14-year-old Texas boy arrested for bringing homemade clock

[Sam]

So, this preacher is in his garage looking at a bicycle that he's too old to ride anymore. He sees a kid pushing a lawn more down the street, and calls out to the kid, "hey, wanna trade that lawn mower for this bicycle??"

The kid agrees, and they make the swap.

Later that day, the preacher is in the yard with the lawnmower, sweat soaked, red faced, pulling on the rope to start the mower, but it keeps sputtering, and won't start.

The kid comes up the street riding on the bicycle, and the preacher calls him over. "Hey, kid, you traded this mower than won't even run"

The kid explains, "oh, it'll run just fine, preacher, you just have to give it a good cussin"

The preacher is stunned "I've been a preacher for over 40 years, I don't even REMEMBER any cuss words".

The kid gets on his bike, and starts off down the street, calling over his shoulder, "just keep pulling on that rope, preacher, the cussin will come!"



I'm beginning to feel that way talking to Sam. "Just keep talkin to Sam, preacher, the cussin' will come!"

You're the one who claimed that Cuban had talked to the teachers "FIRST hand" after accusing me of playing "fast and loose with the facts," preacher. I've backed up everything I've said.

[Cow Poke]

No new points to engage.

Sam, when you give GOOFUS "dog ate my homework" answers to points, that's NOT "engaging" them. Some of your "answers" actually undercut your "arguments".

[Cow Poke]

So, students at George Mason University think it's a bomb....



Yeah, I know, it's reported in The Blaze, so it can't be true, and they probably interviewed 14,987,321 people, and only chose those who said it looked like a bomb.

[Cow Poke]

Meanwhile, some of people who had been quick to join the mass hysteria of accusing the authorities are honest enough to admit they were wrong.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/09/2...urposeful-hoax

Tonight on "The Kelly File," Judge Andrew Napolitano reacted to allegations that Texas teenager Ahmed Mohamed did not create a clock and instead simply took apart an existing clock and transplanted the guts into a pencil box.

Electronic experts have said that Mohamed's clock looks astonishingly similar to a clock that was sold in the 1980s by Radio Shack.

Mohamed and his family have not commented about claims that the clock is a hoax, and they are still planning on keeping thousands of dollars in donations and taking legal action against the school and the police.

Judge Napolitano said it now appears that this was a "purposeful hoax."

Yeah, I know, it's FoxNews, so it can't be true.

[Mountain Man]

It only counts if it comes from Dimbulb Approved^TM news agencies.

[Cow Poke]

Hey, I think we made some progress!!!!

I was reading through the thread, and noticed the part where Sam was castigating us for not bowing to the clock, insisting it was an "engineering project", that a "serious engineering student" would design:

My kid does electrical engineering like that at 14 and I'll be very proud of his skill. It definitely looks like something that a "serious engineering student" would design.

Are we seriously ragging on a 14 year-old kid's electrical engineering project now?

This is where you recognize that you're being puerile toward a 14 year-old's engineering project and realize just how ... filtering ... asinine that is.

And Sam has finally been dragged, albeit with a bit of a meltdown along the way, to recognizing it was just a "transfer" of parts....

The components in the case may have prevented the case from clasping shut.

...I clearly agreed that this was a basic disassembly/reassembly project.

So, I'm ready for the apology, Sam, where you pitched your little hissy about us not bowing to the "engineering project".

You HAVE given up that notion, yes?

[Sam]

Hey, I think we made some progress!!!!

I was reading through the thread, and noticed the part where Sam was castigating us for not bowing to the clock, insisting it was an "engineering project", that a "serious engineering student" would design:





And Sam has finally been dragged, albeit with a bit of a meltdown along the way, to recognizing it was just a "transfer" of parts....




So, I'm ready for the apology, Sam, where you pitched your little hissy about us not bowing to the "engineering project".

You HAVE given up that notion, yes?

A disassembly/reassembly effort with soldering and rewiring is a serious engineering project for a 14 year-old kid, Cow Poke. That you continue to treat a kid's effort with such derision doesn't change that fact ... and what it does indicate isn't complimentary to you.

If the kid has more skill than what's shown by disassembling and reassembling a clock, as appears to be the case from reports, fantastic. If that's the extent of his skill right now, fantastic. We need more curious and engaged kids in the world who hopefully won't turn around and dump on the younger generations when they get to be old cranks.

[Sam]

Hrm, that last post was rather harsh; for that, Cow Poke, I apologize.

I doubt that I can continue dealing with the bad-faith inquisition of a kid or the bad-faith tactics that have been displayed without reverting to that level of disdain so I'll apologize again for being rude and not comment further.

[Cow Poke]

A disassembly/reassembly effort with soldering and rewiring is a serious engineering project for a 14 year-old kid, Cow Poke.

You don't know that there was a bunch of soldering and rewiring, Sam. The way commercially manufactured clocks are put together ---- try this - take that famous bedside clock of yours and crack it open. I'll bet you can take the contents out, put them in a box, and they'll still work with very MINIMUM "rewiring".

And, apparently, this "kid" (why don't you ever call him by his name? I do) Ahmed is just an ordinary kid now, not a "serious engineering student"?

That you continue to treat a kid's effort with such derision doesn't change that fact ... and what it does indicate isn't complimentary to you.

That you have to build him up to a "serious engineering student", then deflate him to "just a 14 year old kid"...

If the kid has more skill than what's shown by disassembling and reassembling a clock, as appears to be the case from reports, fantastic. If that's the extent of his skill right now, fantastic. We need more curious and engaged kids in the world who hopefully won't turn around and dump on the younger generations when they get to be old cranks.

So, it's perfectly OK to flat out LIE and say he "invented" a clock, when, in fact, all he did was take an actual working clock and put it in a case too small for it to fit? It's perfectly OK for him to claim he did this in 20 minutes the night before the incident, when his father claimed he had been waking up to that same clock for some time, and he also apparently lied about buying the parts and building it himself?

[Cow Poke]

Hrm, that last post was rather harsh; for that, Cow Poke, I apologize.

No problem at all, Sam. The point is, you're entirely emotionally invested in this, and this isn't the first time you've lashed out. Normally, you're all "facts and figures" and "graphs and charts". You really can't intellectually defend this, Sam, so you go on the attack.

I doubt that I can continue dealing with the bad-faith inquisition

wow - so much for the apology!

of a kid or the bad-faith tactics that have been displayed without reverting to that level of disdain so I'll apologize again for being rude and not comment further.

So, you apologize for "being harsh", then you double down and take an even more harsh swipe. And you accuse ME (us?) of "bad faith tactics?" (I apologize for slapping you ... SLAP SLAP... oops, I did it again )

You got snookered, Sam. Hornswaggled. You got caught up in all the one-sided media super sensationalism, and bought the bogus "bad teachers and cops attack poor defenseless Muslim kid" screed.

Your ENTIRE case is social media hype, and what Ahmed claims happened. Ahmed hasn't been very forthcoming in a lot of this. That's just a plain fact.

Ahmed's parents have not signed the release that would allow the officials to tell their side of the story. Cuban, who personally talked with Ahmed, was quite puzzled that Ahmed can be "very, very engaged" in science, technology, magnets, etc... but has to rely on his sister's version of what happened.

If you and your colleagues would take some time to actually look honestly at all of the factors here, and not focus only on the notion that "this never would have happened if the kid wasn't a Muslim".....

This reminds me of my police days many years ago, when I would stop a black person, and they would scream "the only reason you stopped me was cause I'm black".... and they just happened to be leaving an electronics store where a big window was smashed, and there's a brand new color console TV hanging out the back of their trunk with the store price tag flapping in the breeze...

Sam - away from the fog of battle, when the students at George Mason University were shown a picture of the "clock", almost without exception they said it looked like a bomb.

[rogue06]

Ahmed's parents have not signed the release that would allow the officials to tell their side of the story. Cuban, who personally talked with Ahmed, was quite puzzled that Ahmed can be "very, very engaged" in science, technology, magnets, etc... but has to rely on his sister's version of what happened.

That's something I find puzzling. He was there. She was not. Why did he need her to tell him what happened?

[Cow Poke]

That's something I find puzzling. He was there. She was not. Why did he need her to tell him what happened?

Her testimony was that she got in trouble 3 years prior for a bomb threat - though she doesn't really go into detail. I think she's trying to make it sound like she was falsely accused by another student. And in her statement, she claims she didn't do enough about it back then, so when this happened to Ahmed, she decided it was time to go to battle (my paraphrase). I suspect -- YES, I SAID I SUSPECT -- that she's coaching him through this, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out she instigated this thing.

The more I learn about this, the more I'm beginning to think that Ahmed was manipulated into this "engineering project", because it had nothing to do with a science fair, it wasn't part of any assignment, and anybody with half a brain could have predicted this would turn into a donnybrook.

But I'm just guessing, cause I hate Muslims and my entire mission in life is to 'inquisition' them.

[Cow Poke]

I have a Pastor friend who's doing his doctoral dissertation on (I forget the name of the typically way too long title) Social Media's ability to cause an avalanche of groupthink and suck people into positions that otherwise, given all the facts, they'd never take. The second component is that anybody who goes against the avalanche (I think "avalanche" is part of the title) gets slapped around mercilessly and called names and is accused of hate speech or racism or profiling. But the net effect is that dialogue is absolutely shut down.

He's really interested in this case because A) he lives in Garland and knows a lot of the actors in this case and 2) his wife is a former Muslim who became a Christian.


ETA: Garland is only 25 miles from Irving, and is where Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi came to shoot up the Curtis Culwell Center just a few months ago.

[Jaecp]

No problem at all, Sam. The point is, you're entirely emotionally invested in this, and this isn't the first time you've lashed out. Normally, you're all "facts and figures" and "graphs and charts". You really can't intellectually defend this, Sam, so you go on the attack.

It's really more like he tried being all facts and figures and you're so emotionally invested you don't realize your being overly cruel to a 14 year old boy over the quality of his craftsmanship.

I can't fault Sam for snapping at you. You need to be snapped out of what ever it is you're in

[Cow Poke]

It's really more like he tried being all facts and figures

and you're so emotionally invested you don't realize your being overly cruel to a 14 year old boy over the quality of his craftsmanship.

No - it's more about the dishonesty of his "craftsmanship".

I can't fault Sam for snapping at you. You need to be snapped out of what ever it is you're in

Sam can snap all he wants - it seems to be who he's become.