I don’t know where you’d get that idea. My older son played with all those “50 electronic experiments” in a box that Radioshack sold, and had breadboards and wires and made games with flashing lightbulbs when he was in elementary school. He even did a robotics event the first year he was in Science Olympiad and I took physics in college. But I’ve never done any engineering. I haven’t a clue what a pcb is or a shroud is and I can’t tell a countdown clock from a bomb. I fixed a toaster once.
It would be nice if the average college educated American had a little engineering education, but it just doesn’t happen.
All that said, since the school did not evacuate, it’s pretty clear that they believed Ahmed. Since he never acted like he was either trying to blow up the school or hoaxing them, I can’t figure out why they called in the police. Detention would have been more than enough if they felt he broke the Code of Conduct - though for a brand new freshman I think a warning would have been more appropriate.
One can have intellectual interests yet not care about the Flemish primitives. One can have intellectual interests and not care about deconstructing alarm clocks. People are intellectually interested in and curious about different things.
@3scoutsmom - post #180 gives one person’s opinion on the answer to your question. If the quoted material is correct, I read it as it hinges upon whether a “breadboard” was utilized or a commercially manufactured Printed Circuit Board was used in the device.
But really for the purposes of this discussion, what was “invented” is really a secondary issue.
PG: I absolutely agree with you that people have different intellectual interests. The question I find interesting is what level of knowledge, across disciplines, we expect average college grads to have.
Well I find the idea that a college grad should “know” highly technical stuff and be able to miraculously tell whether something is a bomb or not is ludicrous. And frankly I found the “I thought it was obvious, a transformer with shrouds, duh” to be pretentious.
Hey, I know what a transformer is. But to know whether it’s dangerous or not, you have to know if it’s an Autobot or a Decepticon.
I would just like to note that the fact that this wasn’t a bomb is kind of a red herring. Nobody thought it was a bomb. If a kid brought a squirt gun that looked like a real gun to school and showed it to a teacher, he’d get in big trouble, but they probably wouldn’t lock down the school. They might call the police though, especially if they thought the kid was planning to scare people into thinking he had a real gun.
So why was this kid unable to convince the school authorities (and the police) that he didn’t intend to scare anybody, and that he didn’t mean to make something that looked like a bomb? It could well be that it was because he is a Muslim and that they refused to believe anything he said. Or it could be because he said something that raised doubts in their minds about what he was intending to do. We’ll never know the truth, though, because unless they recorded the interrogation, we can’t really believe anybody’s version of it.
I am holding the title “worst parent ever” while living pretentiously living in my little tech shell. All I meant is that the components are recognizable as not explodey things - no dynamite, no C4 embedded with nails, no matchheads packed into a pipe. I don’t expect people to know exactly how these circuit assemblies work, just that they are pieces of electronic junk and not anything dangerous. I listed the components for the curious. It’s hard to tell from the picture but would be much more obvious in actual life. As a techie, English is not my first language, nor are any of the others.
I don’t think Ahmed added the power cord, most likely just took an alarm clock out of its case and put it into that pencil case. I tried to zoom in on the connections between the cord, some floating power switch looking thing, and the transformer, and it looks like they have shrink tubing (I have lots in my garage, most people don’t) over the connections. Most hobbyists would skip this though it would be routine for a mass-produced commercial product.
I apologize if this has already been covered. I haven’t had the time to read this whole thread. Elsewhere, I read that Mohamed told MSNBC: “In middle school I was called a terrorist, called a bomb maker, just because of my race.” I find this very sad and troubling. However, especially in light of the injustices he had already experienced in the past, wouldn’t he or his parents reasonably deduce that bringing a metal box with a not-easily identifiable device inside it a few days after the anniversary of 9-11 might cause problems? Wouldn’t you as a parent (who wants to protect your child and shield him from any further discrimination/injustice as much as possible) advice him to at least talk to his teachers before bringing such a device to school?
No one said you’re the worst parent ever, so there’s no need to play the martyr here.
What does dynamite look like? I’ve seen Bond movies, the Bourne Identity series, and some old episodes of MacGyver so I have a vague idea. I don’t know what you mean by C4 - yet another “tech jargon” as far as I’m concerned. Now that I’ve googled it, I know what you mean by a circuit assembly, but how the heck would I know if a given one was set to do something bad or not? I wouldn’t touch one of those on my computer with a 10-foot pole. That’s why I pay an IT guy.
I’m sorry, I still think it is supremely odd and self-focused to think that “everyone” should recognize the components of your little hobby, any more than I expect the average person to know the difference between a triple lutz and a salchow (to use busdriver’s example of skating). It’s that kind of assumption - that everyone else cares - which is why companies like Apple have ascended – because they (correctly) figured out that in the real world, most people simply aren’t interested and don’t want to have to become quasi-experts in things they don’t care about.
Note that this has nothing to do with whether I think the school was right or wrong - I’m agnostic on that.
To me, it looks quite convincingly like a thing that would go on top of the explodey thing to make the explodey thing go bang. The container of C4 or whatever could already be in the school.
I know what the inside of a clock looks like for the same reason I know how to install a toilet- my father was a plumber and I was raised around tradespeople who introduced me to electronics, plumbing, etc.
Otoh I have several degrees in the humanities ( including one called arts & humanities) and can’t tell you the first thing about art because I don’t care. I’m uncultured and can think of few things more boring than staring at a painting.
I don’t expect the school to know what a bomb or clock looks like, but I do expect them to act like reasonable human beings to a CHILD. Everything I’ve seen indicates that they grossly failed on that count.
Studies have shown that the more innocent you are, the more vehemently you will deny being involved in a crime. Guilty people try to mask their stress by reacting calmly. Police react exactly the opposite; the more vehemently someone denies involvement, the more they feel the person is lying.
I would not hesitate to send my son in to school with a project like this, and often do, though I would have made him remove the power cord and use only the 9V battery. An ungrounded metal case is poor design practice for plug-in electronics.
What troubles me is the reaction of one of my Facebook friends and his friends, who are vehemently defending the school’s actions. These are all Jews, who feel that the US is at war with radical Islam, and that war totally justifies the arrest of Ahmed. These are the same people who post a lot about anti-Semitism in the US, and yet they don’t see any irony/hypocrisy/disconnect in believing that the very fact that Ahmed is Muslim verifies his arrest.
To them, it doesn’t matter that this was not a bomb and that school officials seemed to know that it was a bomb. Because it looked dangerous and was brought to school by a dark-skinned Muslim, that was reason enough to call the cops – that NOT calling the cops would have put every school kid in that building in danger. We can’t take any chances with our children’s safety, they say.
I tried to respond but was shut down and haven’t gone back because I have a feeling that nothing I can say would change their minds.
I needed a place to vent about this reaction, so I came here. My feeling, FWIW, is that those educators in Ahmed’s school should have used this incident to educate Ahmed about what is appropriate to bring to school and who is appropriate to show it to – you know, use this as a learning experience. I would hope that if this had happened in my daughter’s HS, the kid would have been brought in to see the vice principal in charge of discipline. I see no reason to call the cops (unless the kid said he was building a bomb), and the fact that Ahmed wasn’t allowed to call his parents makes me livid.
Even this would be problematic because according to the way the School’s Code of Conduct was written, the school would have serious issues proving Ahmed violated their rules. Worse, if they attempt to discipline students for bringing in products of electronic tinkering to demonstrate their passion for said hobby/being an aspiring engineer…one risks creating an atmosphere which discourages such hobbies/aspirations.*
Through the pictures and the admins/law enforcement’s own admission…especially the admins knowing it wasn’t a bomb or hoax BEFORE calling the cops and subsequent dropping of all charges, they knew the clock wasn’t a weapon nor was he attempting a hoax. Claims it resembled a weapon would be very difficult to claim in court. Worse, the school conduct code DOES allow for students to bring guns to campus.
There’s also the matter this school district has had a demonstrated history of prejudicial treatment of racial and religious minorities and paranoia similar to what transpired in the Salem Witch Trials back in 1692 and other similar incidents where as shown here:
Feeling it’s right for school admins to discipline or even “talk” to Ahmed for behavior which doesn’t violate their code of conduct to cater to prevailing prejudices of TPTB itself feeds into the very paranoia and Witch Hunt mentality which caused the Salem Witch Trials to be rightly regarded as one of the most shameful incidents in early American history and a reason why it’s often cited to warn subsequent generations of the dangers of allowing oneself to be so overtaken by fear and paranoia to the point we falsely accuse and persecute others because of them.
In that context, I’m not surprised Ahmed has withdrawn from the school and is considering transferring to other HS. Why should he return to a school who is clearly unwelcoming and populated with authority figures who have demonstrated an inclination to be excessively punitive and call the cops AFTER they’ve clearly established he did nothing wrong except trigger prevailing prevailing prejudices and outrage because he made them look ridiculous and thus, failed to “respect their authoritah”. The principal’s subsequent posting of a letter defending his actions just further reinforces the dubiousness of his supposedly welcoming Ahmed back to attend letter. .
A reason why every alum from my HS who posted on this news story on our alumni facebook page was outraged for Ahmed....including some conservatives such as a retired GOP politician. Incidentally, there's some discussion to raise funds to bring Ahmed and his family to have a warm welcoming tour of our HS and possibly even to make him an honorary Stuy student.
fireandrain, I’m sorry, but people like the ones you describe have long since divested me of my innocent childhood conviction (reinforced by my parents, I must admit) that Jewish people are especially intelligent. I’d love to know how these brilliant people can reconcile their insistence that Ahmed’s arrest was justified by a rightful concern for children’s safety, with the fact that the school and the police were so obviously unconcerned for children’s safety that they neither evacuated the school nor brought in the bomb squad to check the clock.
My best guess is that if the school officials were willing/permitted to tell their side of the story, they would say that they didn’t think anybody was in danger, but that they suspected the kid was a troublemaker who wanted to “get a reaction” by bringing a suspicious object to school. If they hadn’t called the police, they might have been able to successfully defend that story. The fact that they called the police makes it more likely (in my opinion) that they suspected the kid was a Muslim troublemaker.
