[geeks] Ahmed, the accidental terrorist?

[Dr Robert Pasken]

Here we go. I didn't think it would take long for the smear campaign to 
start and it didn't. A smart kid builds something and wants to show it off 
so he takes it to school to show his teachers. It doesn't matter if he 
repackaged an existing clock, built it from a kit, or designed it himself. 
The key point is that he did something technically oriented. Most 
engineering schools require a course is disassembling an existing product 
to learn how and why it designed the way it was. If he repackaged an 
existing clock, he merely did what freshman engineering students are 
required to do. Rather than being punished for his curosity, he should 
have been praised

Hopefully the parents will sue the police officers and chief and the mayor 
into bankruptcy. Please note not the city of Irvine, nor its insurance 
company, but rather the officers, chief and mayor personally. Until these 
clowns can no longer hide behind their office this kind of bullshit won't 
stop.

Cheers
RWP

On Sat, 19 Sep 2015, Mark Benson wrote:

> On 19/09/2015 13:30, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> A couple quick points:
>> 
>> At 14 he's smart enough to know that rearranging the parts of a 
>> store-bought
>> clock is not 'inventing' the clock.
>
> A fair point. Effectively no-one can 'invent' an alarm clock these days, it's 
> a ubiquitous concept and any design that claims to be original would be 
> plagiarism at best most likely, or maybe rather use of 'open source' 
> material. Sure if he'd made the board, soldered it and crafted it himself 
> that'd make him super-smart and really talented... but he'd not have invented 
> anything. That's like lending actual truth to those adverts auto makers put 
> out about having re-invented the car.
>
> Also did anyone ever claim he invented it, i.e. his father? I thought he just 
> 'made it at home' and wanted to show someone?
>
>> His father is the Iman of the local mosque. I and of itself that means
>> nothing, but coupled with the history of this particular mosque in town, in
>> which it tried to establish it's own parallel Sharia Law based court in
>> Irving, TX and at least MY spidey-senses tingle and tilt me towards 
>> political
>> theater. I personally doubt the father planned this with the his son, but I 
>> do
>> believe once the father was called in, he chose to milk the situation for
>> political gain by playing the victim of racism.
>
> It explains the post event reaction and the fact that a Twitter account 
> sprung up @IStandWithAhmed within 12 hours with videos of the kid saying how 
> people should be themselves, it also explains how his father held court with 
> the press really well. It *might* unearth some unease between the school and 
> the family that might have triggered a cynical attempt to deface the family's 
> reputation. Who knows. Really, without independently investigating every 
> aspect of this we'll probably never know the whole truth.
>
>> I fully expect his supporters to attempt to redefine the word "invent" to
>> include re-arranging components of someone else's invention.
>
> I expect most of us will have forgotten about this in 6 months time. :)
>
> -- 
>
> Mark @ DECtec.info
> twitter.com/DECtecInfo
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