4 ms·

9th grader arrested after bringing a home-built clock to school

56 points by macco 11y ago

buffoon 11y ago
Back in the early 1980s I made a simple RC and comparator based bomb timer in electronics at school as an official project. How times have changed...
- zamalek 11y ago
  Considering the NASA shirt he is wearing; God forbid the kids wants to get into amateur rocketry. It's a sad day when a system that is designed to protect us all is used as a platform for hate speech.
  - buffoon 11y ago
    Indeed. It was the rocketry hobby that made me think about building timers and electronic things. Such an inspirational hobby when you think about it.
- wobbleblob 11y ago
  Oh yeah, good times. I used to do chemistry experiments as a kid, with the occasional explosions. Good times. Of course my name isn't Mohammed so I never got in trouble for it. I have a NASA t-shirt exactly like the one that kid is wearing in the twitter pic
  - zimpenfish 11y ago
    Andy Ihnatko has a good take on the whole stupid event. http://ihnatko.com/2015/09/16/im-achmed-except-im-not-brown/ http://ihnatko.com/2015/09/16/im-achmed-except-im-not-brown/ "... But they’re happy stories mostly because I was a white Catholic kid named Andy Ihnatko. Not a brown kid named Ahmed Mohamed, and not a black kid named anything."
    - wobbleblob 11y ago
      I think I actually did make bombs as a kid. Wow, fire, smoke and explosions are cool kind of bombs, not to blow stuff up. But that was before the war on terror, and without a name like Mohammed.
s_kilk 11y ago
> Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed... > “They took me to a room filled with five officers in which they interrogated me and searched through my stuff and took my tablet and my invention,” the teen said. “They were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’ I told them no, I was trying to make a clock.” Yep.
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
I believe the title of this article originally included the word "Muslim," which has since been removed by a mod or the OP. This is unfortunate as it's highly relevant as evinced by these passages from the article: During questioning, officers repeatedly brought up his last name, Mohamed said. [...] Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed blamed the incident on Islamophobia. “He just wants to invent good things for mankind,” said the elder Mohamed, who immigrated from Sudan. “But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated.” Lastly, this quote from Ahmed at the very end of the article just galls me: “[The handcuffs] made me feel like I wasn’t human,” he said in a video interview. “It made me feel like a criminal.”
mnw21cam 11y ago
He was interrogated without the presence of his parents or presumably a lawyer. Now, I'm not all that au fait with left-pondian legal stuff, but isn't that what Tommy Lee Jones kind of got in trouble for doing in The Client? When I was eleven, I made a simple digital clock for an inter-school physics competition, and won. Only after the judges had demanded I scribble out a circuit diagram in front of them to ensure I hadn't got someone else to make it for me though.
dang 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224747
exar0815 11y ago
Sadly happened to me, too. White teen with german name in Germany. Brought a HiVoltage TV Transformer to school for science class (Mind me, I must have been 18 or 19, not 14). A teacher probably overheard my comment to another student "The voltage kills you immediately if you are not careful. An hour later I was nearly thrown out from acool for allegedly trying a "School Shooting" with that device. Luckily my science teacher recued my butt.
steaminghacker 11y ago
False arrest litigation. lack of due process. or is this a made up story?
tomohawk 11y ago
Sad on all 3 sides. The government over reaction by the school and police, infringing this kid's rights and creating a volatile situation. The taking advantage of the situation by CAIR. The family and kid in the middle.
ccanassa 11y ago
But his questioner responded, “It looks like a movie bomb to me.” Bombs don't have digital displays displaying countdown time. People are watching too much tv.

56 points by macco 11y ago

Back in the early 1980s I made a simple RC and comparator based bomb timer in electronics at school as an official project. How times have changed...

zamalek 11y ago
Considering the NASA shirt he is wearing; God forbid the kids wants to get into amateur rocketry. It's a sad day when a system that is designed to protect us all is used as a platform for hate speech.
- buffoon 11y ago
  Indeed. It was the rocketry hobby that made me think about building timers and electronic things. Such an inspirational hobby when you think about it.
wobbleblob 11y ago
Oh yeah, good times. I used to do chemistry experiments as a kid, with the occasional explosions. Good times. Of course my name isn't Mohammed so I never got in trouble for it. I have a NASA t-shirt exactly like the one that kid is wearing in the twitter pic
- zimpenfish 11y ago
  Andy Ihnatko has a good take on the whole stupid event. http://ihnatko.com/2015/09/16/im-achmed-except-im-not-brown/ http://ihnatko.com/2015/09/16/im-achmed-except-im-not-brown/ "... But they’re happy stories mostly because I was a white Catholic kid named Andy Ihnatko. Not a brown kid named Ahmed Mohamed, and not a black kid named anything."
  - wobbleblob 11y ago
    I think I actually did make bombs as a kid. Wow, fire, smoke and explosions are cool kind of bombs, not to blow stuff up. But that was before the war on terror, and without a name like Mohammed.

s_kilk 11y ago

> Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed... > “They took me to a room filled with five officers in which they interrogated me and searched through my stuff and took my tablet and my invention,” the teen said. “They were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’ I told them no, I was trying to make a clock.” Yep.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago

I believe the title of this article originally included the word "Muslim," which has since been removed by a mod or the OP. This is unfortunate as it's highly relevant as evinced by these passages from the article: During questioning, officers repeatedly brought up his last name, Mohamed said. [...] Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed blamed the incident on Islamophobia. “He just wants to invent good things for mankind,” said the elder Mohamed, who immigrated from Sudan. “But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated.” Lastly, this quote from Ahmed at the very end of the article just galls me: “[The handcuffs] made me feel like I wasn’t human,” he said in a video interview. “It made me feel like a criminal.”

mnw21cam 11y ago

He was interrogated without the presence of his parents or presumably a lawyer. Now, I'm not all that au fait with left-pondian legal stuff, but isn't that what Tommy Lee Jones kind of got in trouble for doing in The Client? When I was eleven, I made a simple digital clock for an inter-school physics competition, and won. Only after the judges had demanded I scribble out a circuit diagram in front of them to ensure I hadn't got someone else to make it for me though.

dang 11y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224747

exar0815 11y ago

Sadly happened to me, too. White teen with german name in Germany. Brought a HiVoltage TV Transformer to school for science class (Mind me, I must have been 18 or 19, not 14). A teacher probably overheard my comment to another student "The voltage kills you immediately if you are not careful. An hour later I was nearly thrown out from acool for allegedly trying a "School Shooting" with that device. Luckily my science teacher recued my butt.

steaminghacker 11y ago

False arrest litigation. lack of due process. or is this a made up story?

tomohawk 11y ago

Sad on all 3 sides. The government over reaction by the school and police, infringing this kid's rights and creating a volatile situation. The taking advantage of the situation by CAIR. The family and kid in the middle.

ccanassa 11y ago

But his questioner responded, “It looks like a movie bomb to me.” Bombs don't have digital displays displaying countdown time. People are watching too much tv.