Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

I don't mean any harm, but you guys need to do more research on a story before making all these presumptions or suggesting such drastic measures. The issue, to me, isn't that he built a clock that looked like a stereotypical IED. (Which he most likely knew it did, and brought it to school anyways. But let's be honest, a lot of harmless electronic projects can easily look like IED's to an untrained eye), but that he didn't actually build the clock from scratch, let alone "invent" it like he claims. What he brought to school was, or at least appears to be, something built in a factory. This video demonstrates and explains this in detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=232&v=CEmSwJTqpgY
Even if it was something he invented, which I don't believe it is, he doesn't deserve thousands of dollars worth of gifts and a free trip to the white house. There are plenty of other kids that have done so much more than him, and I wouldn't even say they deserve free stuff. It's a nice just but it's also not a fair gesture. I don't think anyone deserves special treatment like that unless they did something really impressive, like those kids who innovate in medical, technological, and other scientific fields in a way that can potentially help society as a whole. Kids like that deserve a lot of recognition but almost always get little-to-none, while this kid who just, at best, built a simple electronic clock has gotten massive amounts of media and political attention.
There's also the possible issue with his uncle, Aldean Mohamed [his Twitter] being CEO of a company named "twin towers transportation" [http://www.corporationwiki.com/p/2fj...on-corporation] which is obviously provocative, but that's no fault of Ahmed Mohamed. He isn't responsible for his family's actions. Even if he had (not saying he does have, just saying if he did) a terrible family, we shouldn't judge him for that. Just like we shouldn't consider him a hero just because of what happened to him, even though I do believe he was wronged at first. But our school system wrongs A LOT of people, and the teachers are probably required to call the police of they see something that looks similar to a bomb on a student, regardless of race or creed. Rewarding him may be with good intentions and is sentimental, but it's ultimately unfair and unreasonable.
There may have been racial profiling involved, but there's no proof of it. It's fallacious to just assume racial profiling is what happened in this situation, even if you personally think it's probable (Which I agree that is is a high possibility, there is a lot of Antisemitism in our country. But it's still wrong to assume that this is the case). Situations like this have happened many times before, so it's not like it's exclusive to Mr. Mohamed, or Muslims at all. (though it's stupid that they didn't evacuate the school, that should be standard protocol with a bomb threat. But that's how our school system typically is, dumb and constantly takes extreme measures against kids who usually didn't actually do anything wrong)

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

He has never claimed that he invented what he made but he still built it. Most students don't do the kind of things that he did. I personally can say that I wish I did the things that he does but I just don't put the time in.

Maybe other people have done more to deserve the recognition he has gotten but the price he has paid is being arrested for something that he did not do. And that seems very likely that he was racially profiled for.

If someone really thought what he brought in was a bomb; why didn't they stop touching/handling it, evacuate the school, and call the bomb squad? Saying it is just stupid they didn't evacuate the school is an understatement. Based on the response of the school district and how they want to protect all of the students they serve, they failed that objective when the first idea that it was a bomb came up and they didn't get the students away from it.

If anyone had any common sense and believed it to really be a bomb the first thing to do to protect the "All students" would have been to evacuate the school. The story of the school and the police don't add up to someone truly believing that there was some type of bomb threat.

He really seemed to be racially profiled to me because when he insisted that it was a clock the police were still called. When the police interviewed him they kept asking what it was and he always had the same response: "It is a clock". Why did the police keep asking? If someone gives you one answer constantly to the same question you ask over and over again, isn't it a pointless question?

Also by the definition of a bomb that the school/police went by literally includes all electronic devices. So phones, calculators, clocks, watches, ipods, ipads, computers, etc.

You make a lot of statements counting them as fact when they truly are not. And as an anonymous account on this forum you really don't get much credit.

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

I'm not sure if he himself claimed he invented it, it might have just been mainstream media saying that, but his father did say that to reporters and also had inconsistencies in the story. Like saying to CNN that “it was an alarm clock that he made. He wakes up with it most mornings,” and then later saying on Dallas News he made the clock in 20 minutes the night before taking it to school.

I didn't put much emphasis on the bomb threat because that wasn't a concern of mine, I just addressed it since it was a major part of why people have been taking sides. I myself think the school overreacted, but again, being wronged doesn't mean you deserve anything. Let alone what he got. My point wasn't that there are people who deserve reward more than him, my point was that people don't deserve rewards for being wronged. Let alone thousands of dollars worth of rewards and a free trip to the white house. Those should be things that are earned, not given to you because something bad happened to you.

I feel the same way about the families of, for example, 9/11 victims' families, who were given millions of dollars of tax payer's money in return for their lost one. They didn't need, let alone deserve, that money, which could have been used for rebuilding the city or for people who DID need it. They did deserve any sort of life insurance that they may have had with that family member, but what was given to them wasn't this and was just wasteful, unfair charity.

"You make a lot of statements counting them as fact when they truly are not."
Tell me which statements I made that were like this.
Also, "as an anonymous account on this forum you really don't get much credit." is fallacious. Popularity=/=credibility. Additionally, I'm not anonymous. Daisies is the handle I use for everything, when it's available, and I'm not hiding my identity or location.

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

Forgot to respond to these 2 statements in my last reply.
First of all, that is a standard police practice that they use as a way to find inconsistencies in someone's story. They ask the same questions over and over again to see if you ever change your answer, and if you do change you answer (which happens a lot, sometimes even with people telling the truth who just slip up), they use that against you. It's not considered evidence, but it's still an inconsistency that can be used against you if the case goes to court.

Second of all, I was talking about devices with open wires, "motherboard" and timer inside a case. To an untrained eye, it looks like a barebones (without explosive components) case bomb. In the context of what happened, it seems like there was racial profiling involved (on the school's end. Makes no sense that they didn't take any of the necessary actions during a bomb threat, but still claim that they thought it was a bomb) but everyone was jumping to this conclusion before we knew any of this, and even know we shouldn't assume everyone involved was racially profiling him. It's likely that a couple of people were, but extremely unlikely that a majority of them were. From what we know about the story, the police took standard protocol. One of the officers, according to some media sources, made dumb comments, but that doesn't mean the rest agree with him. (I believe they say he said "That's who I was expecting", which looks like it's a racially charged comment, but it could have easily been taken out of context. I'm suspicious of that officer, but I'm not going to judge him until I know all of what he said.)

In closing, I would hesitate to make conclusive statements on the situation itself (I was more-so talking about things surrounding the actual situation, like the rewards and the way people/mainstream media has reacted) until all the evidence is gathered and apparent. Until that time, we can only participate in conjecture. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but hopefully a sufficient amount of concrete evidence is provided soon to make things more clear. I'm not judging the boy, just pointing out the possibility that he was acting like a typical mischievous teenager (and if it turns out that's the case, then I would judge him. But there's no evidence to support this. He certainly doesn't look like a mischievous boy, but looks can be deceiving). The only thing I'm judging is the people who are rewarding him and labeling him as a hero.

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

News Agencies sometimes over simplify facts to make the story simple. Honestly it doesn't really make a difference how long he had the clock if it was a day or a year.

I think the gifts and other things he has gotten are ways for people show their support. They want to make it extremely vocal what happened is wrong and what he is doing (being interested in STEM) is cool. If you don't think he should have gotten I have nothing more to say.

UNFAIR CHARITY?!?
I have literally nothing say about this except, WOW.
9/11 victims families were people who actually needed it.

So what is your name then? Are you on an FRC team or other FIRST team?

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

Daisies, you appear to be a CD troll, with your only three posts in the last few hours all getting negative responses. While opposing views on CD are welcome, I don't think your writings are. But as all things CD, I'm going to take you at face value.

I'm not going to go back and attempt to refute your points by a point by point response. I will respond to main part of your "ideas"

-- Family and their activities in the Muslim community. Yay for them. They are devout Muslims and are doing things to protect their faith. The father tried to stop a Florida "minister" from doing a mass burning of the Koran (the equivalent of Christianity Bible). This isn't the 1500-1600's and the Crusades. Who / what / when they worship is up to them. I worship the "Sourcebook of Electronic Components"

-- It's a RadioShack clock, not something he built. Who cares? I've left a huge swath of disassembled radios, TVs, high voltage neon signs, computers, two and four stroke engines both gas and diesel equipment, and who knows what of junk components from electronic recyclers. Some of it got repurposed, some of it was junked after I learned about it, some more I paid serious dollars to get it reassembled and working. ALL OF IT WAS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE. He's 14, there are posts saying "Well when I could first crawl I took apart grandma's TV. Good for them, good for this kid at 14, he's trying to learn. The 28 year old lit teacher also had a learning experience. You are never too old to take stuff apart. Get a butter knife out and take your laptop apart right now!!! Learn something!

-- The school got into their "Zero Tolerance Policy" roadmap where all destinations are Failtown. "It's beeping. What is that? It's a clock. Ok, shut it off and sit down." One possible path. The path they took was "What is that? It's a clock. Looks like a bomb. Shut it off and when class is over we will start the process of `bringing things to school that do not have school district numbers' ". Which all end up with police action.

The school called the police from a town that has an avowed Muslim hater as a Mayor. Four officers show up and question a 14 year old boy, without his parents, a lawyer for 3 hours about a clock. After that, hand cuffed (for his safety!!) and transported to a detention center to be photographed and fingerprinted.

-- Treasures heaped upon this student. People heard and did individual things. It wasn't a coordinated effort. The President invited him to come to the Whitehouse. And while people are out there going "Of course, our Muslim President is helping a Muslim kid (false, the president is a Christian) I look at it as more of a geek President is helping a geek kid.

Facebook, Apple, Intel, etc, etc "Come see us". Easy to do for them. I'd rather see them come to the school and present to the TEACHERS on how cool geeks can be and the geek tech we use. Come present to students that geeks that have made their lives better come in multiple shades of skin colors, multiple religions, multiple countries, multiple sexual preferences and are all "people". But it appears that I don't tell them what to do and it's not my money.

In "Foster World" (tm) this would have been handled differently. In this Earth timeline it was handled poorly. They could have taken all that money, time and future effort to reach out to more future roboteers.

-- Lastly, please don't visit my house. My workbench is covered with devices with wires all over, flashing LED in both lights and 8 segment display formats. Lots of the stuff is mounted in Sugru, a white Playdo like substance that looks a lot like movie C4. The stuff is great for building little containers for small circuits until I win Powerball and can buy a 3D printer.

-- Summary: Kid new to ripping things apart does a project and takes it to school. School invokes "Zero tolerance == Zero Success cause we dump stuff on the police". Police handle the situation badly. World sees and tries to right a single injustice.


It catches Daisies eye, since it's tech related, but if they would Google search "other screwed up thing in the world" they will find a litany of "Wow is that going on?" things in the world and see that other people are trying to fix other things. We all pick the stuff that we think is wrong and try to fix it.

I'm a robotics Mentor. I'm trying to improve my small corner of this Earth Timeline. There is way too much broken things in this timeline. If you have time Daisies to complain about how other people are making a difference, it's clear that YOU are not working hard enough to make a difference. I run my test "is it helping?" In this case one kid, and since I deal in the "one roboteer success" program, they pass, so I turn back to my job as a Mentor.

Good luck Daisies on helping the world.

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

Slight nitpick: Chris Hadfield is a CSA astronaut... Hence why he would be doing a show in Toronto. AFAIK out of all CSA astronauts over the years, he's the most accomplished (even getting to be commander over an ISS Expidition).

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

With respect we should be careful about making such accusations. The teacher(s) may have been confused. It may be zero-tolerance school policy to call the police (also maybe a bad idea but made by the school board not the teachers, counselors and principals). Then the police dropped it (though not nearly as quickly as they should have).

The one thing we can report, from the facts, is that the mayor's statement was ridiculous and *phobic. And we can conclude that many kids of all races and religions get in trouble at school for silly stuff (chewing pop-tarts into the shape of a gun etc).

This student was the victim of a huge injustice. But I blame the bureaucracy!

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

Actually it looks nothing like an IED except the kind you see in the movies. No explosives, shrapnel, or bomb casing (like pressure cooker). Closed it looked like a nondescript case. Which looks more like an IED than the wires since IEDs should be nondescript, Our robotics lab is currently a mess. it has circuit boards and wires all over the place. Some of which would make effective bomb timers. We also have air rifles in the same place, but that is a different story.

As far as the school goes, I don't think the teacher did anything wrong. Something you have questions about, send to the administration. The administration is handicapped a little because privacy laws prevent them from telling their side the story. (Student may have made previous threatening statements, etc ), Legitimate bomb threats/hoaxes are serious business. I have no reason to think that was the case here, this in an hypothetical. I do know if my child was suspended based on the evidence in the media, if this could not be resolved peacefully, the school would be talking to lawyers.

I agree. Ahmed is reportedly Muslim. Antisemitism isn't the right phobia.

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

QFT.

I used to work for a company that makes countermeasures for IEDs. They look like garbage or backpacks (or cars) and are not put into hard cases. They don't have timers with giant cartoonish LCD displays. The electrics are made using cell phones as remote triggers, not AC coils and 9V batteries.

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

So when you say "QFT == Quoted for Truth", you quoted both paragraphs.

This paragraph, I have a real problem with:

The paragraph starts out with "send it to the administration". Spend a few Google seconds to find the MacArthur High School School Policy. Spend a few minutes reading it. You will find that most things that have to do with "not conforming to the rules" end up with the police. I refer to these policys as "Flow charts to Fail". You should now Google your school policy and see how many things quickly get dumped into the police process.

It wasn't a legit bomb threat. She stuffed the "bomb" into a drawer. She then carted the "bomb" to the administration. The "bomb" set on their desk until the police arrived. The police questioned the student with the "bomb" present. So I'm going to take a wild stab and think that nobody thought it was a "bomb".

The last part, "talking to lawyers" is how we got into this mess. Because people sue and school districts had to pay out lots of money, they now dump everything to the police. Days of a Vice Principal yelling at your child for being a cheesehead (*) are long gone. So if you can say "I'd sue" you get the "Flow chart to fail" as your reward.

So if you QFT, make sure what you are "QFT" is truth and not something else.


The word you want is "Islamophobia". And since we are learning new words today try "Christianophobia" it is the extreme fear of Christians or the Christian faith. And in honor of the Pope arriving in the US, let's add "Catholic-phobi" is fear of, hostility towards or opposition to the Catholic Church.

Don't confuse any of them with "Cathisophobia", since it is the fear of sitting down and also is otherwise known as "Thaasophobia".

(*) Fourth generation Packer fan here, I can use the word cheesehead.

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

Hasty quoting. Not that I agree/disagree but not what I meant to do. Fixed.

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

I've seen several teams that were completely non-white-male, including an all-girls' team from Hawaii at the Wisconsin Regional one year and several teams from the Israel Regional and the Mexico City Regional in St. Louis. I'm so glad I got to go that year (although watching Will.I.Am try to freestyle was atrocious).

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

How did you and I come from the same hometown? Has Kenosha gotten that bad?

Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?
 

The fact of the case is you're ignoring some facts. Everything I've read says the teacher kept the clock in their desk all day. the school didn't over react! They did the exact opposite of what that should have done. They should have called the police and evacuated if they did the correct procedure.

The biggest issue with this is the fact the whole thing was judged on a CASING!

If you take the casing off of every electronic device, the jumble of wires on an iPhone looks more like a bomb than an alarm clock would look. The clock was inside of a pencil case. when you opened the pencil case, you saw an LED display for the clock and 2 or 3 wires. If it was an explosive, they would have seen packs of explosives somewhere in there. The whole fact of the matter is as soon as the clock was shown to her, she should have gotten rid of it as soon as possible and the school should have been under a code red. The reason people keep reaching out to him with gifts is because he was wronged by the school system and the school system was wronged by the under reaction of the teacher. The best thing for the police to have done at the time was taken him into custody and figure out the situation. They did their job. This case is just a very weird case... period.