Join me in a journey to the gibbering throat of conspiratorial madness: a Breitbart article on Ahmed Mohamed and Irving, Texas.
This story isn’t just the usual whine that the “clock” (it’s now always in quotes — because although it was actually a clock in a pencil box cannibalized from an old Radio Shack clock, that is only its outward seeming, and in truth, it was a portent heralding the rising of an ancient evil) was not really an “invention”, therefore Mohamed was a liar. No, that was a circuit board of destruction!!!
It appears, the “clock” Mohamed brought to school this week was not the first of his circuit boards to look ominously like an improvised explosive device trigger. In fact, a photograph of one circulated by the Dallas Morning News was virtually indistinguishable from a circuit board used in a commercially available device used to train law enforcement and military personnel regarding how to identify IEDs.
My first thought was that that was silly — of course it’s distinguishable from an IED. Haven’t the rightwingers been endlessly dissecting Mohamed’s creation, telling us that it’s a dismantled bit of a commercial Radio Shack product? Unless you’re going to claim that every clock and cell phone on the market is actually an explosive device trigger…and then I realized. These are ignorant conservatives. Of course technology is mysterious, malicious, and of the devil. Circuit boards are etched with Satan’s handwriting.
But wait. There’s further evidence of nefarious purpose: Mohamed refused to confess to nefarious purpose.
When Ahmed’s miniature briefcase “clock” did precipitate such concerns, he refused to answer questions from school personnel and police about “his intentions and why he had brought the device to school.” Presumably, they were particularly interested in knowing whether he had brought anything else to school – perhaps to include the other part of such a bomb: the explosive component.
It could be that his intention was to show off something he had made, but that is far too simple. It could be that he answered police questions about what it was with the answer, “A clock”, but that was inadequate fuel for the fevered fantasies of the kind of people who would speculate that somewhere, this 14 year old boy had a secret stash of C4 that he was planning to attach to a crude clock and blow up the school.
Yes, we are now at the point where imagining the existence of explosives is evidence that they have captured a terrorist.
Further evidence of terrorism: his family contacted people who protect American Muslims from defamation. This is a sure sign that they were up to no good.
In very short order, the family was under management by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization established – ironically, in a federal prosecution conducted in nearby Richardson, Texas – to be a Muslim Brotherhood-associated fundraising and political warfare arm for the designated terrorist group, Hamas. Ahmed lawyered up and he and his family were no-shows for scheduled meetings with school officials and with the police chief and Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne.
We have now drawn a dotted line from a geeky schoolboy to Hamas.
Most of us would, by now, realize that we’re in the depths of madness and throw this story away from us. But they’re not done. We are now going to be told that connecting a few components to make a clock was part of an elaborate scheme to destroy the mayor of Irving, Texas.
In fact, at the very hour the latter meeting was supposed to occur, the Mohameds and their Islamic supremacist handlers were instead holding a press conference. In the course of the presser, the family made clear that their beef wasn’t with the Irving school district or the police. It was with the city’s political leadership, starting with Mayor Van Duyne.
This was all part of a coordinated assault on the legitimate American government of Irving by Islamic supremacists.
Another data point: Attacks on Ms. Van Duyne in connection with the Ahmed Mohamed affair appear to have been pre-arranged and synchronized, rather than the sort of reaction that builds over time. Her Facebook and Twitter accounts, and those of the city government and school district, were suddenly and massively assaulted with vehement denunciations of the treatment of this student. Some were so vile, obscene and threatening that the Mayor has been compelled to accept police protection.
I do not condone obscene attacks over social networks, but I do find it strange that when a Republican gets them, it demands police protection, but when a liberal social justice warrior type gets them, it deserves a chorus of “man up” and “get a thicker skin” and “boys will be boys”. And here spontaneous nastiness isn’t just vile behavior, it’s evidence of a pre-arranged and synchronized conspiracy.
Either way, this larger campaign must be recognized for what it certainly is, and repudiated, not applauded – not only by protective parents of school-age children, but by patriotic Americans across the country who are opposed to Islamic supremacism and the threat it poses to us all.
There you have it. A boy tinkering with electronics, something I did myself when I was his age, is now part of an elaborate, complex scheme of Islamic supremacism. Step 1: construct digital gadget. Step 2: America becomes a slave to the Islamic Caliphate!
You are thinking that that is just Breitbart. It’s the kind of twisted nonsense someone like Glenn Beck or Alex Jones might come up with — no sensible person would think it was at all credible. You might brace yourself for the Shyamalan-like shocking twist I’m about to spring on you.
You see, I don’t read Breitbart or pay any attention to Beck or Jones or Icke. How then could I have discovered this wild story?
I got it from…RICHARD DAWKINS!
If we think we're being hoodwinked, ignore age, colour etc & ignore "the company we keep." Simply ask "Is it TRUE?" http://t.co/s2Y12xtNKB
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) September 21, 2015
If we think we’re being hoodwinked, ignore age, colour etc & ignore “the company we keep.” Simply ask “Is it TRUE?”
Yes. As a scientist, when I want to determine the TRUTH of a matter, I turn to the fervid poorly-sourced delusions that get published on Breitbart, written by a wild-eyed Islamophobe.
Personally, though, I’d appreciate it if Dawkins were to turn his keen eye for the truth to matters closer to his home. I hear that the Queen of England is actually a lizard-person from outer space. I’m sure careful, thorough, scientific scrutiny of the Daily Mail would uncover the truth, by which I mean, confirmation that she’s an alien.
I was just in a long drawn-out argument over a FB posting which quoted that very Breitbart article, and when making some of the points that you made (no evidence for the wild claims, factual errors, etc.) there was just silence. I think lots of people know these kinds of posts are bullshit (especially when you show them evidence the claims have been debunked), but they literally do not fucking care. They enjoy taking part in a malicious smear of a 14-year-old boy to prove their right-wing tribal cred.
Sigh. May I give up on humanity now?
Nice Xanatos Gambit… This kid – sorry, this “kid” – is obviously first-rate evil mastermind material.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk……………..
I don’t have any more desks to split in two with my forehead…i’ve been rendered desk-less…
Fuck Richard Dawkins and his idiotic bigotry.
I’m expecting Bill Maher to invite him on Real Time at any moment, so Maher can pat Dawkins on the head and go, “There, there; it’s okay. Those mean liberals will be sorry when the Muslisms murder them all in their sleep.”
Sometimes, it seems like the only thing separating Dawkins from someone like Pam Geller is the ability to write legible English.
I think that naked circuit boards, like tits and cocks, are supposed to be decently hidden from the public gaze. Poor Ahmed is just guilty of setting off a catastrophic sequence of slippery slopes whilst being foreign. If only he’d brought
an approved bomb triggera decently clothed Iphone 6 he would have been fine.Step 3: Profit!
I shared Julia Burke’s Skepchick article (http://goo.gl/owxS9y) on Facebook and attracted a friend of a friend who was parroting this exact line of reasoning. Then he shared this tweet. i had not realized that it came from Breitbart.
Maybe Dawkins isn’t familiar with how yellow journalism works in the US in the Internet Age, but Breitbart has all the credibility of the Weekly World News.
This needs to go in your next book. You’re hitting the head of the pin here and you make it look easy.
Would you also take the same stance against Taslima for this little tweet (and the torrent that followed it)?
Feh, that’s not true and you know it.
She’s a werewolf.
It appears, the “clock” Mohamed brought to school this week was not the first of his circuit boards to look ominously like an improvised explosive device trigger.
Hey, tripwires are common (I)ED triggers! Arrest everyone who’s brown and has a rope!
Talkingpointsmemo had an article a few days ago about Irving mayor Beth Van Duyne. One of her big issues is to root out and eliminate the scourge of Sharia law from Irving. The parent’s attack on the mayor are not without cause; she is whipping up fears that sneaky Muslims are out to undermine the US, starting with Irving:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/ahmed-mohamed-beth-van-duyne-sharia
The more I read about this, the more I’m thinking that there IS a conspiracy involved. A conspiracy headed up by the Mayor, though, not Ahmed or his dad.
Lofty:
“Planet Express Ship! Cover your shame!”
Something else about this has been bugging me…
Schools all across the U.S. Are not only allowing but actively encouraging kids to bring and use deadly weapons on campus. Where is the concern, outrage and arrests over students having weapons like these on campus?
So isn’t about time we start to consider that Dawkins is not the intellectual we took him for? That maybe he just happens to be on the right side of the evolution vs creationism wars and religion vs atheism because of dumb luck? He really never brought any new insights into these issues, he just regurgitates points already made by other people on those topics. Granted, he does have a way with words (if not limited to a limited number of characters), so he can bring a beautiful story in which he places those elements. I have currently no difficulty imagining him to be a catholic apologist or a fellow of the Discovery Institute in an alternate universe.
The hysteria of this is frightening. It’s starting to feel like we all got dropped into The Crucible (Miller).
Just because we’ve seen Lon Chaney, Jr walking with her doesn’t mean we can jump to conclusions. Maybe it was some sort of royal charity function.
The answer to “Is it true?” in the context of Breitbart is almost universally “No.”, simply as that. “Ignore the company we keep.”? Okay, but also “consider the sources you read.”, Dawkins. You wouldn’t take the scribblings of Ray Comfort seriously when it comes to evolution, why in the world would you take Breitbart seriously when it comes to this story? Unless you simply want to, truth be damned? Fucking hell.
re @16
that’s why they advocate Open Carry. To keep their implements in view at all times.
Ahmed’s mistake was trying to disguise it as a simple, reassembled, clock. That he refused to admit was a secret homebrew timer for an IED. They saw through his stealth, and gently tried to get him to confess his conspiracy actions, but no, he stuck with his story; So they had to haul him away for a little scare tactic.
pffft
Is that their story? Did I get it right? Seems all the theories are painting the kid more of a genius than they give him credit for. Consistency of their “logic” is not their strong suit.
*palm, meet face*
@sqlrob, sylwyn:
The Queen is not a werewolf. She’s definitely an alien reptiloid: I’ve seen her squeeze a mouse to death and drink its juices.
Those Buckingham Palace Garden Parties aren’t what they used to be.
There’s nothing wrong with that. After all, Noraid was allowed to openly raise funds in the US for the IRA for decades, and anyway, it’s not like they spent all of it on setting off bombs in the cities of an ally, is it?
Every now and then an issue comes up where reasonable minds cannot possibly disagree. I do think this is certainly one such issue. So it’s very clarifying when Dawkins and Maher are on the same side as Palin and Geller.
Sometimes when PZ dismissed Dawkins and Maher I thought he was a bit too harsh. I hereby apologize. I was wrong and PZ could not have been more prescient. What fucking idiots, both of them.
Let us not forget the threat posed to America by cows! http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy/2015/09/15
Here is another brilliant thinker: http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy/2015/09/19
This is just bizarre or so we think. But this is normal. More ignorant a person is, more s/he tries to exhibit it. All I see is an intelligent kid trying to show off in a school that is biased towards other religions and race. If he cannot do that in the USA, it is not worth calling this nation home.
Ahmed may have succeeded in ways few terrorist could imagine. With one simple, innocent appearing act, this 14-year old émigré has succeeded in causing apoplexy among Irving, Tx officials, unhinged the horde of Republican presidential candidates and hangers on, and discombobulated the brains of several high-profile, atheist intellectuals. I suspect the pundits at Fox are regurgitating on themselves over this story, but I seldom watch rich white man propaganda. He has garnered international attention, and access to the President of the United States. And true to his Sufi background, he has done it without any carnage. Perhaps he is a Mawla. Western civilization may well be in the balance here. Well done, Ahmed, tallyho, and all that.
I was ‘that kid” (Ahmed) too! I remember cobbling up a chronograph using a 10mHz clock and a cascade of 7490 decade counters (TTL) with 7447 decoder-drivers for the LEDs. I was measuring bullet speeds to several thousand feet per minute, as a teenager. I thought I was cool!
Rich Woods@22:
If you play garden parties, I wish you the best of luck;
but if mammaries are ruled out, I’d rather be a duck.
(Than a reptiloid.)
The vast majority of citizens are science/technology-ignorant, so a case with wires, LEDs and circuit boards are totally unfathomable to them; obviously it must be something scary. Remember the Boston panic over portable lite-brites?
Thanks to over a century of propaganda (G.W. Griffith, I’m looking at you), everyone knows us Black folks want to rob you and rape your white women. Now that we’re entering decade #2 of Fear-Mongering Against Muslims, everyone knows that middle-eastern people want to kill you and everyone you love with suitcase bombs.
If Radio Shack was still around, I’d short the shit out of them; who knows what mayhem a brown kid with a pocketful of resistors and capacitors would unleash!?!
It’s taking him longer to get there, but Dawkins appears to be going full Condell.
Times have changed, or maybe my rl name is too ordinary.
Around 1962 – ’63 when I was in high school, I acquired an old wind-up alarm clock. One day I hurried between classes and arrived in the classroom while the teacher was still on break. I set the alarm for half way through the class and put the clock in her desk drawer. Sure enough, half way through class…BBBRRRIIIIINNNGGGG! The teacher was startled, class was disrupted for a couple of minutes and then… nothing. No police, no reporters, no lawyers, no international outcry. Hell, I almost blew up the whole school with my improvised bomb trigger and I didn’t even rate getting sent to the principal’s office. Kids these days have it so much easier. :-P
Dawkins is digging in. Take a look at what he just retweeted.
Also, at this time, why would anyone be surprised that Dawkins would link to Breitbart. His favorite feminist links to Breitbart as well plays a very creepy mother-son game with Milo Yiannopoulos. Richard Dawkins knows exactly who he is dealing with.
I’ve got people telling me no, no, I’ve got it all wrong — Dawkins is saying that Breitbart is all wrong.
Nope. Latest twitter escapades from Dawkins: he’s posting videos showing that the Mohamed clock is easy to make from a few scavenged parts. Yeah? So? Who’s arguing differently? Is there anyone claiming that Ahmed Mohamed invented Time and Printed Circuit Boards and LEDs?
In which our brave fighter for truth defends using the work of an organization known for lying.
Not just Breitbart. The article is written by Frank Gaffney, the loony conspiracy nut muslim hater. Way to be on the right side of the issue Dawkins.
Let’s not go too far in the other direction. No, the clock wasn’t hand soldered from bailing wire and tooth fillings and didn’t display in Greenwich, Metric and Klingon, using compressed encoding algorithms that had baffled Stephen Hawking. But it wasn’t breaking a clock radio with a baseball bat and dumping the insides into a sandwich box either. It’s legitimate tinkering of a type a young student would think is fun and interesting and might hope a teacher would be impressed by.
I don’t see that the story has changed one whit since it broke (other than the kooks, racist, and deniers are predictably oozing out of the woodwork.)
/end little detour. Carry on.
Janine, #33
Why do dumbasses like Dawkins think Ahmed is receiving all this support for what he built? Clearly that’s not the case because countless number of students are making all kinds of stuff.
They just don’t want to admit that our world is fucking racist. And of course since Dawkins himself is anti-Muslim, he’ll never admit the whole fiasco was bigotry.
So, did he think the issue was that we were discussing what grade we should give Ahmed? That’s quite a way to utterly miss the point.
Or does he imagine only brilliant among brilliant students should take extracurricular interests and the mere average and only bright should deserve and expect to be arrested for wasting teachers time, or what?
I mean, seriously, I simply do not comprehend what any one thinks this issue is. “Getting to the truth”. Of what? I really do not understand.
woozy, #39
They’re pretending that the issue is whether he invented something awesome. This is the whole point of their massive “hoax” and “fooled” derail.
That’s what cowardly racist bigots do when they don’t have the guts to come out and say what they think. Reminds me how Rand Paul’s response to the police execution of Eric Garner was “See! I told you government incursion into cigarette sales is bad!”
The anti-Muslim (and anti-immigrant) hysteria is reminding me of the anti-Semitism of the 1930’s in the US and in Europe. Originally, it was mostly the crackpots and the obvious bigots, but we’re seeing elected officials riding the wave of race* hatred. If the Republicans win the US presidency (they already have both houses of Congress, and there’s no sign they’ll lose that in 2016), we’ll have the federal government in the hands of people who have an explicit policy of race hatred.
I don’t see this as ridiculous. I see it as horrifying.
* And to all the folks who will try to derail by whining that the word “race” here doesn’t apply to either Muslims or to immigrants from the “wrong” places, go crawl back under your rock. I can’t be bothered to engage with that kind of dumbassery.
I guess. But *that* *doesn’t* *make* *any* *sense*. Do they think that public schools are some Glengarry Glen Ross sales plan? “1st prize, you get invited to the white house; 2nd prize, you get admitted to the after-school engineering club; 3rd prize, you get arrested and paraded in handcuffs in front of your classmates.”
Radio Shack may be with us no longer, but the simple search term “electronic kits” brings roughly 13,700,000 hits. Citizens of Irving, Texas should be very afraid.
Woah, it’s like I just read his mind. Dawkins just switched to a Rand Paulesque approach: it’s just the zero tolerance security policy that’s to blame!
Just can’t acknowledge the anti-Muslim climate around us, can you, Richard? Anything but that!
On the “Is Ms Windsor a werewolf or an alien” argument, she is an alien werewolf.
Ref.: Doctor Who, Tooth and Claw.
@Saad #44
Awwwww, poor, poor, persecuted Dawkins, I guess TSA never gave him back his little jar of Honey :( In this Dawkins is true and that zero tolerance in schools lead to school administrators not thinking and overacting on any little school issue, but that is not what Dawkins is arguing. Had Dawkins aruged that point first, the conversation would have been different.
Second, nice to reduce the lived experiences of Muslims in America by comparing them to non-existing religions and colours (skybluepink). Dawkins, you do care that he was a muslim. Hence, all of your postings and deflections and defense of the school officers.
Clock triggers? That’s so 20. Century anyway. We all have better bomb triggers in our pockets. (Cell Phones.)
I’ve been seeing people trot out the evils of zero tolerance policies in school since this started. They are both simultaneously to blame for the overreaction, but also, apparently, the overreaction was totally justified because, you know, it looks like a bomb.
I really do not get the zero tolerance argument though. At best, it only explains what I think is the least worrisome part here, the reaction of people at the school, where those policies apply. Possibly tinged with racist attitudes and paranoia, but people with limited ability to punish a student outside of giving them a suspension. The police are not bound by these policies, they were not forced to arrest him because of those policies.
I’ve been wondering how Dawkins could get it so terribly wrong and think the kid was given the attention because of his genius invention and then it struck me: In Dawkins’ world only people at the very top deserve basic human decency, respect and human rights. Ordinary folks who build ordinary stuff can go fuck themselves.
Clearly the authorities at that school failed to respond appropriately to the voices in their heads telling them there was a bomb threat. They should have evacuated the premises, called in the National Guard, and nuked the place, just to be sure. Fire the lot of them!
There may be those who enjoy this “Exclusive: Interview with Dick Dorkins”
http://genotopia.scienceblog.com/554/exclusive-interview-with-dick-dorkins/
Well, it’s false, so an obvious question to ask is “Why did you believe this obvious falsehood?” And to answer that, examining the company you keep is entirely valid.
Sure, let’s condemn the mindless zero-tolerance policies, too.
But the notion that such policies are not actually enforced in a racist fashion in our society (like virtually every other regulatory approach) requires one to have one’s head stuck so far up one’s anus that one can lick one’s own tonsils.
Establishing saner policies in place of ‘zero tolerance’ will not actually do anything to fight the racist approach to policing OR school discipline.
Ahmed Mohamed and his clock shed light on barriers Muslim scientists face (emboldening mime):
blf, #54
I can relate to that. I was given the same advice by my dad when starting college.
PZ: “Of course technology is mysterious, malicious, and of the devil.”
Unless it’s something military or pickup trucks. Then, ‘MURICA!!11!!
I spent a happy, geeky youth tinkering with electronics, and later became an electrical engineer. I can tell you that any home-built electronics project can be construed as a bomb by the ignorant and paranoid.
President Obama is not honoring Ahmed for what he made. Obama is leading by example, as in, this is how you encourage self-motivated, curious young students.
You do not arrest them.
And 3, 2, 1, Sam Harris weighs in, with more equivocation than you could shake a circuit board at, not to mention a big ole stinking shitpile of Hey Don’t Blame Me And Betty White. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejPxe7uxTwg
And 3, 2, 1, Sam Harris weighs in, with more equivocation than you could shake a circuit board at, not to mention a big ole stinking shitpile of Hey Don’t Blame Me And Betty White. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejPxe7uxTwg.
Lynna, OM (in #58)
Exactly. It’s difficult to imagine supposedly intelligent people can really be so obtuse not to realize that.
Blinded by racism/xenophobia!
this is not an add but just for accuracy Radio shack is not gone yet it has been taken over by General Wireless Operations Inc the web site is currently undergoing some remodeling and while many stores are closed there are still many open.
I did a simple search for “clock” on a popular diy site called instructables.com and found many pages of links to clock projects of varying degrees of sophistication with step by step instructions some even had fake explosives that looked like Acme bombs. So we can see that clocks are a very popular project so can we just drop all the BS about OH IT IS A BOMB TIMER!
The electronic components are ready available with whole assemblies polluting land fills.
looking forward I doubt we will hear less of this kind of crap spewing from the fear mongering reactionary crowd I would expect it to increase as the election season heats up because it is all they have.
fear Islam! fear Iran! fear abortion? fear sex! fear taxes! fear science!
fear none whites!
blue monday I guess
uncle frogy
Why is it all of my heroes turn out to be trash? First it was Thomas Jefferson, slave owner. Then Lance Armstrong. Not just a doper but an ego-maniacal ass that lied, stole and cheated on gargantuan proportions.. And now Richard Dawkins is trashing a 14 year old kid?
Dawkins has taken some -hard-to-defend positions in the past. But jeebus, he’s fallen into the deep end with this one.
#60, I can’t listen to Harris. Something about his emotionless voice just puts me to sleep.
And yes, when the kid ate a pop-tart into the shape of a gun… the entire reaction in the news and the blogosphere was about how rational and sane and reasonable the school policy was.
As that was rational and sane it’s only common sense that police and handcuffs being involved just make it more rational and more sane..
How in the fuck does that justify police intimidation and almost getting charged with a felony? This is just like all the “oh, but he wasn’t an angel” straw-grasping done on Trayvon Martin. It’s just a transparent attempt to fling mud at the victim.
On Australian TV last night the story was introduced like this: “Yes it’s the story of a boy who built a clock that looked like a bomb.“
I lasted several minutes into Harris on the YouTube link, finally hitting the back button as I began to dose off. He cannot grasp the rather obvious fact that the reaction within the school and police department to was clearly colored by prejudice. Proof 1: The cop saying (I forget the exact wording) “I figured it was him.” Proof 2: The teachers did not evacuate the school and the cops did not call the bomb squad.
Harris seems to think that if he talks in a monotone, people will take his ideas seriously, as if they were dispassionate. He is wrong.
So far as I can tell, the argument is (seriously) that any real boy genius would have built a “cool” clock that was a lot more sophisticated so he wasn’t a boy genius and no-one who wasn’t a boy genius would do try to do anything electronic, so the only explanation is that the whole thing was staged knowing that the schools no fucking-around-with-fake-bombs was serious so he would get called out and then his father would have a foothold to cry “Islamaphobia! Islamaphobia!”.
This is a bit of a stretch, but it reminds me of the time my much younger than me younger sister in the fifth grade kind of got impressed by me and my older sister talking about Shakespeare (we were well in high school and had just come back from a field trip the Ashland Shakespeare festival) and she went rummaging through our bookshelves where the complete works of Shakespeare had previously been gathering dust since our father’s graduate study days of 13 years earlier, got impressed by the Kate and Petruchio intro scene and took it upon herself to make a cassette tape of her performing it with her best friend.
… And it was *TERRIBLE*….
Even by 5th grade standards it was only average. They stumbled over words. They couldn’t parse the verbs from the nouns and … it was very poorly done. But they showed it to their teacher hoping the teacher would be impressed. He was. He gave them lots of extra credit for initiative.
So, … according to this logic it’s utterly inconceivable my sister would even try to do such a thing! why she couldn’t even pronounce the word “combless”! She’s a fraud obviously! It wasn’t a class assignment. She couldn’t give any reason or explanation why she did it. Why would a fifth-grader have any interest in Shakespeare and, look, in the future she just dropped it and never showed interest again. She actually turned out to be a a piss-poor literature student (as was I) in future years (although she was decent at history). She’s a fake!
Jeezus, I feel sorry for kids these days.
Ooh, here’s a new one from Dawk:
No, not really. Maybe you and O’Reilly should discuss the mystery of the tides.
virtually indistinguishable from a circuit board used in a commercially available device used to train law enforcement and military personnel regarding how to identify IEDs.
I have to call bullshit on that. An IED’s control system looks like: a piece of plywood with a cell phone hot glued to it, the case dismantled so 2 wires are connected to it, which leads to a small boxy thing glued to the plywood with 2 larger wires coming off that, one of which goes to a large battery, the other of which goes to a blasting cap stuck into a wad of putty-like stuff or the nose of an artillery shell that has had its fuze removed. That’s what it looks like.
I could go downstairs to my shop and whip one up in, oh… a couple minutes, most of which would be waiting for my soldering iron to heat (hint: explosives makers don’t use push-on connectors like the kid used in his clock. they don’t need to carry that much of a signal and they don’t like vibrations to make things short out. everything is neatly soldered or crimped and heat-shrunk)
anbheal wrote:
I think we can all agree here: Sam Harris is the real victim in this Ahmed Mohamed “bomb scare” arrest situation. We should all weep for Sam Harris, for he has been persecuted unfairly. He clearly said “airplanes”, not “schools”, so we’re wrong in assuming he meant everywhere, or that that would be the inevitable conclusion. He just wants us to use common sense, like the common sense in his own head that says that jihadists are the most dangerous threat to everyone.
I am still trying to figure out why tea partiers walking around with guns doesn’t trigger this kind of reaction.
Could it be they’re … pink?
Well, thanks a lot, Marcus. Now we’re all gonna be in trouble.
Marcus Ranum wrote:
That can’t be it. The supreme court ruled that America is post-racial, and everyone involved in getting this kid arrested has been quite clear that it wasn’t about race. It must be that guns are good, and… um… clocks are bad..?
Back in the fun old days it was considered a pretty hilarious gag to use someone you didn’t like’s credit card to buy one of these:
Defuse a bomb alarm clock
and send it to someone else you didn’t like. I’m guessing that nowadays that’d trigger a lethal overreaction, unless Jerry Sienfeld was the sender.
Caine @ 18;
I am seeing uncomfortable parallels to the McCarthy-ite mindset from the 1950s – Muslims have now replaced the Reds under the bed, but the testerical paranoia is the same, as is the retreat into toxic, knee-jerk pseudo patriotism, the tendency to couch the issue in apocalyptic religious terminology, and the gleeful liberal-baiting that sees Right wing talking heads immediately seize the opportunity to attempt to draw ridiculous links between the foreign bogeyman of the day and anyone Left of Ghengis Khan.
Public figures (and so it seems ordinary citizens) being hauled before review boards to answer questions such as “Are you now or have you ever been a Muslim? Has any member of your family ever been a Muslim?” seems all together too plausible a scenario in the current atmosphere, and would be doubly so with a Republican in the White House.
Someone should ask the teacher he first showed the clock to, who didn’t go berserk, how many other kids have brought in home made contraptions to show off with. The difference would probably be the other kids where all white like me.
“You are thinking that that is just Breitbart.”
Forget it. As a Dutchman I have had 12 years or so to get used to crap like this. It’s not that I have got used indeed – but I must admit that I have grown blasé.
Woozy #65
Oh yes, definitely, no one was critical of it at all. *rolls eyes* I came across someone on imgur trying to say that everyone ignored it when that kid got into trouble for that. It is amazing how much people will go to ignore reality. Not only was that decision heavily criticized at the time, it continued to be discussed on blogs and in news articles through to this year, 2 years after the event, with even more attention this year when it was upheld. Even more than that, legislation was introduced in multiple states after the incident. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pop-tart-gun-laws-fighting-for-the-right-to-keep-and-bear-pastry-in-the-u-s-1.2929705 For them to pretend that story was ignored is simply astounding. It speaks to a willingness to remain ignorant, to do absolutely no work to confirm what they are saying and believe.
But I am not surprised, relying on facts is not their strong point. I came across a crap infographic about scary bomb suitcases, that I sadly cannot find at the moment. It had 4 images, one being the clock, and 3 were supposedly suitcase bombs that they wanted everyone to think looked similar. Of course, I had to throw those images into Google Image search and see what came out. None of them were bombs, one was a suitcase computer someone put together (which was pretty obvious to anyone that has looked inside a desktop and had seen a power supply), one was the Honeywell security sales demo kit that was being passed around, and one was a case of separate objects used for security training in a storage case. They were objects you were meant to remove from the case and plant in things, to train security personnel, so it had various explosive related components within the case, but the case itself was in no way meant to even look like an explosive device.
Sorry for going on about this so much, but much like PZ, all of this has made my brain explode and I have not really had a chance to get the frustration off my chest. One of the most galling things I have seen is people passing around infographics that are incorrect, tossing links to The Blaze and Breitbart, treating them as good sources, while talking about how people should be independent thinkers, and think for themselves, not accept liberal narratives and such. The person who posted the 3 bombs, 1 clock image I mentioned in my previous post was one of these people, which did not surprise me in the least. Being an independent thinker apparently does not require checking ones facts at all.
Now, of course the sensible reaction to a 7 year old getting into trouble for nibbling a pop tart into a gun shape is to make it legal for 7 year olds to bring actual guns to school to protect themselves from evil poptarts.
+++
I’m also amazed at how Ahmed and his family were simultaneously brilliant enough to conceive a brazillion variables plan to get the kid into the White House AND too stupid to build an impressive clock…
I mean, why use Occam’s Razor when you can use Dawkins’ Sledgehammer?
Heh. Dawkins’ Sledgehammer.
They sell one on amazon.
I find it very disturbing that Dawkins sent out the tweet in question AFTER he had been chastised (rightly so) for his prior tweet claiming that Ahmed hadn’t “invented” that clock. It’s as if he’s doubling down on bigotry. Shame on him for taking anything Breitbart writes seriously. I thought he was supposed to be rational.
Can any of these conspiracy theorists remember being fourteen years old? It seems not.
I don’t know. I saw a child claim she had drawn a picture of a turkey. She didn’t. She traced her hand print and colored it brown with and felt pen and drew a smile on the thumb. The “turkey”‘s body was just her hand and fingers unaltered on a sheet of paper. Why would anyone do that? And the truly astonishing thing is that her father, instead of chastising her and yelling at her for wasting paper and pens on useless and bizarre non-art endeavors, actually put it on the refrigerator. Why would anyone do that?
Mysterious.
Rats below. The man has now achieved Bill O’Reilly mentality. Way to go, Richard.
Source.
And, since when do cops take orders from a school principal? Fucke, you’d think they’d come up with a better cover.
Maybe the school wasn’t evacuated because the cafeteria cook wasn’t there to give the order.
It’s kind of true though. It’s hard to criticize a story like that just because you know the company you’re about to keep in doing so.
“Boy, that was a ridiculous overreaction to normal child behavior, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah! It’s the commie teachers unions trying to mold our kids into little commies! Participation trophies common core indoctrination UN arglebargle”
“Um, that’s not what I said.”
Didn’t Richard Dawkins take a jar of honey to an airport because he possibly wanted to get arrested in a devious plot to get an invitation to the whitehouse, a scholarship, and some accolades from Zuckerberg?
Don’t look at me that way, I’m just asking questions! You know, being and advocate for the Devil’s Chaplain.
PZ Myers:
It’s not “madness”. Unfortunately, for Breitbart, it is a highly successful business model, and it is highly effective at promoting their political ideology as well.
And for Dawkins, a hugely important reason Dawkins and several of his fellow travelers are so much more popular now than they were once were (compared to, say, back in the 1990s), is that they have turned to harsh attacks on Islam, and anything perceived to be associated with it, even when such attacks are unreasoned and contrary to readily available evidence.
I recall that back in the 1980s and 1990s Dawkins often lamented that he seemed unable to appeal to conservatives or win them over. Attacking Islam, perhaps especially with poor and racist thinking, seems to be a way to do that, to a limited extent.
Also, many of us mentally ill atheists are quite offended, as we should be, to be lumped in with Dawkins and Breitbart; that presents considerable danger to most of us.
I brought it up because of the tendency to “Well, where was all the fuss when X happened? X happened without a blink of an eye. You’re hypocrites” when X caused a *huge* fuss at the time. Are you folks *now* saying that X was okay at the time?
But it’s funny how sides will bunch up. If this really *weren’t* about islaamaphobia, shouldn’t all these “those darn ding-dong liberal school unions suspending kids for writing about hunting” types be arguing in *defense* of Ahmed –he simply made something with circuitry that merely *looks* likes something that one could pretend to be a *hoax* bomb but the liberal wienee school boards think that because is could *look* like a *prop* it somehow is magically some real high level threat; Sheesh fuckin’ unions– as they did with the pop tart gun?
Just recognizing and working with components is a nontrivial skill. I would like to see the average adult repurpose the guts of a commercially-made clock into a different case, so that they function correctly and without electrocuting themselves. Most people cannot solder or recall wire connections. If you hand them a screwdriver, they look distant and recite; “Let’s see, it’s righty-tighty, lefty-loosey…”
I thought the right to carry clocks was protected by the SECOND amendment…
Apologies for the bad pun, could resist.
I think I read the Dawkins post as in “look at these idiots, just ask if it’s true”. I think I read his twitter link to videos saying the bombs are easy to make as a debunking people can do for themselves.
Has Dawkins clearly stated he actually thinks this clock was a risk? I just don’t see how we’re reading those posts like he’s saying the opposite, unless I’m missing something.
Dark Jaguar,
He started out victim blaming Ahmed quite directly, then when that became indefensible, he switched to critiquing the workmanship of the clock to derail the conversation.
He also questioned Ahmed’s motives for tinkering with it, calling it “mysterious”.
Oh, and he also referred to him as a “kid” (including the quotation marks).
I think his asking *us*, the Ahmed supporters, to “ask if it is true”. i.e. is the narrative: Ahmed, boy genuis, constructs a brilliant clock of his own design, only to be arrested as a for active terrorism and possession of a real bomb, solely based on Islamaphobia. Is it true?
And as the clock is somewhat average and mundane and hardly worthy of a college level engineering degree, but is only something someone teaching themselves from kits and material, maybe someone who has never even taken a formal engineering class at even the associative college level, so Ahmed is clearly *not* trained, talented and experienced engineer at all. Ergo, we must consider that Ahmed never intended to construct anything but staged the event for the reaction.
Quite the opposite, I think. I think he’s claimed that the clock was never intended to be a clock but to always have been a hoax bomb to scare people with and to stage an incident. For if it were a *real* clock, it would have required some degree of a sophisticated original engineering. Anything less than that can only have been done for the purpose of deception.
…. but for the life of me I can not comprehend why Dawkins put ‘”kid”‘ is quotes. Did he think that Ahmed might actually be 18 years old?
I was talking to someone yesterday about this incident, He is quite liberal and I was surprised when they stated with the excuse paranoia and how we (he is white) have no experience with terrorism, 9/11 bla bla. I did not know what to say except to remind him that that was not true of the black population and point out Timothy McVeigh
uncle frogy
woozy wrote:
I have an idea, but it’s a stupid idea. Republicans have been repellant to the word when dealing with police brutality towards black youth in America for quite some time, and often describe them as having “arms like tree trunks”, etc. Possibly, it’s the same kind of thing going on here.
Dawkins is a Smug Pompous Atheist Blowhard (SPAB).
Because the word kid suggests innocence.
The denial of childhood to children of colour
AFAIK, especially black boys are much more likely to be tried and judged as adults, deemed more mature and responsible while girls of colour, especially black girls are blamed for their own sexual assault at much younger ages than white girls, who are (rightfully!) afforded the status of the innocent child victim.
If that’s the case, then what the heck? Has Dawkins never heard of amateurs? I mean, the first bit of coding I ever did was edit my name into a qbasic program, and I was proud of that amateurish bit of string editing at the time. This is the problem with college profs (sorry PZ), they assume their standards for education and what a student should be accomplishing are perfectly fine for grade school, when they most certainly are NOT. Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, and a kid’s basic wiring of a mostly complete clock kit is “somewhere”. Insulting a teen for that is like insulting a 3 year old’s stick figure drawings. Of COURSE it’s not all that good, but it’s a show of interest! It’s a foundation! Give him SOME credit for that and encourage further tinkering!
I dunno, I guess that’s the problem with a prodigy. They judge everyone else by unreasonably high standards.
Dawkins just retweeted this:
He continues to pretend that Ahmed’s invite was for the clock and not for the humiliating and traumatizing treatment he received from his own school and his own police force, both of whom are supposed to be supporting and serving him.
Dawkins is an anti-Muslim bigot just like the right-wing Christians. Enjoy your company, Richard.
I found this on my Twitter feed this morning, and thought I might know a relevant place to share it! https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/646824829136580608
Related – I keep hearing I should read Saladin Ahmed, and this just makes me think people who said that were right!
Dawkins comes from times when a 14-year-old was “a youth” as opposed to “a child”.
I don’t think he pretends. I think he really believes that.
That would, however, mean he hasn’t even tried to think this through. And that kind of intellectual laziness is… rather surprising for a scientist.
@Everyone:
Saad has it right, with a nod to Giliell:
This has been known for quite a long time.
Dawkins choice to embrace the strategy? An act of complicity with known evil.
Fuck that shit.
@Katybe:
That was classic. Almost enough to make me want to be on twitter.