You know what bugs me about this? If they really thought it was a bomb, why didn’t they behave like it?
The English teacher sees it, says it looks like a bomb, and then keeps it. If she really thought it was a bomb, why did she not do something like evacuate the room or pretty much anything other than sit near it? She gives it to the principal, who also just hangs on to it. He calls the police, who arrive and interrogate the kid, all with this thing still around. Does this sound like what people would do if they honestly thought there was a bomb? No bomb squad, no evacuation, nothing. So if they didn’t really think it was a bomb, why the big song and dance? They punished the kid because a few people thought it looked like a bomb, even though he never once claimed it was anything but a clock?
Personally, I think hers was a very bad idea. There is no way on earth a school committee of some kind is capable of determining whether the item was a bomb or not. The police SHOULD have been called because they would be the only local authorities with the expertise to figure out if it’s dangerous.
Unfortunaely, in their zeal to arrest SOMEBODY for SOMETHING, they went way past that and leveled a hoaxing charge, for which (if the story is accurate) they have no evidence whatsoever.
It’s clearly not obvious enough for some or even most people.
If nothing else, I’m glad for having have the opportunity to reminisce about my nifty little faux grade-hacking program. I forgot to mention earlier that in addition to simulating the dial tone and high pitched modem tone pretty effectively, in between it also simulated a quick succession of touchtone beeps. The only thing I couldn’t simulate with PS/2 technology was the sound of the phone ringing. But fortunately in those days many BBS’s would pick up on the first ring anyway. And in any event, no one I pranked noticed the lack of ringing.
Yeah, the guy is in every picture of Ahmed. He totally dominated the interview on MSNBC. He elbowed Ahmed in his rush to get to the microphones at the press conference.
Wait. None of those things happened. He wasn’t even in the interview on MSNBC. I may have seen him quoted in one story, but I could not tell you his name (and I have followed this story as close as anyone not in Irving TX could.
How again is this guy a publicity hound? Is this just another super sekrit double bluff three-ahead move on his part?
I actually think this kind of thinking is a load of bollocks. A 14 year old kid is standing there with a few wires and a circuit board claiming its a clock, why the fuck does anybody need a degree in bombology to figure out if its dangerous or not? What sort of useless cretins are you lot, are you all living in so much fear that you see bombs in very wire and semi autos in every kid playing with his food?
What sort of useless fuck can’t look at a few wires in a childs hand and determine if its explosive or not? And what sort of culture makes that sort of willful ignorance acceptable? “The local authorities should have been called?” Give me a fucking break.
And btw, I grew up in Northern Ireland during the troubles, I know full well the dangers of homemade bombs.
Also, I am a cord cutter and do not have network TV or cable news, but a Google image search shows many images of this father standing at impromptu podiums with news cameras and microphones gathered around. The screenshots show graphics for CBS News, CNN, etc.
Please read the Vox article (no one’s idea of a right-wing site) and tell me he does not fit the definition. (I actually think Dopers are less stubborn and hidebound than people most places, and that there might be some mea culpas coming from people wiping egg off their faces shortly.)
There is absolutely no difference between the thoughts, “It looks like a clock to me, so it’s a clock” and, “It looks like a bomb to me, so it’s a bomb.”
These are public fficials responsible for the lives of perhaps hundreds of children. Someone alleged it was a bomb. It would have been grossly irresponsible not to check it out, and to think a school committee was competent to do it is simply idiotic.
None of that means the official response wasn’t inappropriate and over the top. There was no reason whatsoever to arrest the kid, or even seize his clock once it was known to be clock.
Sure, let’s blame the father now since we can’t convince the world this Muslim bomb making kid really intended to, wait, SlackerInc, what was he intending to do by hiding the clock in his backpack for the rest of the day?
Blame the bigoted, small minded authorities and their anti-Muslim hysteria if you want a villain. Don’t put any of this in the student or his father.
I’ve already read it. Yet, I feel no egg on my face.
Most of your take on this seems to be raising your eyebrows, pointing at nothing and going “See? Aha!” Some part of it also seems like jealousy because you’ve been unappreciated for your mad BASIC hacker skillz.
He’s still posting in the thread, Andy, but he’s not going to answer your question or mine. He’s too busy bragging about the hoaxes he created when he was a kid.
If Slacker had built it, it would have been a hoax bomb. Thinking that everybody’s like oneself is a common trait. (For example, it explains why right-wingers think liberals are motivated by fear and disgust.)
-Teacher hears beeping, says whats that?
-Kid takes out bunch of wires and says its a clock he made.
-Teacher needs management assistance to determine if this is true or not, but unfortunately the management can’t tell either so they have to ring the police.
-Dumbass on the internet defends them by saying “They aren’t qualified to know what it was”.
Complete and utter bullshit. “Once it was known to be a clock”, are you for fucking real? Stop defending shitty adults.
To some people it is outlandish. Some people just don’t get the idea of intellectual pursuits outside of what’s necessary for making a buck or earning a grade.
Years ago, when having a computer at home was a relatively new thing, a guy on a programming team I was working with brought in some Mandelbrot printouts he had created on his home computer and was proudly showing them off. Everyone thought it was cool except this one guy (the one who wore a suit to work every day) who couldn’t understand why anyone would spend their spare time on such things.
For some people, intellectual curiosity is an alien mindset.
-Teacher [waits for several periods to seek] *management assistance to determine if this is true or not, but unfortunately the management can’t tell either so they have to ring the police. *
Never mind that the teacher was so obviously concerned that s/he immediately cleared the classroom, and thereafter the authorities evacuated the school. That seems a reasonable thing to do to protect students. But it never happened.
Except that what people seem to keep ignoring, or intentionally eliding, is that before his English teacher actually reported him for the device, his *engineering *teacher warned him not to show it to any other teachers!
P.S. I take it no one is any longer contesting the characterization of the kid’s father as a “publicity hound” at least?