Geek gets arrested in Texas for assembling a digital clock and taking it to his high school where the High School and PD freak out.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-ninth-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece

Irving 9th-grader arrested after taking homemade clock to school: 'So you tried to make a bomb?'

IRVING — Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High on Monday.

Instead, the school phoned police about Ahmed’s circuit-stuffed pencil case.

So the 14-year-old missed the student council meeting and took a trip in handcuffs to juvenile detention. His clock now sits in an evidence room. Police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it’s a clock.

In the meantime, Ahmed’s been suspended, his father is upset and the Council on American-Islamic Relations is once again eyeing claims of Islamophobia in Irving.

Box of circuit boards

A box full of circuit boards sits at the foot of Ahmed’s small bed in central Irving. His door marks the border where the Mohamed family’s cramped but lavishly decorated house begins to look like the back room at RadioShack.

“Here in high school, none of the teachers know what I can do,” Ahmed said, fiddling with a cable while a soldering iron dangled from the shelf behind him.

He loved robotics club in middle school and was searching for a similar niche in his first few weeks of high school.

So he decided to do what he’s always done: He built something.

Ahmed’s clock was hardly his most elaborate creation. He said he threw it together in about 20 minutes before bedtime on Sunday: a circuit board and power supply wired to a digital display, all strapped inside a case with a tiger hologram on the front.

He showed it to his engineering teacher first thing Monday morning and didn’t get quite the reaction he’d hoped for.

“He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’” Ahmed said. “‘I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”

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.

“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said.

“I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”

The teacher kept the clock. When the principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of sixth period, he suspected he wouldn’t get it back.

They led Ahmed into a room where four other police officers waited. He said an officer he’d never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”

Ahmed felt suddenly conscious of his brown skin and his name — one of the most common in the Muslim religion. But the police kept him busy with questions.

The bell rang at least twice, he said, while the officers searched his belongings and questioned his intentions. The principal threatened to expel him if he didn’t make a written statement, he said.

“They were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’” Ahmed said.

“I told them no, I was trying to make a clock.”

“He said, ‘It looks like a movie bomb to me.’”

This is what happens when helicoptered people make it into the workplace: they cannot recognize a weapon - at all. A "movie bomb"? Really?

Wait 'til they find out the kid can buy things at Home Depot that will kill people.

Or that those uppity black people can do things like this.

I had no idea Texas police were hiring TSA dropouts - who question 14-year-olds without parents or attorneys present.

Rad, not sure where you live but here in CA the police don't need to have a parent present to question a minor in a "criminal" investigation. I found this out when my oldest who was in Jr. high was questioned about another kid who had drugs on campus. I flipped when I found out. After that, all my children's schools were notified, in writing, that I had to be contacted and present for any trips to the office. I wasn't real popular with school administrators.

here in CA the police don't need to have a parent present to question a minor in a "criminal" investigation

This is why you teach your children this phrase: upon the advice of my parents, I am invoking my fifth amendment right to counsel.

Yes, you will cause the cops and the school admin to whine to you about your stubborn children. Screw that.

One of the basic strategies in the Dictator's Handbook is to keep the people ignorant. They should know only that which is spoon-fed to them by government. People who engage in independent learning are inherently a threat to the regime. Not only do you eliminate them, but you do it in a way that humiliates them. You make it socially unacceptable; you call such people geeks and nerds and encourage others to make fun of them and ostracize them. If that doesn't work, you accuse them of engaging in conspiracies against The Peoples. After all, the government provides you with all the knowledge you need. People who seek to obtain anything else are obviously planning to do evil and must be eliminated.

“I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

— Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) August 31, 2015

"Rad, not sure where you live but here in CA the police don't need to have a parent present to question a minor in a "criminal" investigation."

Hey, ask Patrick about that. He insists that schoolchildren have "rights".

Something making the rounds on FB now: Emily Moskalenko. She's eight, and a pole dancer. Check Google and decide: exploited sex worker or artist?

"Dell pledged to spend $125 billion in China over the next five years ... Cisco pledged $10 billion in investment in China over the next several years"

Can we stop giving them tax breaks now?