14 year-old Muslim teen builds clock, shows teachers, and gets arrested for it.

You have an uncanny ability to not see the horrific treatment of Muslims in America.

Hey Libtards - it was Muslums who flew the planes into towers. Muslims use kids nowadays to blow up innocents. No one else is beheading innocents. Only Muslims stupid Libtards.

One is an appropriate reaction.

How to go wrote:

You have an uncanny ability to not see the horrific treatment of Muslims in America.

Yep -and I also believe they send money home to fiance their causes against America.

Guilty.

If the teacher really believed it was a bomb then how come they didn't evacuate the school, call the bomb squad, etc? She put what she supposedly believed was a bomb in her desk and waited for the police?

Mofong wrote:

One is an appropriate reaction.

And, hint, it's not arrest.

I love you baby wrote:

Hey Libtards - it was Muslums who flew the planes into towers. Muslims use kids nowadays to blow up innocents. No one else is beheading innocents. Only Muslims stupid Libtards.

It's not Muslims that are occupying, invading, bombing, and engaging in regime change in non Muslims nations. Who are killing people every day with drones and one ton bombs.

It's not Muslims who are burning entire families to death and not being arrested for it, is it?

You are spectacularly ignorant.

Mohammed wrote:

If the teacher really believed it was a bomb then how come they didn't evacuate the school, call the bomb squad, etc? She put what she supposedly believed was a bomb in her desk and waited for the police?

These days teachers desks are made of bomb proof material for other similar over-reactions.

Did you see the kid? He looks like a future terrorist. Better to get them young.

Electronics guy wrote:

Nearly any DIY electronics project is going to 'look like a bomb'. I have made projects with my daughter and have advised her specifically to not bring it to school because of this exact concern.

Such projects usually consist of a micro controller (read small computer) specifically designed for wire connections to input /output components. . .

From the picture it just looks like he's taken the innards of a digital clock and laid them out in the briefcase. It's a stretch to call it "invention", but for a 14 year old kid, it shows far greater than average curiosity about the technology we take for granted but which scant few have any clue about. The actual danger of the thing is that he's got line voltage in there and it's not well protected.

That said, it does look like a movie bomb, particularly since it has a ridiculously large display to count down the seconds until our hero can save the heroine and perhaps all of civilization. If one were to build a bomb, using some sort of commercial clock for the timer would be an obvious choice, though the power cord in this instance kind of reduces flexibility.

The image of this device online are tiny, but if you magnify it... Wow! Does it ever look like every "bomb in a briefcase" on TV and movies, complete with a large LCD display! No explosives were present, of course, but there was room for it in the case. (Note that it appears to be partially disassembled and the 9v battery removed in this picture. We don't know how much more scary it might have looked before it was disassembled.)

Here's a link. Press Control plus the "+" key to blow up the size of the image.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Mark-Zuckerberg-Invites-Teen-Clockmaker-Ahmed-Mohamed-to-Facebook-327955881.html

Keep in mind that all we have so far is the kid's side of the story. We don't know what actually happened when he was initially questioned by police. Being a kid, he might have just clammed up, which would have added to the suspiciousness. If this happened at my kid's school, I'd definitely want to teachers and police err on the side of caution until they were 100% sure this kid was not a threat.

“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.”

I would love to have heard their conversation...

"It's a clock."

"Yes, but what is it REALLY???"

"A clock."

"I want a BROADER EXPLANATION!"

"Ok, a clock tells time."

"Yes, but WHAT ELSE DOES IT DO???"

I can understand why they would want to look into the device and (briefly) question the kid, but there's no reason for the suspension or the arrest.

zephito wrote:

“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.”

I would love to have heard their conversation...

"It's a clock."

"Yes, but what is it REALLY???"

"A clock."

"I want a BROADER EXPLANATION!"

"Ok, a clock tells time."

"Yes, but WHAT ELSE DOES IT DO???"

I can understand why they would want to look into the device and (briefly) question the kid, but there's no reason for the suspension or the arrest.

What part of "clock" did he not understand.

Positive PR:

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Mark-Zuckerberg-Invites-Teen-Clockmaker-Ahmed-Mohamed-to-Facebook-327955881.html

Any half witted high school science teacher would know that there is a very long way between the simple home made digital clock this kid had and an actual bomb. Any minimally trained police bomb squad would know in an instant that the device the kid had is miles away from ever being a bomb.

In any other place in the US, you could rack this up to pure stupidity. And there is a lot of stupidity to go around in American schools and police departments. But in Irving, Texas, there has been a very racist city government that has been doing everything they can to score points with right wing media outlets by stirring up idiotic phobias over Sharia law taking over. The local Imams set up a mediation service for members of the local Mosques to come and try to resolve marital disputes and other civil disputes between Mosque members. Churches and Synagogues in Texas have offered the same service to their members for decades without anyone batting an eyelash. But people in Irving flipped out because someone saw that the mediation service was being called a Sharia Court and went all Brietbart on the issue. The mayor and city counsel responded by passing a phony ordinance that banned courts from considering foreign law (i.e. Sharia law).

So, this wasn't stupidity. This was another example of Irving city government's Islamophobia. The mayor is very sadly fueling the anti-Muslim sentiment of a few redneck right wingers in order to get herself into the right wing media and access campaign funding on a national level so she can run for higher office. But this will all blow up with this kid files a civil rights lawsuit and gets a huge judgment against the school and the city in Federal Court.

zephito wrote:

“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.”

I would love to have heard their conversation...

"It's a clock."

"Yes, but what is it REALLY???"

"A clock."

"I want a BROADER EXPLANATION!"

"Ok, a clock tells time."

"Yes, but WHAT ELSE DOES IT DO???"

I can understand why they would want to look into the device and (briefly) question the kid, but there's no reason for the suspension or the arrest.

Haha, nice.

I'll even go as far to say I understand the suspension. But after he had already showed it with one teacher who fully knew it was a clock and not a bomb, and gave it to a teacher who was capable of knowing it wasn't a real threat but just appears threatening, to actually arrest the kid is absurd.

Doclove wrote:

Blame the people placing bombs all over the world to kill civilians not the over reaction to it

It's the government's fault.

Hey, I've a question for any electronics guys or DIYers out there. Once you have this clock complete with a 9v battery, how difficult would it be to add wiring to a detonator that would go off when the alarm rang? Would it only require two additional wires from the alarm circuit to the detonator... or is it a lot more complex than that?

Not taking a position on the story... just curious because it could be why they questioned the kid so long if it was an easy conversion to make.

Both sides of this discussion are pretty funny. On the one side, we have the obvious stupidity of the school and police who were involved in the arrest (and the unfathomable stupidity of the few who still contend that the punishment was reasonable). On the other side, we have the people who are acting like this kid just built a homemade particle accelerator.

The kid isn't a terrorist. Nor is he a genius inventor. Let's all just calm down.