There are a bunch of inbred morons out there, like SlackerInc, who seem to think that Ahmed built this to be a functioning time piece for himself.
This is a lesson for the kid about what it’s like to be smart in the land of the stupid. Thankfully social media exists, and has let him know that he is not alone.
The kid constructed a clock that not only tells the time but has a built-in racist detector - that’s kind of impressive.
Evidence? Did the clock count up or down? Either way, the fact that he brought it out only to show his science teacher argues against it being a gag.
I sometimes think that we expats have a clearer view of what America is turning into than the inmates have.
School safety is a big deal. Did you hear about the school that called HazMat when a kid brought a mercury thermometer to school? Even though the thermometer was unbroken!
Why do you think he intended to create a “gag bomb”, rather than just a clock, as he claims? Is it that outlandish that a kid who likes to tinker with electronics might make a home-made clock for fun?
From the picture I saw his clock consisted of a PCB, a digital display and a battery. Personally, if I was making a gag bomb I would include something that looked like some actual explosive. You know, the actual “bomb” bit.
If this kid was smart enough to realise that his teachers were such mouth breathing moronic paranoids that they would conclude it was a hoax bomb even if he left out the bomb, then he’s even smarter than he’s being portrayed.
I can’t wait until that whole clan of cunts die in a meth lab fire.
At age 13, my gag was more software based. I dare say also more sophisticated. I wrote a program in BASIC that simulated something like you saw in the movie “War Games”. It appeared to dial up the junior high school’s computer and even made a simulated dial tone, followed by a high pitched tone that was the same as my modem would make. Then if you typed in a social security number it would display the current quarter’s grades and allow them to be edited, using an array. I had surreptitiously gathered all the needed information from perusing the report cards of my sister and her and my friends; if you actually entered in a social security number for someone else it would just be stuck. But that didn’t matter because I only showed it to people that had their grades in there. It was great fun, and the last people I pranked with it were my parents–who were equal parts impressed and alarmed.
A couple years later a friend and I spent one summer experimenting with homemade explosives created with Drano and bleach. That was probably not legal, although this was the late 80’s and I don’t think people cared as much back then.
Princhester, if that was actually just a sincere and naive attempt to make a clock, then he is not about to set the tech world on fire. I was making more impressive electronic items with the soldering kit I got for Christmas when I was nine.
But I do give him more credit than that, and I think that he may well have been trolling people as you suggest. In which case, good job–but I don’t have to go along with it. If it’s a coincidence that his dad is a publicity hound who has inserted himself into high-profile controversies involving Islam and rednecks before, then that is one heck of a coincidence in a country of 300 million people.
When asked, did you say your little BASIC program was a clock?
I made lots of bombs when I was a kid- real ones, that could do serious damage. I never brought any to school, though, and none of them had digital detonators. So, I’m probably better able to judge what the kid was doing than you are. If he wanted to make a hoax bomb, he would have included an explosives package.
Not if he wanted deniability. I never said he was stupid. I think the people who are taking it at face value that this was his best effort at making a clock are the ones who underestimate his intelligence. The general public reaction to this story would fit much better if he was a lot younger or known to have an intellectual disability like Down syndrome.
I would add that you are not better able to judge this than I am, because his intended audience was not people who are experts at making bombs. Similarly, if I had shown my BASIC program to someone who was highly tech savvy, they would have been able to pick up on the fact that the little lights on the modem were not doing anything.
Ooh! Ooh! Where do I sign up for your fanclub, ya pathetic fuckin manchild?
The key point, of course, is that if kids want to prank, they prank. Tell me a reasonably accomplished technerd kid (not the boy-genius calibre of Slacker, of course, just reasonably accomplished) is going to pull a bomb prank, and I expect to see:
-a device with a timer and wires. So far, check.
-a device with something that looks like a teenager’s idea of explosives–whether a couple of road flares, a wad of putty, or something else. Nope.
-a device left somewhere that it’ll be found. Nope.
-a kid snickering and telling his friends about what he’s done. Nope.
-a kid who doesn’t fucking tell everyone that he’s built a clock. Good god almighty.
The lengths people will go to to deny that there’s bigotry in Texas, Jesus Christ.
So let me understand the plan here.
He made a fake bomb that looked like a clock and brought it to school as a hoax. When there, he brought it to the engineering teacher and told him it was a clock. After showing the teacher this, he put it in his own bag and left it there, showing nobody else until after hearing a beep a different teacher made him take it out again.
Thats one hell of a devilish hoax that is. Me, I would have left the fake bomb somewhere to be discovered, showing it to a teacher and telling him its a clock is the sort of high level thinking I just can’t begin to understand.
Trolling people by showing it to a teacher then keeping it out of sight all day, its just brilliant!
It would have been a better ‘hoax bomb’ had he left his backpack in a different room/hallway by ‘accident’.
Backpacks - without antyhing in them - make pretty good hoax bombs.
So, alternative A is: the kid takes about 20 minutes to whip up a functioning clock from a set of various parts in order to show to his Engineering teacher his interest in this kind of activity. In turn, school personnel overreact, adopt a zero-tolerance stance, call in police, who also overreact, and handcuff a school kid. Each element of which, by the way, has occurred in many many instances in many other settings before.
Or alternative B: in a feat of 11 dimensional chess rivaling the most implausible movie plot line, this child and his father hatched a plot to have school personnel and police dramatically overreact and convey overtones of racism. They were able to pull this all off even though their plot started with the kid immediately that morning showing his teacher the clock that he built and inerringly referring to it as a clock.
Anyone who believes alternative B is the better explanation is just a fucking imbecile.
I agree. I wasn’t much into electronics when I was a kid but had a brother who was and who would have made a clock like that before breakfast. If your point were merely that the guy’s tech skills are getting overblown, I agree. But that’s just normal “15 minutes of fame” hyperbole and largely irrelevant to what occurred here.
Unless you just want to put him down.
The really great thing about a conspiracy theory is that the lack of evidence for it is evidence for what a truly excellent sekrit conspiracy it is. If his “bomb” had looked more like a bomb you would be saying it was a hoax bomb, but since it didn’t, that’s evidence of what a clever hoax bomb it was.
As always, the question becomes: exactly what would it take to convince you this story is about a boy who brought to school a homemade clock, and intended nothing more? Is there anything that would convince you?
Offspring of a female who believed dinosaurs and people coexisted are bound to have more than a few loose wires in their heads.
You had a pretty good rebuttal going until you made this wild leap. If you look at my posting history in the Elections folder you will see that I am solidly on the left. And not just in a pro-forma way to build some sort of concern troll cred. Deny bigotry exists in Texas? Good lord, I will take a back seat to no one in acknowledging or even trumpeting the fact that the entire South is filled with moronic, reactionary rednecks who hold this country back from being more like an enlightened, humane European-style social democracy as I would prefer it to be. (If I thought Bernie Sanders could win in November 2016, he would be my guy.)
But at the same time, I see more shades of grey then so many of the binary thinkers I find around me on both the left and right. The PC lockstep reaction to this story is a great example of the left’s version of “truthiness”, what you might call “too good to check”.
At this distance, I don’t know how I could be convinced either way. I was never saying I would bet the farm on my theory of the case; more just that it makes me roll my eyes that everyone is so willing to just accept his story at face value without any skepticism whatsoever. I at least give you credit for not buying into the “future MIT student” hype.
But do you really think it is a complete coincidence that his father is a publicity hound?
That, and just making the trolling too obvious.