It certainly doesn't sound like the best example of his technical prowess, at least according to him. To me, it makes about as much sense as putting an old starter motor from a 1955 Chevy truck into a bucket of sand and bringing it to school and showing it off.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

This is a kid who regularly brought in electronic devices in previous years of school. He brought in things far more sophisticated in previous years at least according to his middle school teachers who were shocked of his arrest.

Really? All I read was that he once pranked a teacher with a projector remote and being suspended for blowing soap bubbles in the bathroom.

Suspended for blowing bubbles in the bathroom? I'm not sure that that even deserves detention.

Nothing about building stuff and bringing it to school. But even if he did do it before, this was a different school, and different people who didn't know him.

Note: different people who developed a different perception of him.

That's a civil rights violation of the same caliber as having cops pull you over and make you blow the alcometer because they think you are driving erratically, and then letting you go when finding out you're not drunk.

I think people should stop whining about trivial bullshit like this. There was no harm done, the kid was compensated by the public already, and there is no evidence of him being singled out because of race or religion except in his family's narrative.

I hope you don't mean that I am whining. I just find the hatred for Muslims in my country to be dangerous and here on the Internet only slightly annoying. I mean you have someone in the thread saying everyone in Ahmed's family are "pieces of shit."

Do note that the internet outrage is solely due to the family's own attention whoring, but even then the reception has been by and large positive.

Things are rarely due to a single cause. In this case, people have a decision to make about whether to broad-brush and hyperbolize an entire family as pieces of shit. So decisions by various individuals as to their actions are also a cause. So are the circumstances that led to this outcome of the parents feeling a need to speak out publicly, which includes actions by the police and school as well as discrimination against Muslims. Such discrimination does include bullying that Ahmed had in school and neglect (perhaps willful) by staff to do something about it. They're all causes.

But in any case, if I believed that my kid was discriminated against and I had the economic power, connections, and skills to create activity, connections, and awareness of the issue, I would, too. I don't think there is a need to frame this as "attention whoring" unless one dislikes the people doing it. It could just as easily be called "family support" or "advocacy" by other observers.

On the other hand, I might agree with your wording of "attention whoring" if they create a reality tv show "Real Muslims of Texas," but that's because I dislike reality tv shows.

He got several tv interviews, all favourable to him and his family, plenty of gifts from Microsoft and other companies, and even a scholarship to a school in Qatar. Few noises saying that he's a "piece of shit" are drowned in the wave of goodwill.

I agree that he did get a lot of good attention. I don't think that should be the end of it, necessarily. Persons in official positions involved in this such as school staff and police should be held to account, IF it is deemed in a civil court of law that there was discrimination or civil rights violations.

 

[laughing dog]

If scrutiny should match the seriousness of the infraction, that's a reasonable response. Teachers and police can't function if they get fined $15 mllion every time they might falsely accuse someone. When I was 11, I was falsely accused for writing "Fuck" on my english class desk. Only me an another guy had sat there, and neither of us confessed, so we both got questioned and punished. Shit happens, but what do you think would have been the correct response? Should the teacher have been fired? Should I have been entitled to $15 million in compensation for mental damage?

Once the school realized it was not a bomb, nothing else should have happened. The issue is not with the teacher, but with the over-reaction of the school officials and the police. Yes, these dumbasses should think twice about they behave. If a lawsuit asking for $15million does that, then the lawsuit is a good idea, even if it never goes to trial and even if the plaintiffs do not receive a dime.

 

[Nexus]

Once the school realized it was not a bomb, nothing else should have happened.

No they still needed to investigate whether he intended to create a hoax bomb. Him being detained for a few hours was not a civil rights issue.

 

[laughing dog]

Once the school realized it was not a bomb, nothing else should have happened.

No they still needed to investigate whether he intended to create a hoax bomb.

No, they did not need to do anything else. It was obviously not a bomb. Nor did he pretend it was a bomb.

Him being detained for a few hours was not a civil rights issue.

Without knowing what was in their hearts and minds, we cannot know that for sure.

 

[zorq]

It fits all the definitions of a clock.
It tells time. It is a clock.

Actually, because he removed the backup battery and the clock required AC power, it couldn't tell time anymore. At least not correct time. Only purpose that it could serve is to show a bunch of electronics in a box, with number display that says 00:00 when plugged in. And maybe play an alarm sound.

Yeah unless he plugged it in and set the time. Like a lot of clocks including one that's sitting on my night stand right now.

Your claim that it's a hoax bomb on the other hand is ridiculous.
Hoax bombs must be designed to fool people into believing they are bombs. Ahmed's pencil case never fooled anyone into believing it was a bomb. [...]
It's is missing the only think that could make ANYTHING look like a bomb.

So is this:

Wrong. The pencils in that picture are made to look like they might be explosive. Nothing on Ahmed's clock looks remotely explosive.

Yet, a casual viewer would immediately recognize that it was meant to look like a bomb despite having no explosive components.

As I pointed out the pencils could be made of explosive material which is what makes people think that it might be a bomb. But really, Are you telling me that your pencil picture is a hoax bomb? Do you think the guy who made that picture was arrested for making a hoax bomb? Passing around a picture of his handiwork in a threatening way? It clearly wasn't designed to look threatening. It was designed to look awesome.

Just like Ahmed's clock.

 

[Jayjay]

Really? All I read was that he once pranked a teacher with a projector remote and being suspended for blowing soap bubbles in the bathroom.

Suspended for blowing bubbles in the bathroom? I'm not sure that that even deserves detention.

So should Mohamemd family have sued the school for $15 million for that as well? But anyway the point was that he didn't have a history of making electronics, as much as he had a history of pranks.

Nothing about building stuff and bringing it to school. But even if he did do it before, this was a different school, and different people who didn't know him.

Note: different people who developed a different perception of him.

That's a civil rights violation of the same caliber as having cops pull you over and make you blow the alcometer because they think you are driving erratically, and then letting you go when finding out you're not drunk.

I think people should stop whining about trivial bullshit like this. There was no harm done, the kid was compensated by the public already, and there is no evidence of him being singled out because of race or religion except in his family's narrative.

I hope you don't mean that I am whining. I just find the hatred for Muslims in my country to be dangerous and here on the Internet only slightly annoying. I mean you have someone in the thread saying everyone in Ahmed's family are "pieces of shit."

Do note that the internet outrage is solely due to the family's own attention whoring, but even then the reception has been by and large positive.

Things are rarely due to a single cause. In this case, people have a decision to make about whether to broad-brush and hyperbolize an entire family as pieces of shit. So decisions by various individuals as to their actions are also a cause. So are the circumstances that led to this outcome of the parents feeling a need to speak out publicly, which includes actions by the police and school as well as discrimination against Muslims. Such discrimination does include bullying that Ahmed had in school and neglect (perhaps willful) by staff to do something about it. They're all causes.

But in any case, if I believed that my kid was discriminated against and I had the economic power, connections, and skills to create activity, connections, and awareness of the issue, I would, too. I don't think there is a need to frame this as "attention whoring" unless one dislikes the people doing it. It could just as easily be called "family support" or "advocacy" by other observers.

On the other hand, I might agree with your wording of "attention whoring" if they create a reality tv show "Real Muslims of Texas," but that's because I dislike reality tv shows.

Sure, call it advocacy. But the police or the school are not responsible for the minor bad publicity (although majority of it has been positive) they might get as a result. If someone calls Ahmed a shithead on an internet forum or in twitter, that's not the police department's fault.

He got several tv interviews, all favourable to him and his family, plenty of gifts from Microsoft and other companies, and even a scholarship to a school in Qatar. Few noises saying that he's a "piece of shit" are drowned in the wave of goodwill.

I agree that he did get a lot of good attention. I don't think that should be the end of it, necessarily. Persons in official positions involved in this such as school staff and police should be held to account, IF it is deemed in a civil court of law that there was discrimination or civil rights violations.

That goes without saying. I don't think the case has any merit whatsoever, but there are things that are not yet public and I might not know, and as a consumer I would like it to go to court just so we'll get to the bottom of it. The worst case scenario for everyone is if the city buckles under pressure and settles without a trial.

 

[Jayjay]

If scrutiny should match the seriousness of the infraction, that's a reasonable response. Teachers and police can't function if they get fined $15 mllion every time they might falsely accuse someone. When I was 11, I was falsely accused for writing "Fuck" on my english class desk. Only me an another guy had sat there, and neither of us confessed, so we both got questioned and punished. Shit happens, but what do you think would have been the correct response? Should the teacher have been fired? Should I have been entitled to $15 million in compensation for mental damage?

Once the school realized it was not a bomb, nothing else should have happened. The issue is not with the teacher, but with the over-reaction of the school officials and the police. Yes, these dumbasses should think twice about they behave. If a lawsuit asking for $15million does that, then the lawsuit is a good idea, even if it never goes to trial and even if the plaintiffs do not receive a dime.

Again, he wasn't arrested for making a bomb. He was arrested and suspended for a hoax bomb. Realization of whether it was actually an exposive device is not enough, they'd have to have realized that it was never intended to even look like one. If Ahmed couldn't adequately explain why he made it (which is plausible, given the stressful situation and that in his interviews he comes off as a rather poor communicator) it's easy to imagine why the cops or the school still had doubts.

By the looks of it, it was a honest misunderstanding.

 

[Jayjay]

Your claim that it's a hoax bomb on the other hand is ridiculous.
Hoax bombs must be designed to fool people into believing they are bombs. Ahmed's pencil case never fooled anyone into believing it was a bomb. [...]
It's is missing the only think that could make ANYTHING look like a bomb.

So is this:

Wrong. The pencils in that picture are made to look like they might be explosive. Nothing on Ahmed's clock looks remotely explosive.

Yet, a casual viewer would immediately recognize that it was meant to look like a bomb despite having no explosive components.

As I pointed out the pencils could be made of explosive material which is what makes people think that it might be a bomb. But really, Are you telling me that your pencil picture is a hoax bomb? Do you think the guy who made that picture was arrested for making a hoax bomb? Passing around a picture of his handiwork in a threatening way? It clearly wasn't designed to look threatening. It was designed to look awesome.

Just like Ahmed's clock.

No, I' saying that the presence or absence of explosive material is not the yard stick to determine whether something is a hoax bomb or not. That the pencils could be made of explosive material and therefore it's a hoax bomb is silly... you migth as well say that the linings in Ahmed's pencil case could have been made from explosive materials, or it could be a remote trigger, or he could have the explosives in his bag or at home, or ...