Richard Dawkins questions Ahmed Mohamed's 'motives' and sparks backlash

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Richard Dawkins questions Ahmed Mohamed's 'motives' and sparks backlash

Martin Pengelly in New York
Sunday 20 September 2015 19.52 BST

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins found himself at the centre of controversy on Sunday when he questioned the motives of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old boy who was arrested and detained in Texas when a teacher thought a clock he had made was a bomb.

Dawkins did not dispute that Mohamed should not have been arrested, but questioned whether the boy had truly “invented” the clock, as has been reported. He tweeted:

Richard Dawkins
@RichardDawkins

If this is true, what was his motive? Whether or not he wanted the police to arrest him, they shouldn’t have done so.

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Subsequent tweets, issued against a growing storm of online protest, said: “Assembling clock from bought components is fine. Taking clock out of its case to make it look as if he built it is not fine. Which is true?

“Yes, there are other reasons why a boy might take a clock out of its casing & pretend he’d made it. Trying to impress teachers, for instance(.)”

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/20/richard-dawkins-questions-ahmed-mohamed-motive-backlash

[HassleCat]

1. As I heard the story

He built the clock using an Arduino computer, a small, cheap computer designed for experimenters and tinkerers. People attach all kinds of components to the Arduino to create homemade devices, clocks among them. I don't know if you can buy an assembled Arduino clock and remove it from the case. Either way, I don't see how it has any bearing on his arrest. The police knew he was not carrying a bomb, or bomb component, and they arrested him anyway. Why is Dawkins questioning whether he assembled it himself, or bought it assembled?

[pinboy3niner]

4. Islamophobes blaming the victim, claiming Ahmed intentionally made a 'hoax bomb'

Their claim is that he set out to provoke an overreaction as part of some Muslim agenda.

Claiming that he merely disassembled and reassembled a clock in a different case is to disparage him AND President Obama (for inviting Ahmed to the White House).

[IDemo]

10. Not an Arduino or Raspberry Pi

As much as I support anyone of his age getting into electronics, he did not create this clock using an Arduino or any other single board computer. The PCB shown in the picture is one manufactured specifically for a commercial clock. The wide ribbon cable connected to the seven segment display unit is soldered directly to the board, not via a standard connector as would be expected on a project such as this. He even included the transformer from the original clock to step down 110v AC household current to the onboard voltage regulator circuit instead of simply using the 9v battery connector in plain view.

I am glad that things turned around for him so much after the harrowing morning he had, but I will give the credit to kids his age and younger who have actually taken the time to learn some basic electronics principles and applied them to a protoboard.



A young Maker tinkers with a microcontroller.

[PoliticAverse]

12. That's why as he himself said he "threw it together in about 20 minutes before bedtime on Sunday".

(Source http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-ninth-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece )

Note that the 9-volt connector is likely for a battery backup used to allow the clock to keep time during brief
electrical power disruptions not to operate the clock off the battery itself.

[MisterP]

2. he's always BEEN Trumpish, it just takes a while for people to wake up ti

[BuddhaGirl]

3. "@RichardDawkins remember when you were a scientist instead of a twitter crank

...those were better days"

"@RichardDawkins he's an enthusiastic fourteen year and you, a grown man and public figure, are trashing him on the internet for "fraud"





http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/20/richard-dawkins-texas-clock-boy-ahmed-fraud_n_8165644.html?1442760775

[MisterP]

6. he guesses his motives were "Possibly wanted to be arrested? Police played into his hands?"

"If the reassembled components did something more than the original clock, that’s creative. If not, it looks like hoax"
"It's fine to disassemble & reassemble a clock. … But don't claim it's your INVENTION"
"Sorry if I go a bit over the top in my passion for truth. Not just over a boy's alleged "invention" but also media lies about J Corbyn"

it just gets more and more plaintive

it's the same with Musk--people have been eating out *ahem* tied to his every word for a decade or so to the point where every idea is a "golden-ticket" one, until they're babbling about unfunded vactrains and planetary carpet-bombing campaigns; eventually everyone just looks at each other and thinks, "y'know, he might not actually be as smart as we thought he'd been"

on edit: Maher joins in, saying we can't afford the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud; Entertainment Weekly's commenters are the sanest of the bunch

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/09/20/3703542/the-smear-campaign-against-ahmed-mohamed/
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/20/ahmed-mohamed-bill-maher-istandwithahmed
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/254298-bill-maher-defends-arrest-of-ahmed-mohamed
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maher-battles-guests-on-ahmed-mohamed-be-cautious-when-young-muslims-are-blowing-sht-up/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-maher-ahmed-mohamed_55fdb3cbe4b08820d918ea3f
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/09/bill-maher-justifies-14-year-old-being

this is almost as bad as when someone said Rosetta disproved God because He hadn't swatted it away, and then it promptly bounced and pooped out until last month

[roguevalley]

13. Dawkins is and always will be an asshole. He must have wanted more attention. Kicking a little kid

was his vehicle. What a sod.

I dropped him a tweet. Told him to wait a few years and watch that kid get a nobel prize he will never get himself. Kicking a kid around. Someone has not only problems with religion but race too I would imagine.

[LittleBlue]

5. I've always sensed an intolerance in him

Always discouraged me seeing atheists get sucked into his militant brand of atheism.

[shenmue]

7. What a jerk

[Gothmog]

8. Dawkin's islamphobia is showing

[starroute]

11. He seems to have a long history of that

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/07/richard_dawkins_goes_on_anti_islam_rant_blames_charlie_hebdo_massacre_on_entire_religion/

Richard Dawkins, biologist and noted New Atheist, took to Twitter on Wednesday following the attack on French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo. The attack left 12 dead.

Dawkins has an extensive history of Twitter trolling — whether about religion (specifically anti-Islam), sexism or abortion and down syndrome. On Wednesday he struck again with a series of tweets, which cast sweeping blame for the attack on an entire religion.


http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/richard_dawkins_does_it_again_new_atheisms_islamophobia_problem/

Richard Dawkins is at it again. And by “it,” I mean simple-minded anti-Muslim Twitter trolling. On Thursday, the professor and provocateur raised eyebrows when he wrote that, “All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.” . . .

In March, I wrote a piece here at Salon that sparked a fierce debate about the so-called New Atheists and the way in which they use rational atheism as a cover for anti-Muslim prejudice. But in his rant this week (as well as in other recent Tweets), Dawkins poked holes in his own façade, showing that it is increasingly difficult for him to engage religious topics without eventually resorting to some good old-fashioned Muslim bashing.


http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/dawkins_harris_hitchens_new_atheists_flirt_with_islamophobia/

Richard Dawkins, the preppy septuagenarian and professional atheist whose work in the field of evolutionary biology informs his godless worldview, has always been a prickly fellow. The British scientist and former Oxford University professor has expended considerable ink and precious breath rationalizing away the possibility of cosmic forces and explaining in scientific terms why those who believe in a divine creator are, well, stupid.

It appears, however, that some of those believers are stupider than others. At least according to a recent series of tweets by Dawkins, who served up a hostile helping of snark this week aimed at followers of the Muslim faith. It’s a group that has come to occupy a special place in his line of fire — and in the minds of a growing club of no-God naysayers who have fast rebranded atheism into a popular, cerebral and more bellicose version of its former self. . . .

Until 9/11, Islam didn’t figure in the New Atheists’ attacks in a prominent way. As a phenomenon with its roots in Europe, atheism has traditionally been the archenemy of Christianity, though Jews and Judaism have also slipped into the mix. But emboldened by their newfound fervor in the wake of the terrorist attacks, the New Atheists joined a growing chorus of Muslim-haters, mixing their abhorrence of religion in general with a specific distaste for Islam (In 2009, Hitchens published a book called “God Is Not Great,” a direct smack at Muslims who commonly recite the Arabic refrain Allah Akbar, meaning “God is great”). Conversations about the practical impossibility of God’s existence and the science-based irrationality of an afterlife slid seamlessly into xenophobia over Muslim immigration or the practice of veiling. The New Atheists became the new Islamophobes, their invectives against Muslims resembling the rowdy, uneducated ramblings of backwoods racists rather than appraisals based on intellect, rationality and reason.

[Downwinder]

9. If they question his motives, they have to admit

that a 14 year old played on their bigotry and utterly destroyed them in the public arena.

[ThoughtCriminal]

14. So why does he show the project to his science teacher?

If it was intended to be a bomb hoax? A hoax would require either a threat or planting the "hoax" somewhere.

How did he know that the police would be complete imbeciles?... Oh... Never mind.

Let's just note that many of the people that I see posting this theory on Facebook are the same people who believe that somehow President Obama managed to plant birth announcements in 1961 Hawaiian newspapers.

[MurrayDelph]

15. You know, for an group that says

it isn't a religion, he sure has a devoted cult of followers.

[PeaceNikki]

16. So does Jimmy Buffet.

A person with fans is not the definition of a religion.

[Orrex]

18. Excellent response! Further...

No one is quicker than atheists to call Dawkins out as a bigoted, sexist asshole.

[oberliner]

17. This is a teenage boy we're talking about. Pranks are pretty common.

I can see a kid saying - I'm gonna take apart this clock and bring it in in a briefcase and see what happens.

Lots of kids that age do stuff just for the hell of it - including, or maybe even especially, "nerds".