Just had to chime in, eh?
That much is true. 
You really want to use Atticus there, now that we know he turned out to be a racist after all?
How do you figure that was a kangaroo court/show trial? Adams got most of those soldiers acquitted, and the other two got reduced sentences.
That post really wound him up.
Seconded.
And now, as if this was a mediocre police procedural, a late twist enters our story. This post argues (with visual evidence) that Ahmed didn’t build a clock, merely repackaged it. While I don’t agree with the article that it necessarily means that Ahmed intended it as a hoax bomb, it might indicate some amount of deception on Ahmed’s part.
Princhester, did you ever suggest that Ahmed was trolling people?
This is what I am saying. Although I don’t agree with the author of the article that there was no racism/nativism involved. But trolling or pranking are certainly not worthy of elevating this kid to the next Woz. He’s closer to an anti-nativist version of the people who deceptively made those Planned Parenthood videos, except the crowd cheering him on doesn’t even know there is deception involved.
Everyone is contesting it, because it’s stupid.
Except he never was deceptive about that. For example:
He never claimed he made a fusion reactor or anything. He took about 20 minutes to rebuild a clock inside a pencil case because he thought it was cool.
Jesus.
Holy fuck you’re stupid. Zero percent reading comprehension. Absolutely appallingly fucking stupid.
He’s getting some of it now.
It indicates that an at least partially self-taught 14 year old boy who has never studied patent law is susceptible to the Dunning-Kruger effect, and is unaware that what he thinks of as “my awesome new invention!” isn’t as impressive an innovation to an adult.
Thanks for finding that article. But It’s not clear from the words he uses or, for that matter, many of the write-ups on the web that I’ve read. In the video on the NPR page you cite he calls it “my invention”. In this Dallas News article it says he “built” it in 20 minutes, not “rebuilt”. That’s probably the source of the confusion.
Jesus your-fucking-self. This is some srsly revisionist history. Do you really want me to embarrass the people who, earlier in this thread, were hailing him as a great prodigy who was going to be the next Elon Musk or something? Do you want me to cite the stories that did *not *quote him as this being something he just “rebuilt” or threw together but “invented” or “created”? I would bet a large sum of money (if I had one) that a majority of the people who are aware of this story do not know he just quickly rebuilt an already-existing clock.
BTW, if someone deserves to be “Queen for a day”, get the red carpet at the White House, etc., it’s this kid.
If you read the *Vox *piece and think my synopsis shows “zero percent reading comprehension”, and you really honestly believe that and aren’t just saying it to be a dick, then…I dunno. Black is white, up is down. Anyone can take any statement and just throw a bunch of curse words at it and call someone stupid. But you’re either trying to gaslight me, or you are not even remotely acquainted with reality.
to him - it is his invention- he moved it inside a ‘pencil case’ - thats how many new ideas start.
Don’t you remember being excited about some thing you accomplished, that to adults would be trivial?
even if he took clock bits from an electronic supply store and built a working clock from scratch - it still wouldn’t be an ‘invention’ in the patentable sense - but it would be something he would likely call his own.
How many new programmers think that thier version of “hello world” is an accomplishment simply because they managed to do it?
Yeah. People seem to be thinking, “If I brought a reassembled clock to my boss, MY boss wouldn’t be impressed!” But that’s projecting an adult-adult relationship on a teenager talking to his teacher.
I’m not in a position to say whether what he did was impressive or not for a 14-year-old: I was no unappreciated Boy Genius like Slacker, nor am I the sort of pitiful adult who sobs in public about how nobody recognizes his brilliance. But that doesn’t matter.
If his invention was a farce–if his “clock” was really just a handful of numbers drawn in crayon on a torn-up scrap of cardboard from a box of Froot Loops–it wouldn’t substantively affect the part of the story where he got arrested.
Here we are touching on the crux of the matter: Nobody ever believed it was a bomb. Nobody took any measures remotely appropriate for a bomb scare.
No evacuation, no bomb squad… Who do they think they are fooling?
Absolutely! And thank God we never, ever elected him President. OR his kid, a sleazy lawyer who defended murderous Negroes before the SCOTUS. And then there is that wife of his who Chris Christy, a known idiot, suggested be the face on the ten dollar bill. In his place, indeed!
Much as I think they overreacted, I think this kind of argument is missing a key point. It was clearly not a bomb. But it was not clearly not a hoax bomb, at least at first. And an unconvincing hoax bomb is still not something a kid should be bringing to school.
If teachers thought maybe he was planning on pulling some sort of bomb prank with it, they acted reasonably in kicking the issue upstairs, even if they knew for sure it wasn’t an actual bomb. The crime of pulling a bomb hoax does not depend on the skill with which the hoax bomb was made.
Again, though, there’s zero evidence that the kid intended to hoax anyone with it, and plenty of evidence that he had no such intent. Once it was kicked upstairs, the principal correctly investigated the issue; things went off the rails when the issue was escalated to the police.