Question About Ahmed Mohamed

[erpowers]

Earlier today I watched a clip from Real Time with Bill Maher in which Maher claimed that it had been discovered that Ahmed Mohamed had not actually built the clock that he brought to his former school. Maher then said a video had shown that Ahmed Mohamed had simply taken the insides of a digital clock out of its casing and placed it in a box. Is it true that Ahmed Mohamed did not actually build the clock he brought to school?

[6chars]

1. I think they were talking about this

It shows someone building a clock, but it isn't Ahmed. You would have to draw your own conclusions about whether this is all the same kind of creation.

[PoliticAverse]

7. Note that although that is illustrative of what Ahmed apparently did, that's not the exact same

model of clock he used.

[Bonx]

20. That doesn't show someone 'building a clock'.

Just someone pulling the clock guts out of the plastic clock case and sticking them in a pencil box.

[LiberalArkie]

2. Kids do that a lot. Take something from this and put it with that to make it

look like this. I did a lot of it as a kid. I took a walkie talkie apart. Put the transmitter and receiver and antenna on the roof and the microphone and speaker and push to talk and power supply in my bedroom. Worked fantastic. I think I was about 10 when I did that.

[davidpdx]

14. Damn, you were at a young age

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Who cares? And hasn't this been beaten to death already

by RWers and anti-Muslim types like Maher?

Ahmed put together a digital clock from existing parts and added a battery backup. He didn't invent it or create it from scratch and he never claimed he did. He's a bright kid who likes to tinker, and he modified an existing clock and brought it to school to show his science teacher. For that he got accused of building a bomb or a hoax bomb, handcuffed, arrested, and suspended from school - something that almost certainly would not have happened to him if his name had been Tommy Smith.

There are a lot of people - I would hope, not DUers - who think Ahmed doesn't "deserve" the positive attention he has received as the result of this incident. I think he does. Whether he built a clock from scratch or just reassembled existing clock parts is irrelevant; the important thing is that a smart kid who likes to tinker with electronic stuff should be rewarded for his curiosity and not punished for his ethnicity because some bigots, and I include Maher in that category, think all Muslims are potential terrorists.

[PoliticAverse]

5. He didn't make it from parts, he didn't add a battery backup. n/t

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Still doesn't matter. I don't care exactly what he did with it or to it.

The point is that he tinkered in some fashion with a digital clock and wanted to show his teacher what he'd done - and was punished for it. Assholes like Maher are trying to make it sound like he deserved his punishment because he didn't do anything especially brilliant - so it must have been a hoax bomb because of course that's what a Muslim kid would have done, right?

[PoliticAverse]

4. It's a commercially built clock out of its original case that he put into a pencil case. n/t

[Nye Bevan]

6. Yes, that is true.

However, it was obviously not a bomb. This would have been plain from a cursory inspection and things should have ended right there.

[PoliticAverse]

10. Zero tolerance for anything unusual. n/t

[uponit7771]

16. ... especially from brown skinned Asian people. It was already known it wasn't a clock by police...

... before the young man was placed into custody

[newfie11]

18. +++++++++++++++

[alphafemale]

9. He's a smart kid. Smart kids are challenging sometimes.

They like to challenge boundaries and can get in way over their heads as a result.

This should have been handled on a school level without law enforcement and the brainiac in cuffs and tears.

[PoliticAverse]

12. Indeed they can be challenging, Steve Wozniak certainly was...

see: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027184534

[alarimer]

19. And teenagers don't always think things through either.

But this issue should be about the reaction, not about the stupid clock or whether he's a genius or not. It doesn't matter.

I hate this sort of "just asking questions" OP. It's right-wing bullshit.

[CC]

11. What I heard Bill say was he did not "invent" the clock

just moved parts around. Thing is the first few stories I read on it he never said he "invented" the clock but that he had put one together. I grew up with a brother that took things apart and put them together again in a different way so never had a problem with what Ahmed did. Said brother is now a vice president of an electrical company because he can take something normal and put it together in a different way. What I do know is the school never evacuated, the police never evacuated the school and the bomb squad was never called. If they were doing due diligence in the name of safety by handcuffing and interrogating Ahmed they failed and made themselves look like the fools. Ahmed was acting like any other mechanically inclined American student. I might like Bill but I also know on somethings he is very misguided. (too put it nice.)

[Heeeeers Johnny]

13. "he never said he "invented" the clock"

Yes he did say that.
"they took my tablet and my 'invention'...

#t=38

What I do know is the school never evacuated, the police never evacuated the school and the bomb squad was never called

Probably because at no time, did anyone... teacher, principal or police say or believe it was a bomb; the concern was that
it was a hoax bomb or device.

And sadly, in these times of zero tolerance and paranoia, it takes very little to flip that switch.

[Downwinder]

17. Doesn't fit the mold. Well, stamp him into it.

[840high]

15. True.

[mercuryblues]

21. I had figured

the clock was something he fixed. I babysat for a kid like him once. He was always asking for your broken electronics. He would then take 2 or 3 of the same type and make a working whole. Of course the "new" working equipment never fit in any of the original housing. He would end up with radios in shoe boxes.

I have read where this is an alarm clock from radio shack from the mid 90's. The chances of it still working in 2015 seem pretty slim to me. His father stated he is always fixing things, "my car, my phone, my computer" Even the kid said he assembled it from various parts from around his room.