…I woulda yelled “DUCK!” but I thought you saw it.
I dunno, I’ve read pretty much this whole thread. That we live in such fucked up times blows my mind. (At least for four forty-minute periods.)
Do the cops think that a group of hackers means machettes are involved? I did their test today stoned and hungry and still got 90%. I’m not even American.
How come the kid hasn’t been invited to Greenwich? Has Whitehurst Luxury Timepieces been in touch with his people?
If Ahmed builds a clock and gets to go to NASA, is it because time has something to do with space?
Yeah, I’m a teacher. Yesterday I pulled a kid aside and told him no harm, no foul, but ixnay on the Hitler jokes, third grader, some people are sensitive to them. I understand about handling kids who may not have a real social awareness of people around them.
And I understand the difference between that and a bomb threat.
If a kid brought in a digital display with wires attached, yeah, i’d pull the kid aside at the very least and say, “I love your mechanical aptitude [just like I complimented yesterday’s kid on his love of history], but be aware of how other folks might see your clock.” I might mention it to admin, as a precaution against other folks misunderstanding what he had.
If I had any question about whether he might be planning a hoax with it, I’d mention that to admin. When I discover it in my classroom and the kid tells me it’s a clock, I might have reasonable doubt: maybe he was planning on dropping it off somewhere later as a highly ill-advised prank. I dunno, and the admin is in the best position to determine that.
The administrators, however, were able to gather all the information. Nothing in the kid’s actions pointed to a plan to hoax. Everything in his actions pointed to a kid not thinking about how his actions might be misinterpreted. Administration completely screwed up.
Now, is it clearly not a bomb? At the point where I can see the digital display, and the motherboard, and the wires, of course it’s clearly not a bomb. The whole thing about explosive devices is that they contain explosives. The wires, digital display, etc., are just garnishes. I don’t have to be a bomb expert to notice the lack of anything that can actually explode, any more than I have to be a veterinarian to determine that a leash and a collar are not an attack dog.
The concern about whether he was gonna pull a hoax is a legitimate concern, and I don’t fault teachers for kicking that concern upstairs. The concern about whether it was a real bomb? Not legitimate.
Like people who double down on this point even after everything I posted from the Vox article?
But Morgenstern, dear: you are not a “thing”. No matter how intellectually challenged you may be, you are a person and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
Apparently everyone is still contesting your characterization of the dad, SlackerInc, you cretin. Surprisingly, your argument, “Hey, Vox!” failed to convince anyone. Especially when the Vox article itself had nothing in it supporting your conclusion. You are conflating “doing things” with being a “publicity hound.”
Again, you may be bitter because this kid does things, whereas your brilliance led you to punk your sister with your Atari 800. Sorry, but your limitations are no reason to take it out on this kid and his family.
Yeah, you’re probably right. My rant really isn’t against Ahmed. I’m just bugged by the combination of Citizen Ruth and Queen for a day that elevates any individual who’s story is not fundamentally different from many others across the country but somehow generates a critical mass of “buzz”, into a lottery winner or pariah depending on the whims of the public.
For some reason it just doesn’t seem to me to be healthy for us as a society to have our attention an resources to be focused on an individual based primarily on emotional appeal, popularity and luck.
In any case I’ll give an unironic “Way to go Ahmed! I wish you the best of luck”, and then shuffle off to go yell at a bunch of kids to get off my lawn.
Why do you think his engineering teacher warned him?
a) He knew that the other teachers, on seeing what Ahmed could do technically, would say, “Yeah, that’s okay, but you’re no SlackerInc, man, he was a REAL genius,” and that’d crush Ahmed’s spirit.
b) It was all part of the engineering teacher’s master plan to take over the world, with his trusty minion Ahmed.
c) He knew that some of the other teachers were racist idiots, and he didn’t want Ahmed to get into trouble.
In other words, the putative obviousness of its non-bombness was not so very self-evident after all. And yes: I think the whole plan was to use this publicity stunt to troll a little slice of bigoted, provincial, nativist Red America so as to predictably curry favor with a much larger slice of Blue America. It worked like a charm: Francis Underwood would approve. (Would be interesting to browse the family’s Netflix watching history to see if House of Cards is indeed on there.)
Damn, you really do think you’re smart, don’t you? Bless your heart.
No, dummy, the putative obviousness of its non-bombness (the fact that it wasn’t a bomb, if you want to write clearly instead of tying large words onto your dumb sentence like sequins on a turd) is, not to be redundant or anything, self-evident. Explosive devices have explosives.
Then you think he’s a freakin’ genius. “I know! I’ll troll people with a fake bomb **by telling them it’s not a bomb! That’ll get them!”
This was Ahmed’s own recollection. If that’s not good enough for you, then sorry, no: I don’t have a recording of the conversation to link you to. But given your extremely strict standards of evidence, how do you know any of this happened at all? Does Texas even exist? I’ve never been there. Videotape doesn’t prove anything: it can be faked with CGI. :rolleyes:
It’s been a long while since I’ve been in front of a class, but this seems to be the most reasonable thinking I’ve seen.
One question I haven’t seen asked is if the Admin called in the engineering teacher (back in the 1960’s we called them the ‘shop’ teachers, I guess they’ve been upgraded) whom he originally showed it too and did he tell them “it’s a clock, the kid is fine, just proud of his building stuff.”
Which, as the quoted article noted, he did until a teacher complained about it and he showed her to explain it.
To borrow a quote from a SF series I like: “…Truly brainless. Not simply stupid. Bar-ain-less. As in: brains of a carrot.”