I’ve gone over to the Taupe Side.
And now I understand this post.
I just read the first page, and I have to say that “refudiate” is an awesome word.
I was pretty disturbed to read Richard Dawkins has been a flaming asshole about Ahmed Mohamed, the kid who should have apparently known better than to bring a clock to a Texas school while looking Arabic.
I’m a liberal and I count him as one of our own, recent douchebagery displayed notwithstanding.
Given the lawsuit and Dawkins’ correct observation that the kid didn’t do anything technically challenging for someone half his age, it’s sure starting to look like the family was trying to make a point, as well as get some money out of it.
I mean, the kid basically put a clock in a box, said it was a clock, but it clearly looked like a bomb. Dumbest stunt ever, but no one ever got poor doing a shakedown on handwringing PC types. Maybe some other kid should put his dick in a box, take it to physics class and call it a pulley, and then his family can sue the school district when they take disciplinary action.
Richard Dawkins (and Bill Maher) are raving Islamophobes.
Just out of curiosity… what exactly defines Dawkins as a “liberal”? Is being an atheist and a scientist really all it takes? (I read his science books; I am aware of but not really interested in his atheism; I have not been aware of any reason to look to him for political ideas.) Once upon a time, these would not have been partisan political identities.
If it was a stunt, wow, did our incredible Republic not rise to the challenge. Aren’t we supposed to be the greatest nation of Earth?
I thought this was the Stupid Liberal Idea thread, is your side feeling left out? We have another thread for that you know, much more traffic there.
Fair enough, perhaps self reflection is needed on my part.
it seems pretty incontrovertible to me that he is a liberal, and his take on the clock was indeed bullshit. On the other hand, it is not correct to call him an islamophobe.
I remain a big fan of him and his work, despite my disappointment with him on that matter.
I’d say that the whole situation was designed to take advantage of stupid liberals. And a lot of really smart liberals actually think this kid meant well.
I see. This conspiracy was three-dimensional chess. Dad talks his 14 year old son to cannibalize a clock and take it to his school where he cleverly shows it to his science teacher and then complies with his suggestion of putting it away for the day. It goes off, planned of course, the coup de grace. He then manipulated teachers, the principle and police officers by telling them it was a clock and was completely to blame for them not evacuating the school because they thought it was a bomb instead.
The kid didn’t mean well, or ill, he’s a kid. It is the responsibility of adults to act like them.
“No, no, dig up stupid!”
From what I know of your posting history, your intended formulation is ten parts stupid to seven parts clueless, but this particular snippet cracks me up.
Anyway, are there examples of Dawkins “raving” about Islam? I am now curious. I’ve seen him mocking it, and its mystical claims are indeed quite mockable as are those of any religion, but actual raving?
Of course, the whole plot would have fallen apart if the kid has simply gotten detention for letting his alarm go off after being told to silence it and put it away and if the school authorities had not pretended it might have been a bomb, (without evacuating the school in case it was), and if the police had not questioned the kid for a couple of hours (while the kid correctly identified his object as a clock) without calling his parents.
In order to get the handwringing PC types involved, it took a number of idiotic anti-PC types to misbehave/behave stupidly for several hours.
The lawsuit is dumb and should be dismissed. OTOH, it was set up by people in authority behaving dumbly.
Problem is, none of that bad behavior was negligent or inappropriate. If there’s one thing that schools value more than PC, it’s being risk averse. Of course they evacuated the school.
The suit has no merit. And the kid should not have been treated as some kind of hero. I mean seriously, he puts a clock in a box and gets offered internships at major tech companies? Seems to me that he’s already benefitted quite a bit from this situation.
They didn’t evacuate the school – there’s no evidence that anyone in authority in the school actually thought it was a real bomb – only that they thought it might be a fake bomb. No actions were taken to protect anyone else in the school – only to arrest the kid with the clock.
And there’s no evidence that the kid plotted or manipulated or did anything other than bringing something he’d been tinkering with to school.
That doesn’t mean the lawsuit has merit, but I’m not going to blame the kid for that.
They didn’t evacuate the school, you fucking numbskull.
As iiandyiiii notes, none of the actions they took suggest that they actually thought it was a dangerous device. Indeed, if it HAD actually been a dangerous device, basically nothing they did would have reduced the risk or made the teachers and students at the school safer. All their actions succeeded in doing was make them look like idiots.
I don’t think the lawsuit should go anywhere either, but as tomndebb suggests, it never would have come to this if it weren’t for morons who think like you.
Objection, your honor! Facts not in evidence.
They didn’t evacuate the school. They didn’t call the bomb squad. They didn’t even remove Mohamed or the “bomb” from school grounds for two hours.
Have you ever considered not commenting on subjects that you know nothing about? Granted, it would put a major dent in your posting volume, but to most people the improvement in quality would be adequate compensation.