9th Grader Arrested in Houston for making ... a clock.

[Macbeth]

Tell me you didn't ever take stuff to school like this. I know I did, frequently.

I took stuff to school frequently too. Only at 14 I wasn't stupid enough to show it to teachers. And we didn't have zero tolerance policies in force then either.

Anyway this issue was quickly changed from the idiotic zero tolerance nonsense and dumbing down of science I initially thought it was into an islamophobia thing. By the lads dad, the publicity hungry CAIR zealot and former presidential candidate for Sudan. Maybe that is why laddy has been invited to the White House?

[DTJ]

I wonder if this whole thing isn't part of a stunt by the boys father. Perhaps not orchestrated but more along the lines of "why not take that thing to school Timmy and see what happens".

The father and the son are intelligent folk, they would know a significant reaction was to be expected.

[Macbeth]

He has another school lined up for him. Erm, sorry, but at 14 you would not leave school over getting in a bit of trouble. Not only are you seriously disrupting your education, you are leaving behind all your mates too.

[Wytnucls]

The science teacher didn't report his handiwork and told him not to show anybody else.
The alarm went off during the next class.
It had to be switched on, accident maybe.
It also had to have the proper time set, another coincidence maybe.

[EEVblog]

Journalists don't get things right either,because they are basically members of the General Public,with skills  confined to their chosen profession,& they have the same weird ideas of  Technology as the "man/woman in the street".

They are also after a sensational story, that's their job. No one want to read boring stories.
Even they were told it's just a repacked clock, that's not interesting, so *insert boy genius headline here* etc etc.

[HighVoltage]

Most likely, we have not heard the rest of the story

[EEVblog]

I wonder if this whole thing isn't part of a stunt by the boys father. Perhaps not orchestrated but more along the lines of "why not take that thing to school Timmy and see what happens".
The father and the son are intelligent folk, they would know a significant reaction was to be expected.

Or maybe, a nerdy (beginning) hobbyist just "made" something and took it along to show, for whatever, because, you know, he's 14.
Father sees the furore & knows that fits into his political agenda, so capitalises on it big time.

Some innocent things just happen because they happen, but people love to think it's some conspiracy, or it's all planed or orchestrated etc.
I don't know how it actually went down any more than anyone else does. But one thing I do know is that I'll encourage any potential 14yo hobbyist and give them the benefit of the doubt any day of the week.

[GNU_Ninja]

I don't know how it actually went down any more than anyone else does. But one thing I do know is that I'll encourage any potential 14yo hobbyist and give them the benefit of the doubt any day of the week.

 

[vk6zgo]

Journalists don't get things right either,because they are basically members of the General Public,with skills  confined to their chosen profession,& they have the same weird ideas of  Technology as the "man/woman in the street".

They are also after a sensational story, that's their job. No one want to read boring stories.
Even they were told it's just a repacked clock, that's not interesting, so *insert boy genius headline here* etc etc.

Another point,-------TV Journos are normally under extreme time pressure to get "something"up for the  6 O'clock News,so they don't have a lot of time to research stuff.

That said,over the 10 years I worked at TVW7,they got things right far more often than the "Sunday Times",which had all week to do their research.

I remember a few years before that,one of the minor weekend papers (can't remember if it was "The Independent" or the "Western Mail") was waiting on a delayed NASA blastoff.

Eventually,they could wait no longer & elected to go to Press with an announcement that the rocket had blasted off successfully,embellished with a stock photo .

Of course,the blastoff was delayed due to inclement weather----OOPs!

[Wytnucls]

It only got reported in the news because the kid is Muslim, or the son of Muslim parents, as R. Dawkins would say.
If he had been a pink fat white kid, it would probably have been handled the same way, without all the fuss.
From what I have seen on TV, he is not the only kid of African origin in school and Ethiopia is only 33% Muslim.
Who called the press anyway? Was it the father, claiming persecution again?

[hammy]

Wow, I'm stunned at the amount of comments now coming out about how he didn't build anything, it was just a reassembled Radio Shack clock.
[...] Because it didn't need to be mentioned, many of us started out doing exactly this. The whole point of the video was to encourage a beginner, instead of shout him down for not having any skills.
It's a sad reflection on society when people shout down a kids skills (or lack of) instead of encouraging them. 

 

We all build very trivial stuff as kids and we were proud of it. With a little bit childish imagination everything was like an "invention" for us.

Or maybe, a nerdy (beginning) hobbyist just "made" something and took it along to show, for whatever, because, you know, he's 14.
Some innocent things just happen because they happen [...] But one thing I do know is that I'll encourage any potential 14yo hobbyist and give them the benefit of the doubt any day of the week.

 

Exactly. It is just a boy, 14yo, he likes to tinker, a lot of motivation.
It's a shame that some people build a conspiracy story to justify this paranoid overreaction and lack of humanity. The boy was handcuffed and interrogated. Where was the teacher (he showed the clock) to help him? Or any other teachers who know him? It's their duty to guide and protect this kid.

[EEVblog]

The other thing that bugs me are the cries of all the people who say that he didn't "co-operate" or adequately explain etc, so everyone once again jumps to the conclusion that he's hiding something, it's a conspiracy, it's his fathers plot etc etc
when if you just apply Occam's razor again, maybe he was just a scared 14yo kid in the spotlight.

Said with a bunch of burly cops surrounding you:
"Why did you build it?"
"What's the motive?"
"How does it work?"
"Why is it in this pencil case?"
Scared 14yo kid replies trembling:
"I don't know, I just did it, because, well, I don't know"

At 14 I would have been terrified if I got called to the Principal's office to explain, let alone the cops.

It was hilarious how in the first 24/48 hours it was all for support of Ahmed, and then people started to learn about his father, the Radio Shack blog article came out etc, and now it's conspiracy theory central because that's an exciting twist, and people love exciting twists.

[Macbeth]

People are treating this kid as if he is an infant. Sorry, but I remember when I was 14, it isn't far from adulthood (you can join the army or get married at 16). Unless he is some kind of "special needs" case, but from his interviews he seems pretty articulate.

Taking apart a clock and shoving it in a case, not even removing the mains lead (apparently he said he didn't lock the case and had the mains lead on show as he didn't want it to look suspicious - so he new it looked exactly like something that breaks all the zero-tol. rules)

Also the interviews with him. He has an "Engineering" book in pride of place, covering a Home DIY manual (the kind his dad would use). Yes, it looks like a Civil Engineering book his dad borrowed from the library back in 1978. (Maybe he is studying bridges for the weak points?  ). He calls seven segment displays "light lines". He points out lots of stuff he claims to have invented. Like a USB hub with the cover removed, and a bundle of other scrap of which he can only identify a transformer.

We've all been played like a fiddle by his dad using his son for his political agenda. It's a shame he is pulling his son out of school in order to get a better education "possibly abroad".

I feel bad for the real 14 year old hackers who can see right through this charlatan and are getting no offers of internships, visits with POTUS, loads of free gear, no recognition for genuine inventions or ability. If I was one of his peers I would be pretty pissed off. Perhaps they are, but the media won't listen to them as it doesn't suit their narrative. 

[Wytnucls]

It's a clock! That's all he said. He didn't tell anybody that he showed it to the science teacher earlier.
Maybe he was just a frightened kid and the adults overreacted.
I'm not into conspiracies, but the story in the press has glaring holes in it.
Their version, where the school principal and the police force conspired to frighten this ingenious kid, because they are bad people or because he has a dark skin and possible Muslim ties is a hard one to digest also.

[EEVblog]

I feel bad for the real 14 year old hackers who can see right through this charlatan and are getting no offers of internships, visits with POTUS, loads of free gear, no recognition for genuine inventions or ability. If I was one of his peers I would be pretty pissed off. Perhaps they are, but the media won't listen to them as it doesn't suit their narrative. 

Often life ain't fair, people need to deal with that. Ahmed got "lucky" in that respect, rightly or wrongly, deserved or undeserved, his story made world headlines, it happens. Having sour grapes over that is just childish.
Also, it won't do him any good if he gets an MIT scholarship out of this and then sucks at it. Once all the hype dies down he'll have to prove himself in the real word like most others.

[DimitriP]

We should call it a "weather baloon" and be done with it.

The problem with this whole story is that yes it started as an random innocent kid bringing a homebuilt clock to school and all hell broke loose.

I too thought and probably still think that calling the cops and getting him arrested  at the end of the day was a ridicilous delayed reaction etc etc

BUT the kid was not so random , the clock was not homebuilt or invented or anything close to what we would over here call "built" or "made" much less "invented" . ( Sorry but when you dad has run a campaign to be the president of a country that puts you in some sort of < 0.1% of all kids out there)

Reading articles where he is described as an "avid inventor" is really rubbing me the wrong way.
Repackaging the clock acnnot be an example of his best work.
But that's what is shoved under our noses.
and I'm getting tired of it.

But hey, it might get him a meet and greet with the president and Zuckeberg, , so maybe this will turn out to be exactly an example of his best work.

Funny how things turn out.




 

[Macbeth]

But hey, it might get him a meet and greet with the president and Zuckeberg, , so maybe this will turn out to be exactly an example of his best work.

Funny how things turn out.

Yes, with politics, its not what you know but who you know. I think he is getting a good education there.

[EEVblog]

BUT the kid was not so random

Rubbish. Random includes everyone. He was otherwise a nobody, as was his dad to 99.999999999% of the world.

Reading articles where he is described as an "avid inventor" is really rubbing me the wrong way.
Repackaging the clock acnnot be an example of his best work.
But that's what is shoved under our noses.
and I'm getting tired of it.

You chose to continue to read the articles.

[zapta]

... maybe he was just a scared 14yo kid in the spotlight.

Maybe, but somehow you developed strong opinion that there was no room for suspicion in a bomb or a bomb hoax.

That's irrational.

[apis]

We've all been played like a fiddle by his dad using his son for his political agenda. It's a shame he is pulling his son out of school in order to get a better education "possibly abroad".

There's no way of disproving a conspiracy but I can tell you for certain that if the father did plan all this it was an islamophobic and fear mongering response he was hoping for, and it's sad and scary to see how many deliver.

In the end it really doesn't matter. A 14 year old kid brings electronics to his school and shows his science teacher. The sane response would have been to encourage the kid and help him learn more about electronics.

What did the school do? They called the cops.

[EEVblog]

... maybe he was just a scared 14yo kid in the spotlight.

Maybe

Maybe is good enough for someone to give him the benefit of the doubt, surely?
What kind of world do we live in when that's not the case?
It's not only just a "maybe", it's fully plausible.

but somehow you developed the strong opinion that there was no room for suspicion in a bomb or a bomb hoax.
That's irrational.

Nope, seemed like a dumb over-reaction and a very fine example of the perpetual fear society we live in.

[thunderbolt87]

Wow. I would not say it is a US-only phenomenon. This incident indeed shows the sorry state of society.
Politicians want citizens to feel the threat, so they stand together and shut up when it comes to increasing the
military ("defense"  ) expenses and voiding civil rights.
Anything that's a mystery to you can appear suspicious!
In this case, blame Hollywood for their stupid time bombs as seen in many movies.
I guess the 7-seg display was what teachers and policemen associated with a bomb.
Would have expected more common sense, from the cops at least.
To judge if a device is a bomb, wouldn't you look for something like Semtex (Play-Doh)?
ICs don't explode, neither do caps (usually). Jeez. Don't need to be MacGyver.
Would not say it's all sunshine here in Germany but you cowboys have an
anxious trigger finger.
I would not be afraid to carry around firecrackers out of season, here, as long as they
aren't mounted around my belt.

Besides,... this site claims to have a picture of the device the boy built:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/21/nerds-rage-over-ahmed-s-clock.html
Not having read the article, it appeared strage to me that the clock is not DIY at all.
It's a commercial product in a suit case... Especially that flat cable crap is very untypical of DIY.
So, taking it school to show pride of THAT THING which he did not even build himself?
That smells like an excuse to not be held responsible for it being a hoax after all.
No matter what intention, I don't see any moral issues in what the boy did.
He's just holding a mirror... How he was treated clearly reflects where society is headed.
We can observe how terrorism succeds at causing mistrust and suspicion. Chickens!

Maybe he was naive to think that his fooling around with classmates and teachers
would stay a in-class only affair. Was it his intention to do the shocker ?
However, I don't believe there's truth in the money making / fame conspiracy theories...

[Macbeth]

Nope, seemed like a dumb over-reaction and a very fine example of the perpetual fear society we live in.

There is no doubt that it's an over reaction. But USA schools, particularly Texan ones, are very well known for absurd zero tolerance policies. They do not discriminate on creed or colour, they do not discriminate at all - that is the whole point of zero tolerance. When a kid is bullied both the aggressor and victim are punished. If someone merely draws a cartoon bomb or gun on paper they will be punished, never mind bringing that absurd contraption in that serves no purpose I can think of - certainly not impressing teachers with.

I thought the outrage was all about this zero-tolerance insanity over an invention, but it has all been exposed as an islamophobia sham by the media & the lads father and comrades.

[VK3DRB]

Anyone who thinks Ahmed's clock incident should open their eyes. The 14 year old kid's plight with the clock was similar to what happened to Keira Wilmot...



Fortunately, Kiera is now studying engineering at university and is doing well. She is the real deal, just like Ahmed.

The real threats to society are the do-gooders and dickheads who had Kiera (and Ahmed) arrested. I feel what happened to Ahmed would also have been tainted with racism. I suspect if he were white and his name was Dave Smith, there would have been no issue.

[GK]

Ahmed's father is a long-time media personalty, self-appointed sheikh and crusader against "Islamophobia".

And he is a complete idiot:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/09/video-robert-spencer-debates-clockmaker-ahmed-mohameds-father

He also courted media attention in another incident by volunteering his services as defense attorney in nut-case pastor Terry Jones mock trial of the Koran; which along with complementary rabble-rousing and deliberate provocation by the reprehensible CAIR (while other Muslim groups/organizations were purposefully distancing themselves) , resulted in protests and 7 deaths in Afghanistan.

I posted this link on CAIRs reprehensible activities already:

http://www.meforum.org/916/cair-islamists-fooling-the-establishment

CAIR are now the Mohamed families media mouth-piece and provider of legal representation.

CAIR, a documented supporter of Jihad with numerous ex-players serving long prison sentences for terrorism-related offenses, is well know to the authorities.

When your father is a media personality of this sort and has association with an organization like that maybe you're not going to get treated just like any other kid when you sneak your cobbled-together brief-case clock to class.......