It strikes me as odd that instead of thinking “How cool for the kid that the President did that” some people have to go find someone who didn’t get a shout out to complain. I’ve seen a couple of people on my FB feed doing similar.
BTW, I think the President did call the guys in France shortly after the incident. I’m sure someone objected to that too because there’s someone else out there who he didn’t call.
The guys who stopped the terrorist attack in France are invited to visit the White House tomorrow to meet the President. http://koin.com/2015/09/16/french-train-heroes-to-meet-president-obama/
Maybe the complainers are thinking the Secret Muslim President is favoring his brethren.
Nice ad hominen attack. I’m glad the French train heroes are invited. I’m glad the kid is invited. I wish everyone could be invited.
I want a t-shirt with a picture of that kid’s clock superimposed over a schematic of it.
It should say NASA on it too, but I’ll settle for Rocketdyne or something.
I want every 14 year old nerd (of any race, creed, or gender) to wear it to school next Monday.
I read this on FB early today. An MIT prof has invited him to visit, and a Caltech prof invited him to JPL, to fulfill his dream of seeing life on Mars. Also, the White House. All pretty cool.
What a great essay this young man will write. He will have a busy month, visiting DC, MIT & Caltech.
In three years we will have a thread saying this kid took their kids or grandkids spot in college.
I wish this kid all the best.
My first thought was, Ahmed, get the heck out of Texas. My feeling however was deep shame, seeing this young boy in handcuffs.
This kid looks like half the kids in my son’s high school Like the Muslim valedictorian who is going to Harvard. My son, and a lot of kids in his old high school, were constantly making electronic stuff that looked a lot scarier than this little device. The difference was, the school encouraged it, took pride in it, promoted it.
Honestly, if this isn’t anti Muslim hysteria (or vindictiveness, if indeed there is some kind of grudge against his father), the reaction comes from a place of profound ignorance.
This news was plastered all over the Stuy alumni facebook page with most alums saying this would never happen at Stuy, especially when they attended. Some even went so far as to say if this did happen at Stuy, they will organize alums to express outrage against any school admins and authorities dumb enough to pull something like this.
Most agreed with the sentiment that overreactions like this form of political theater and overemotional reactions with xenophobic and anti-intellectual overtones is one good reason why the US hasn’t been doing well educationally at the K-12 level.
My older son’s STEM magnet program had kids building similar devices (with timers and wheels) in their 9th grade Research & Engineering course. Everyone in the program took three years of R&E. They got certified in using serious tools, too. None of them have gone on to become terrorists. There are a lot of engineers among the alumni, however.
Yes, they have. They’re going to be there tomorrow.
I love when people construct their own history… even when a 5 second google search can correct them.
But hey, easier to just be upset, right? 8-|
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/16/france-train-attack-honors/32529197/
For all the apologists (here and elsewhere) straining themselves to justify what happened retrospectively, isn’t it kind of obvious that if anyone – the school or the police – had actually believed for one millisecond that the so-called “suspicious” device might have been a bomb, the school would immediately have been evacuated? Like they’ve been doing since I was in high school. But they didn’t evacuate the school. So come on. I believe that what they really thought – because of his name and/or his color and/or his father – was that he was some kind of troublemaker who was perpetrating a hoax. Ignoring, of course, that he never said anything other than that it was a g.d. clock. I appreciated the post I saw on Twitter, with a photograph of Big Ben in London, with a caption saying “It seems the British have developed a giant clock-shaped bomb, on top of some kind of rocket.” That idea is no more ridiculous than the apologism I’ve been reading.
I saw that Big Ben on FB. I was amused.
,<<<
I guess I’m being devil’s advocate here. This is a high school, so presumably the kid has a locker. The first teacher he showed it to advised him not to show it to any other teachers. It’s obvious to me that this first teacher thought the other teachers would find it to be a suspicious device. But instead of putting it in his locker, he takes it to his other classes, lets the alarm go off, and then shows it to another teacher, just as the first teacher advised him not to do. What was he trying to accomplish at this point? (Also, we don’t know anything about this kid’s history at the school, if any.)
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Yes, it seems that his science teacher warned him that others might worry about what it was.
While the school/cops were crazy to suspend/hand-cuff him, the adults did have an obligation to remove the item from the school to protect the students while finding out what it was.
If it HAD been a bomb and students had died, people would have been outraged that the item had been allowed to stay in the classroom.
Right?
If he had put it in a locker and it beeped or made other noise that could have caused a panic too. My high school was evacuated once because someone heard ticking in a locker. Turned out it was a metronome.
I’m curious about why he plugged it in in a different class. I don’t know about where you all are, but it is a THING here that students are not allowed to plug anything in in a classroom. Now, of course, that is referring to charging phones, but the rule is no plugging in or you will be excluded from the classroom. Not arrested. Excluded, so I can totally see why he would be removed from the classroom. Why did this young man think it was ok to plug something noisy into an unrelated classroom? I wonder if the kid is a little clueless?
Cell phones are easier to make triggers from.
The whole reaction is in part anti nerd. We’re being taught to fear the kid with developing skills.
Wait a minute. I was just reading about this on the Washington Post. According to the article, the clock was confiscated by his English teacher during second period but Ahmed was not pulled out of class until sixth period. If they really thought it was a bomb, wouldn’t the school have been evacuated immediately? Wouldn’t officials have detained him at once?
Something seems weird here. Also according to the kid:
So wrong. Are you all seriously telling me that this is acceptable behavior on the part of the police? If my 14-year-old were being questioned by police and they refused to let him call me, you’d better believe I’d be furious.
Most common bomb triggers these days are cell phones, radios, or car remote controls, FWIW. People who think the clock was a bomb obviously watch too much TV. If they really thought it was a bomb, where was the explosive? They are not exactly the analytical kind.