This was the "pencil case" he put it in (the black one.) It looks exactly like a bomb briefcase from the movies.

From another article, when he first showed it to his engineering teacher, the teacher told him, "Don't show that to anyone else." The kid's stated intention was to show it off to his electronics teacher, which he did without incident. But having not gotten the actual reaction he wanted, he then showed it to his English teacher, who was the one who sent him to the principal's office.

The thing is, this is exactly the kind of thing my friends and I would have done. We were smart, and bored, and we occasionally fucked with our teachers because it was entertaining, especially when we knew they knew what we were doing, but their hands were tied because of policy.

My brother did a very similar thing with his physics teacher in HS.
The teacher had mentioned that he couldn't hear high pitched sounds. So my brother made a little box that emmitted a faily loud buzzing noise at a high pitch, and was setting it off during class.

The teacher didn't hear it, but the other students did. Some thought it was funny, and some thought it was stupid and annoying. It caused a disruption, so my brother turned it off. But the teacher knew something was going on. My brother got mildy scolded, but nobody called the police. He wasn't arrested and suspended.

I wasn't there for this clock incident. If the principal felt the kid was deliberately disrupting class, he deserves a detention. Arrest and suspension are way overboard.

Actually from one of the original stories

~

The reverse engineering article points out something very odd about the lad's Youtube interview with the Dallas Morning News. Here's the interview:



At 1:25, the kid says

The reverse engineering article asks, why was he concerned about it looking suspicious? He's describing his choice while building this thing.

The danger here is that I/we parse the worlds of a 14-year-old too closely. But he is also really specific about this detail, where there is no reason to get specific. Often, when you lie, you introduce unnecessary specifics.

I also find it interesting that he is constantly doubling down on he invented this thing. Even knowing he's in serious trouble, he never just stops and says hey I took apart a clock. I thought it would look cool with all the electronics exposed and the display mounted on the case lid.

I'd point out that he was describing past events after having been arrested. So he knows there was HUGE suspicion surrounding him. He's trying to paint himself in the best light, as we all do.

(the above was edited - i didn't realize it took me 10 minutes)

Oh, absolutely. The school should have realized that you don't play chicken with a teenager, because doubling-down is all most kids know how to do, whether out of panic or defiance or both. It's possible the school felt their hands were tied because of a shitty zero-tolerance policy, but still, they should have known how to quietly let this thing go.

Yeah, we had several instances of the "too high-pitched for adults to hear" prank. We also had a kid who figured out what kind of universal remote worked with the TVs in the school classrooms, and he would turn them on randomly from his backpack whenever it suited him.

When I was in 8th grade, I read the entirety of Johnny Tremain upside-down just to piss off a teacher. I told him that I had a rare form of dyslexia where instead of being flipped left-to-right, letters were flipped top-to-bottom, and that if he tried to make me read it right side up he was discriminating against my disability.

Oh, he loved you, I'm sure. LOL

I would want EVERY SINGLE TEACHER in EVERY situation to report this and for it to be addressed. When etc etc the knew it wasn't a bomb, I don't know. What to do from there ... something different, but we have these zero-tolerance policies and they dictate what must be done.

I'll just dump all these here. I call bullshit on the whole thing. Something doesn't add up right.

Times have changed. When I was in junior high, my woodshop teacher helped me build a working replica medieval crossbow. In New York state. Where crossbows were illegal at the time.

Only on TV do bombs have visual timers and beep. Real bombs don't waste time doing something so useless. How many adults cannot even understand that simplistic concept? How many adults know it is a bomb when nothing of bomb size and potential even exists in it? The teacher panicked due to ignorance and emotion. How long did it take for someone to finally act like an adult - and think?

I'm not saying what happened was right. But the child was accused of a bomb hoax, not of making a bomb.

Except he never hoaxed anyone either.

It wasn't a bomb, and never said it was, and when they described things he could have done to make it seem like a bomb, they were things he hadn't done.

Throw some wires and electronic parts in a box. That is a bomb or a hoax? Hoax was the ability of an adult (and her peers) to think like an adult. She made other involved adult (and police) into national jokes.

Nothing was right or wrong. Pathetic were so many adults who failed to think like adults. The kid remained suspended from school because a teacher and administration could not admit their ignorance and public humiliation? Who was the child here?

Somewhat interesting article about the boy, talking to a former teacher.

There's enough ammo in here to support any position you have on the boy.

And the kid is moving to Qatar.

The backwards-ass authoritarian country offered him a full scholarship. So his family is moving there soon. WTF?

Interesting also how there weren't any pictures of him meeting with Obama splashed all over the media. They kept that meeting on the down low.

I saw pictures of that meeting. They probably weren't "splashed all over" because the media was bored with him.

Yes indeed, this is a family that is all about that science, 'bout that science, no trouble.

Hmmm.... Authoritarian, yes. Different religion, yes.
But, if I lived in a place where my kid was treated that way by the local officials
and community, I'd seriously think about moving out too.

from Wikipedia:

See also: Wiki: Qatar Foundation

.

You are engaging in some serious cherry picking from that entry.

Yes, I know... "backwards-ass"

Because there's certainly nowhere in America more tolerant and accepting than Texas... If you can't make friends here, you might as well give up.

Oh, yeh... that's it :rolleyes: :right:


:cool:

The media is in charge of "splashing all over". I saw the pictures, so they were available for splashing, if anyone wanted to. Apparently, few did, either way.

Why not? Perhaps because the kid is leaving the country?
The "buzz" ended immediately after that announcement.

I think the meeting was before that. The buzz was over before either.

Initial incident was in Sept. Met Obama on Oct 19th and announced leaving Oct 20.

The press probably dropped it because it became just another false alarm. After starting out with all the makings of a juicy story they could panic folks with it was a dud.
I think Obama met with him as a gesture that not all Muslims, for that matter not all foreigners/immigrants/swarthy people, are bomb throwing terrorists.

The press dropped it because it wasn't a positive for Obama.

Or a negative.

See, there is no confirmable answer, so fertile ground for opinions based on prejudices and conspiracy theories, though everyone feels their opinion is based on reason and logic.

... and they very well may be, probably are. Still doesn't mean either one is correct.
There are no guarantees.

OTOH, HM is right also - were it a negative, they've dropped those pretty quickly as well.

Clock kid's family sues the school district for $5M, the city of Irving for $10M

Now where are we?

That'll be a cold day in hell. Besides, why should this family feel safe in Texas when nobody else does.

And they feel safer in Qatar? :eyebrow:

I hope they win. It's a lawsuit, so of course they'll play up the harm, but the school and the mayor acted shamefully, and it should be expensive to do that.

Expensive to the kids still at the school, since they are the only ones who will actually suffer from any loss of funds.

I didn't go to the link, but there was a short article in the paper this morning. It's not a lawsuit. Not yet. It's a threatening shakedown letter from the attorney.

And it's bullshit. The cop and the principal behaved poorly, but not $15M worth of poorly. If it became a lawsuit and I was on the jury, I'd rule in favor of the child and give him $5K from the city for the false arrest, which sounds like a lot, even to me, but is one 3 thousandth of what his attorney is asking for. I'd give him nothing from the school district. I think he deserved a detention for the class disruption, and he got a suspension instead, but that's a principal's prerogative.

I'm liking this kid and his family less and less, but that doesn't mean the cop and the principal behaved well.

And eventually the taxpayers who voted in one of the most islamophobic mayors in the country.

Some teachers and staff will be laid off if the school district has a $5M shortfall. Librarians, art teachers, music teachers, aides. Those types of jobs.

Who will not, in any way, associate their punishment with their own actions. They will in fact associate it with the aforementioned Islamic people, and vote in an even more reactionary mayor.

For someone who understands very well how overly punitive actions backfire in both the prison system and with foreign affairs, you have always been surprisingly idealistic and blind to the way schools work (an opinion based on more than just this conversation, for what it's worth.)

If there were a better way to deter this behavior, that would be great.

I'm happy to be considered idealistic, but financial punishment like this seems to be just about the least idealistic approach possible. I'd even consider my opinion of the school board and the town to be fairly cynical, in that fear of financial penalties is more likely to work than moral or ethical arguments.

The "better way" is to get rid of zero-tolerance policies in schools, to train teachers to use common sense instead of forcing them to take teenage hoaxes seriously.

For the family's part, the "better way" is to stay in town and prove you are a valued part of the community, instead of uprooting and moving to a country that enforces Sharia Law and doesn't educate girls. Also, to acknowledge that your embarrassment and inconvenience, while both embarrassing and inconvenient, are not worth $15 million dollars.


Shortly post-9/11, the comedian Dave Attell got removed from an airplane because someone thought he looked too Arabic (he's Jewish.) You know what he did? Nothing. He was embarrassed, inconvenienced, and he didn't try to get $15 million dollars out of it.

Recently a white police officer (in Detroit, I believe,) was faced with an increasingly hostile situation with a group of teens on a street corner. Rather than escalate, she engaged in a dancing contest with one of the teens and defused the situation.

There are a million other examples. All hot-button situations are better when they are defused, not escalated. Prove that you are better than the Other Guy's opinion of you, and he will start to believe it. Retaliate, and you've made it worse.

That sounds much more idealistic, not less.

What class disruption. An alarm on my watch goes off. A cell phone rings. That also requires detention for class disruption?

The whole thing exists because multiple adults were emotional multiple times. Every fact was ignored because adult were emotional. Then penalties increased because adult were even more emotional. So emotional as to refuse to admit how foolish and wrong they had been.

I have no problem penalizing the school system for hiring adults who repeatedly acted emotional like children. $15 million is excessive. But I would not be surprised if he got one year of free college tuition. These adults were so emotional (illogical) as to even make international news. Their school board should be reviewing other decisions by these employees for a pattern of emotionally justified decisions. If not, a lawsuit is clearly justified if the school board is also complicit - also acting emotionally.

They screwed up. Take responsibility for being so emotional. Instead they want to deny everything including their painfully obvious and repeated mistakes. If not, that is why lawsuits are necessary.

Clodfobble recommends taking the high road. Both are options. But little tolerance exists for adult who act like children. An adult would have openly admitted their mistake and apologized. Those adults who are still children could not even do that.

Perhaps "simplistic" would have been a better choice of words. Solutions do not come in neat monetary packages, no matter their size.

There was no hoax.

Zero-tolerance policies are in place because school districts think it protects them from liability, because "their hands were tied". Until it's more expensive to maintain a zero-tolerance policy, the policy will remain.

On that, we still disagree. I think at best the kid was an unknowing pawn in his father's game.

No, because even $15 million, even sought by every kid who faces even the slightest discrimination, will still never outstrip the financial liability of a cafeteria full of blown-up kids. In Newtown, Connecticut, various Sandy Hook Elementary victims and their families have sued the city, the gun manufacturer, the shooter's dead mother's insurance company, and, of course, the school. One lawyer of a kid who didn't even die sued the school for unspecified millions because someone in the office turned on the intercom as the gunman entered the building (presumably to warn the classrooms of what was coming,) and the child heard "violence" and other "disturbing sounds" over the speaker, which traumatized her.

Being a non-lawyer, my interpretation of shot-gun law suites is...

The judge and/or jury can hear a case with multiple defendents,
and, on their own, assign fractional responsibility.

So, not-withstanding how deep the pockets, the city, state, school,
LE Officer, gun-manufacturer, gun-seller, parents-of-shooter,
insurance companies, ... one or all can be proportionally responsible.

(Of course, the LLD's are never at risk and always get first bite.)

What the fuck is a LLD?

LLB and LLD - Bachelor's and Doctor's of Law

IOW, your friendly attorney down the street.

Then what is a JD?

Different countries have different degrees.

Most lawyers in the US are JDs.

LLB and LLD (which doesn't exist anymore and was replaced by LLM) is mostly a fuzzy ferriner thing.

But the specific degrees don't matter so much, what really matters is if they are members of the bar.

In theory, could I join the bar and be licensed to practice law even if I just read a lot and never went to law school?

That used to be the case, but isn't any more. It's a law school scam.

I stand corrected. :blush:

Rereading all these posts I don't see any of the words I use to describe lawyers. :eyebrow: