Boston Bomb Scare

[Gravdigr]

His plan is working perfectly...

[glatt]

Ha!

[classicman]

...

[xoxoxoBruce]

More cake for me.

[footfootfoot]

.

[Undertoad]

This article has convinced me. It was a hoax bomb. That kid definitely did not build a clock.

The reason the cops were not scared was because it was an obvious hoax.

[Clodfobble]

Fascinating. In the comments of UT's link is another link showing the kid's dad has a long history of being an anti-Islamophobia activist. I, too, am convinced. I'm sure he never thought it would get this big, but the kid was fucking with his teachers, for sure.

[glatt]

The article says he took the guts out of an old clock and put them in a pencil case.

When I understood him to say that he "made" a clock, I assumed that he cannibalized some other existing electronics and put it together into a clock. Kids can get their hands on discarded junk easily, but they don't have much money to buy new individual electronic components that would add up to maybe $50 or so for the same contraption.

So he took a clock apart and stuck it into a pencil case. He probably felt that he made a clock. Instructibles.com is full of similar case mods where people claim that they made something when all they really did was repackaged something.

[Happy Monkey]

When I heard it had a circuit board, that is exactly what I suspected he had done. A clock sounds simple, but I would have been pretty surprised if he had actually built one from scratch.

I'm not sure how the word "hoax" comes in if he never said it was a bomb, and nobody thought it was.

[Undertoad]

Here's his dad

He ran for President of Sudan twice, and was a primary battler of Florida Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones a few years ago.

Pops set this up. We all fell for it. The President fell for it. Now what?

[glatt]

Maybe pops set it up, but the cops and principal swallowed it hook line and sinker.

I've got my biases in this for sure. I'm a maker. On my bedroom floor right now is an alarm clock radio I took from the curb and took apart to see if there would be an easy way to add an aux input. My son is a year younger than this kid and he's a bigger maker than I ever was. This strikes pretty close to home for me. Glatt Jr. actually had a homework assignment in Spanish two days ago where he had to write about what makes him special, and he made up some BS instead of talking about the stuff he makes in my basement because he didn't want anyone at school to know that he makes stuff. It would lead to questions and then how does he explain that he makes typical boy stuff like alcohol burning stoves and weapons to fight the zombies?

This is turning into a Left vs Right issue, and I think that's fascinating.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Here's his dad

He ran for President of Sudan twice, and was a primary battler of Florida Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones a few years ago.

I knew that. Who fell for what? What was the hoax?

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by glatt

The article says he took the guts out of an old clock and put them in a pencil case.

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.

[glatt]

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.

[Undertoad]

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.

Actually from one of the original stories

He kept the clock inside his school bag in English class, but the teacher complained when the alarm beeped in the middle of a lesson. Ahmed brought his invention up to show her afterward.

~

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

I closed it with a cable. Because I didn't want to lock it to make it seem like a threat, so I just used a simple cable. So it won't look that much suspicious.

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.