I suppose if Ahmed was in school in Santa Clara, California - nothing would have happened. But he was in Dallas, Texas.
In Texas, everyone is allowed to carry a concealed firearm without a license or permit. The fear factor just may be more a part of their daily life.
Electricity was a big part of my childhood in San Francisco. I even had an old military telephone wired down the block to a friend's house. But the neighbors put a stop to it as they were worried the wires might start a fire... even though it was all a low voltage set up.
I wonder why his engineering teacher didn't just explain to the other teachers that it wasn't a threat and was indeed just a clock. No one's seemed to ask that question yet.
I wonder why his engineering teacher didn't just explain to the other teachers that it wasn't a threat and was indeed just a clock. No one's seemed to ask that question yet.
Because he was the only one with common sense?
In my high school it was a requirement. But one clod missed it.
In a world where everything is judged by appearance, the takeaway is clear: If you have a bomb, put it in a computer monitor (or something else familiar to an English teacher) and you'll go undetected.
I despair of the movie-based stereotypes that have contaminated the brains of my fellow citizens - cops and lawmakers included.
I am still a bit aghast as to why my Japan Airlines flight from Tokyo to Taipei insisted on confiscating a tube of wasbi and a bottle of soy sauce from my carry-on bag that I purchased in Tokyo.
But that was very soon after 9/11 and I guess they feared I had figured out a way to blow the plane out of the sky with cleverly disguised chemicals.
As the ancient Hindu text - The Crest Jewel of Discrimination - tried to clarify. A rope is not a snake. One must not look at ropes and dread snakes... and so on.
Honest to goodness. My real 7th grade science project was two nails driven though a piece of plywood. I took an old extension cord, split the wires and attached them to the nails. I then would slide a hot dog across the two nails (hot dog lenght apart) and plug it in for 20 or 30 seconds. It made the best hot dogs - very juicy. TALK about dangerous! ;-)
I would be terrified if they let a child do that and take it to school now! Sorry - I know this isn't really on topic, but times have changed.
I think that is the point Whit, times have changed.
It's not clear they have changed for the better.
Why is it for example that the USA, one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, a super power, is falling behind in basic science research and engineering excellence?
I posit it's because kids are not allowed to cook hotdogs on bare mains wires, or cast molten aluminium in shop class, or build mercury switches like I did.
Exploration is the name of the game. Exploration is risky...
Honest to goodness. My real 7th grade science project was two nails driven though a piece of plywood. I took an old extension cord, split the wires and attached them to the nails. I then would slide a hot dog across the two nails (hot dog lenght apart) and plug it in for 20 or 30 seconds. It made the best hot dogs - very juicy. TALK about dangerous! ;-)
I would be terrified if they let a child do that and take it to school now! Sorry - I know this isn't really on topic, but times have changed.
Gee, I dunno Whit. did times change?, Or did we just get older and more wise?.
In the bad old '70s I went to voc school for TV audio repair and built a six digit digital clock from a handful of ttl chips and old school linear P.S. It was entirely wirewrap and point to point for the power supply. Worse thing that happened to me was being asked to switch into the electronics class the following year since I was not doing much more than enough TVs for a "C" once the digital bug bit. But since now we gotta have someone to blame everything on, guess I must blame Don Lancaster and his TTL Cookbook which book I wore out two copies and the third never came back from loan. Oh, and Sol Libes and IMSAI for lifelong CPU and electronic hardware dependencies.......
So it seems parts of Texas have a new "time zone". So, what time is it? Tick-Tock at the sound of the panic alarm the time will be Stupid o'clock, precisely.
When is a clock not a clock? When is a clock, a bomb?
I seem to have had several interesting international flight incidents now that I think about it.
On a different trip back to the USA, my electric watch gave up the ghost just before departure due to humidity in Taiwan, so I just tossed an electric alarm clock in my suitcase to tide me over until I could get another watch in the US.
When I arrived in the US, I was told that my luggage was still in Hong Kong and would come a day or two later.
It seems that the luggage handling in Hong Kong at that time collected any ticking suitcases, put them at a far corner of the airport for 24 hours rather than on your plane, and waited to see what would happen.
Maybe we should just ban clocks from schools.
++++++++
So, if you are going to put an alarm clock in your luggage -- remove the battery. And it is always wisest to carry on a fresh pair of socks and underwear.
Well the good news is the kid is seeing a lot of support. He's going to be fine, and likely encouraged to do more. Microsoft set him up pretty nice, and he's either going to see the President or has already. Very cool. This President really likes science. That invite is genuine and will stay with him for life, I suspect.
When I was little, I brought tons of things to school. And I did repairs on the various things at the school too. Mostly it was allowed, and I was kind of a problem kid in other areas. For a year, they sent me across the street to the TV Repair shop to hang with that guy and do stuff. A 5th grader testing tubes, reflowing trouble circuits, aligning yokes and doing convergence... I was lucky. That old guy, Ray, loved having me in there and I learned a ton!
(and you all wonder why I like making sure Props can do TV signals. Well there you go)
I didn't ever get questioned on anything as a kid, but for one event that turned out to be pivotal:
We had Apple 2 computers and some programmed instruction disks to learn from. A couple friends and I found out they were modifiable, and so we wrote jokes into them. When caught, that educator placed a few of the computers off to the side and told us to pick what we wanted to do, do it and tell him why. And if we did that, we passed; otherwise, fail.
Best move ever! He got us books, and we basically attacked those computers, each of us kicking off a great career related to them too.
He could have taken an authoritarian path and I suspect things may have played out very different for us. Some perspective there for sure. Back then, nerd and geek were not well respected where I came from. For me, the saving grace was the performance arts, music, drama, etc... But other geeky smart kids were not so lucky, often discouraged socially. Not cool.
As an adult, I've been questioned many times!
Once, coming back from a Parallax event, the San Jose TSA went nuts! They just didn't like all the stuff I had. But, I took a risk and actually had some serious fun with it. They put it all onto a table and began questioning me. "What are you doing with this stuff?" "I'm a student." (true) "But you are too old for school." "Never too old man", etc...
"What is this?" "Ultra Phasor" "and that?" "dynamic fluxor" "these?" "flux capacitors", "confabulators".... and on it went!
They were serious, and a bystander got the humor big. He struggled to keep it quiet, but I could see it in his face as he recognized variations on sci-fi names and terms.
I was moved. I really did expect them to call me on BS and I expected to pivot that into a more lighthearted conversation. But it never happened. They were entirely clueless! And that's OK. People don't have to know about this stuff. They might know a lot about other stuff, right? Right. But, what were we doing then and what did that mean? (and I don't know what that means, but I know I'm worried about it)
Still a bit disturbed by the whole thing, if you want to know.
There have been other times. Traffic stop with circuits on the back seat... (was going to do some stuff with a friend and put things there for the ride over. One wouldn't even think about this kind of thing, but for the general unease a few too many of us Americans seem to be experiencing.
And it's just simple: where people see parts, not well refined products, parts = bad or nefarious. Products are good, safe, benign. Never mind all the possibilities. It's as silly as grocery stores looking for people carrying stuff out in the bag, stopping the ones not using the bag! (and mine does this, despite the fact that I told them that policy actually makes casual theft significantly easier. Know their response? "How do you know?" lulz --> and I'm serious. I just had to laugh and wish them a nice day, and I rarely use a bag there now, just for bonus points.)
Products have some specific intent, and parts could be anything at all! Why that is bad is tough to think about, but it kind of is. I often think about the shift toward a spend to solve problem culture. Growing up, I didn't have much, and it was definitely a fix it and learn to solve scenario. I saw that play out among my peers of all socioeconomic classes too. In some ways, it didn't matter. Stuff had to get done, and as I learned and helped people and solved problems, opportunity followed and I ended up just fine.
Today, that dynamic just doesn't seem as likely to play out as it did for so many of us. We need to think hard about fixing that, and I think a lot of us are. I've got hope, because I do see media depicting this stuff in favorable ways, and I also see leaders doing the same. So we aren't doomed, but we are facing some ugly times right now.
When you look at the kids clock, and contemplate the thought of a bomb, just where is the stuff that goes boom? Seems extremely basic to me. As it does all of us. My first thought was, "not enough mass"
A few too many people in the USA seem to fear smart people like they do non-conforming people. And honestly, I think some of them simplify it down to just non-conforming and it's all worrisome to them. We need to spend more time understanding why so that we can help them get past it.
Seeing this kid get good support and some press is a great thing. He's gonna be better for the experience and maybe more of us will think about this situation and improve it. We need the smart people, we need the hackers, makers, tinkerers, builders, leaders, doers as much today as we ever have. But something has shifted a little. It's just wonked, and it's gonna take some examples like this and a lot of talking about it to sort out.
So now we are talking and that's good. Hope they give him his clock back.
Oh, and Dave Jones is all kinds of awesome. If you are not listening to "The Amp Hour" you are missing out. Dave is just a character who is fun to listen to and his chatter seems to get me in the mood to do stuff too.
Well the good news is the kid is seeing a lot of support. He's going to be fine, and likely encouraged to do more. Microsoft set him up pretty nice, and he's either going to see the President or has already. Very cool. This President really likes science. That invite is genuine and will stay with him for life, I suspect.
When I was little, I brought tons of things to school. And I did repairs on the various things at the school too. Mostly it was allowed, and I was kind of a problem kid in other areas. For a year, they sent me across the street to the TV Repair shop to hang with that guy and do stuff. A 5th grader testing tubes, reflowing trouble circuits, aligning yokes and doing convergence... I was lucky. That old guy, Ray, loved having me in there and I learned a ton!
(and you all wonder why I like making sure Props can do TV signals. Well there you go)
I didn't ever get questioned on anything as a kid, but for one event that turned out to be pivotal:
We had Apple 2 computers and some programmed instruction disks to learn from. A couple friends and I found out they were modifiable, and so we wrote jokes into them. When caught, that educator placed a few of the computers off to the side and told us to pick what we wanted to do, do it and tell him why. And if we did that, we passed; otherwise, fail.
Best move ever! He got us books, and we basically attacked those computers, each of us kicking off a great career related to them too.
He could have taken an authoritarian path and I suspect things may have played out very different for us. Some perspective there for sure. Back then, nerd and geek were not well respected where I came from. For me, the saving grace was the performance arts, music, drama, etc... But other geeky smart kids were not so lucky, often discouraged socially. Not cool.
As an adult, I've been questioned many times!
Once, coming back from a Parallax event, the San Jose TSA went nuts! They just didn't like all the stuff I had. But, I took a risk and actually had some serious fun with it. They put it all onto a table and began questioning me. "What are you doing with this stuff?" "I'm a student." (true) "But you are too old for school." "Never too old man", etc...
"What is this?" "Ultra Phasor" "and that?" "dynamic fluxor" "these?" "flux capacitors", "confabulators".... and on it went!
They were serious, and a bystander got the humor big. He struggled to keep it quiet, but I could see it in his face as he recognized variations on sci-fi names and terms.
I was moved. I really did expect them to call me on BS and I expected to pivot that into a more lighthearted conversation. But it never happened. They were entirely clueless! And that's OK. People don't have to know about this stuff. They might know a lot about other stuff, right? Right. But, what were we doing then and what did that mean? (and I don't know what that means, but I know I'm worried about it)
Still a bit disturbed by the whole thing, if you want to know.
There have been other times. Traffic stop with circuits on the back seat... (was going to do some stuff with a friend and put things there for the ride over. One wouldn't even think about this kind of thing, but for the general unease a few too many of us Americans seem to be experiencing.
And it's just simple: where people see parts, not well refined products, parts = bad or nefarious. Products are good, safe, benign. Never mind all the possibilities. It's as silly as grocery stores looking for people carrying stuff out in the bag, stopping the ones not using the bag! (and mine does this, despite the fact that I told them that policy actually makes casual theft significantly easier. Know their response? "How do you know?" lulz --> and I'm serious. I just had to laugh and wish them a nice day, and I rarely use a bag there now, just for bonus points.)
Products have some specific intent, and parts could be anything at all! Why that is bad is tough to think about, but it kind of is. I often think about the shift toward a spend to solve problem culture. Growing up, I didn't have much, and it was definitely a fix it and learn to solve scenario. I saw that play out among my peers of all socioeconomic classes too. In some ways, it didn't matter. Stuff had to get done, and as I learned and helped people and solved problems, opportunity followed and I ended up just fine.
Today, that dynamic just doesn't seem as likely to play out as it did for so many of us. We need to think hard about fixing that, and I think a lot of us are. I've got hope, because I do see media depicting this stuff in favorable ways, and I also see leaders doing the same. So we aren't doomed, but we are facing some ugly times right now.
When you look at the kids clock, and contemplate the thought of a bomb, just where is the stuff that goes boom? Seems extremely basic to me. As it does all of us. My first thought was, "not enough mass"
A few too many people in the USA seem to fear smart people like they do non-conforming people. And honestly, I think some of them simplify it down to just non-conforming and it's all worrisome to them. We need to spend more time understanding why so that we can help them get past it.
Seeing this kid get good support and some press is a great thing. He's gonna be better for the experience and maybe more of us will think about this situation and improve it. We need the smart people, we need the hackers, makers, tinkerers, builders, leaders, doers as much today as we ever have. But something has shifted a little. It's just wonked, and it's gonna take some examples like this and a lot of talking about it to sort out.
So now we are talking and that's good. Hope they give him his clock back.
I'm impressed, individual with the head of an Idaho spud, it makes sense. No really. (And I couldn't resist the nickname for a screen name.)
Yes I did indeed recognize some of the screen words. Remember the people at the TSA are picked for one reason, to fill a space. Not to have the brains to do the job.
As for the Apple 2, that's where I got my start. By the time I switched, I could do my best in both Applesoft, and Assembler, and understood enough Pascal on him to sort out an adventure game written in it.
Now? Yes I do write programs in assembler, X86, and Pascal on it using a VM for the job. And certain ones for the PC, and even for that other platform, no not the A**** one. And yes the ones hosted here.
So I applaud the lad's efforts and offer confusion to the flock of boobies that he's fooled. (They are both not very nice looking waterfowl, and characters with less sense then we give other people for.)
Now the big problem will be keeping up the momentum.
As much as I'm on the side of Ahmed and hackers, makers, creators and "doers" everywhere and shocked at the apparently low level of knowledge, experience and general common sense of the people around him that caused this stink, I'm think I'm jealous.
Ahmed takes the guts out of a common or garden digital clock and stuffs it into a little carry case - result: world wide fame and and audience with the president.
At his age we were building radios and transmitters with tubes and transistors, bit later I built a digital clock with TTL and Nixie tubes, my own custom circuit and hand etched PCB design.
Did I ever get invited to meet Harold Wilson or Edward Heath? No
Our society does seem to reward the dice roll of sensationalism more than consistent hard work.
I guess using TTL and Nixie tubes isn't something that will go viral.
In my version of that Trayvon BS (people wearing hoodies etc), I now try to work on Electronics projects in the mall to educate people. Hope to do it every week. We'll see how much time I have to keep doing it.
Sometimes the story is not about what actually happened.
In this case: "It's because Ahmed is a muslim" they will say, or "it's because of the backward creationist nature of Texas" others will say, or "it's about the the sorry state of education and teachers in the USA" others will argue. Whatever, etc, etc, etc.
Any and all of which may or may not be true. Who knows?
No, in an instant the story is about the story itself not the actual events. It becomes a debate, ill informed perhaps, with supporters for all possible sides arguing whatever point they want argue and using the subject of the story as the "handle" on which to hang their arguments.
I have one little bone to pick with Ahmed, he did refer to that box of alarm clock guts as "my invention". Now I don't know if he was trying to be smarter than he is, or was he just using the word "invention" in place of "idea", or was he just generally misusing the English language as Americans are apt to do?
Anyway, I don't care, he hacked that clock to bits, as any kid should be hacking anything and everything to bits.
Hey, how do you get to work on electronics projects in the mall? I'm sure if I tried that here I would be immediately shutdown. A soldering iron is a fire risk you know. Or at least its loitering.
In this case: It's because Ahmed is a muslim, it's because of the backward creationist nature of Texas, it's about the the sorry state of education and teachers, whatever, etc, etc, etc.
Any and all of which may or may not be true. Who knows.
Heater,
Can we knock off the religion bashing? Just because Dave Jones did it in his video doesn't mean we need it here.
There was no religion bashing my me in what I wrote there. Or anywhere else as far as I remember.
Dave Jones did not do any religion bashing in his video either.
I should have put those statements in quotes to indicate they are not my opinions but a statement of arguments I have heard around the net. In fact I will edit my post to make that clear.
Do you just set yourself up in the mall, set up work bench, layout all you gadgets and test gear and start hacking?
In any mall around here I can imagine being thwarted at the "set up work bench" step. For sure that would be seen as some trader trying to set up a pitch. Bounced out immediately.
I just bring my stuff and work on it. Yesterday I got my XBees to work and sent data back and forth to an ActivityBot.
Lead to a long conversation with the guy who contracts for the signs in the mall (backlit etc). He brought up this story from Texas.
C.W.,
I didn't take it as religion bashing.
I don't either. But using quotes around the statement, and then indicating where its being cited from is next. And Keith where are you doing this? An Activity Bot and a XBee? Interesting pairing.
As I said, I was not making that statement myself, rather I was quoting it as an example of what your come across as arguments in this and many other such stories. My whole post was about the nature of a viral stories rather than the actual story itself.
Thank you for pointing out that ambiguity, I have fixed my post.
I have a lot to debate with both the religious and the un-religious, but this is not the place.
Comments
In Texas, everyone is allowed to carry a concealed firearm without a license or permit. The fear factor just may be more a part of their daily life.
Electricity was a big part of my childhood in San Francisco. I even had an old military telephone wired down the block to a friend's house. But the neighbors put a stop to it as they were worried the wires might start a fire... even though it was all a low voltage set up.
Because he was the only one with common sense?
In my high school it was a requirement. But one clod missed it.
I despair of the movie-based stereotypes that have contaminated the brains of my fellow citizens - cops and lawmakers included.
But that was very soon after 9/11 and I guess they feared I had figured out a way to blow the plane out of the sky with cleverly disguised chemicals.
As the ancient Hindu text - The Crest Jewel of Discrimination - tried to clarify. A rope is not a snake. One must not look at ropes and dread snakes... and so on.
Or as the British tired to clarify.
I would be terrified if they let a child do that and take it to school now! Sorry - I know this isn't really on topic, but times have changed.
It's not clear they have changed for the better.
Why is it for example that the USA, one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, a super power, is falling behind in basic science research and engineering excellence?
I posit it's because kids are not allowed to cook hotdogs on bare mains wires, or cast molten aluminium in shop class, or build mercury switches like I did.
Exploration is the name of the game. Exploration is risky...
I love the EEVBlog.
Gee, I dunno Whit. did times change?, Or did we just get older and more wise?.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/16/politics/barack-obama-ahmed-texas/
So it seems parts of Texas have a new "time zone". So, what time is it? Tick-Tock at the sound of the panic alarm the time will be Stupid o'clock, precisely.
I seem to have had several interesting international flight incidents now that I think about it.
On a different trip back to the USA, my electric watch gave up the ghost just before departure due to humidity in Taiwan, so I just tossed an electric alarm clock in my suitcase to tide me over until I could get another watch in the US.
When I arrived in the US, I was told that my luggage was still in Hong Kong and would come a day or two later.
It seems that the luggage handling in Hong Kong at that time collected any ticking suitcases, put them at a far corner of the airport for 24 hours rather than on your plane, and waited to see what would happen.
Maybe we should just ban clocks from schools.
++++++++
So, if you are going to put an alarm clock in your luggage -- remove the battery. And it is always wisest to carry on a fresh pair of socks and underwear.
When I was little, I brought tons of things to school. And I did repairs on the various things at the school too. Mostly it was allowed, and I was kind of a problem kid in other areas. For a year, they sent me across the street to the TV Repair shop to hang with that guy and do stuff. A 5th grader testing tubes, reflowing trouble circuits, aligning yokes and doing convergence... I was lucky. That old guy, Ray, loved having me in there and I learned a ton!
(and you all wonder why I like making sure Props can do TV signals. Well there you go)
I didn't ever get questioned on anything as a kid, but for one event that turned out to be pivotal:
We had Apple 2 computers and some programmed instruction disks to learn from. A couple friends and I found out they were modifiable, and so we wrote jokes into them. When caught, that educator placed a few of the computers off to the side and told us to pick what we wanted to do, do it and tell him why. And if we did that, we passed; otherwise, fail.
Best move ever! He got us books, and we basically attacked those computers, each of us kicking off a great career related to them too.
He could have taken an authoritarian path and I suspect things may have played out very different for us. Some perspective there for sure. Back then, nerd and geek were not well respected where I came from. For me, the saving grace was the performance arts, music, drama, etc... But other geeky smart kids were not so lucky, often discouraged socially. Not cool.
As an adult, I've been questioned many times!
Once, coming back from a Parallax event, the San Jose TSA went nuts! They just didn't like all the stuff I had. But, I took a risk and actually had some serious fun with it. They put it all onto a table and began questioning me. "What are you doing with this stuff?" "I'm a student." (true) "But you are too old for school." "Never too old man", etc...
"What is this?" "Ultra Phasor" "and that?" "dynamic fluxor" "these?" "flux capacitors", "confabulators".... and on it went!
They were serious, and a bystander got the humor big. He struggled to keep it quiet, but I could see it in his face as he recognized variations on sci-fi names and terms.
I was moved. I really did expect them to call me on BS and I expected to pivot that into a more lighthearted conversation. But it never happened. They were entirely clueless! And that's OK. People don't have to know about this stuff. They might know a lot about other stuff, right? Right. But, what were we doing then and what did that mean? (and I don't know what that means, but I know I'm worried about it)
Still a bit disturbed by the whole thing, if you want to know.
There have been other times. Traffic stop with circuits on the back seat... (was going to do some stuff with a friend and put things there for the ride over. One wouldn't even think about this kind of thing, but for the general unease a few too many of us Americans seem to be experiencing.
And it's just simple: where people see parts, not well refined products, parts = bad or nefarious. Products are good, safe, benign. Never mind all the possibilities. It's as silly as grocery stores looking for people carrying stuff out in the bag, stopping the ones not using the bag! (and mine does this, despite the fact that I told them that policy actually makes casual theft significantly easier. Know their response? "How do you know?" lulz --> and I'm serious. I just had to laugh and wish them a nice day, and I rarely use a bag there now, just for bonus points.)
Products have some specific intent, and parts could be anything at all! Why that is bad is tough to think about, but it kind of is. I often think about the shift toward a spend to solve problem culture. Growing up, I didn't have much, and it was definitely a fix it and learn to solve scenario. I saw that play out among my peers of all socioeconomic classes too. In some ways, it didn't matter. Stuff had to get done, and as I learned and helped people and solved problems, opportunity followed and I ended up just fine.
Today, that dynamic just doesn't seem as likely to play out as it did for so many of us. We need to think hard about fixing that, and I think a lot of us are. I've got hope, because I do see media depicting this stuff in favorable ways, and I also see leaders doing the same. So we aren't doomed, but we are facing some ugly times right now.
When you look at the kids clock, and contemplate the thought of a bomb, just where is the stuff that goes boom? Seems extremely basic to me. As it does all of us. My first thought was, "not enough mass"
A few too many people in the USA seem to fear smart people like they do non-conforming people. And honestly, I think some of them simplify it down to just non-conforming and it's all worrisome to them. We need to spend more time understanding why so that we can help them get past it.
Seeing this kid get good support and some press is a great thing. He's gonna be better for the experience and maybe more of us will think about this situation and improve it. We need the smart people, we need the hackers, makers, tinkerers, builders, leaders, doers as much today as we ever have. But something has shifted a little. It's just wonked, and it's gonna take some examples like this and a lot of talking about it to sort out.
So now we are talking and that's good. Hope they give him his clock back.
I'm impressed, individual with the head of an Idaho spud, it makes sense. No really. (And I couldn't resist the nickname for a screen name.)
Yes I did indeed recognize some of the screen words. Remember the people at the TSA are picked for one reason, to fill a space. Not to have the brains to do the job.
As for the Apple 2, that's where I got my start. By the time I switched, I could do my best in both Applesoft, and Assembler, and understood enough Pascal on him to sort out an adventure game written in it.
Now? Yes I do write programs in assembler, X86, and Pascal on it using a VM for the job. And certain ones for the PC, and even for that other platform, no not the A**** one. And yes the ones hosted here.
So I applaud the lad's efforts and offer confusion to the flock of boobies that he's fooled. (They are both not very nice looking waterfowl, and characters with less sense then we give other people for.)
Now the big problem will be keeping up the momentum.
As much as I'm on the side of Ahmed and hackers, makers, creators and "doers" everywhere and shocked at the apparently low level of knowledge, experience and general common sense of the people around him that caused this stink, I'm think I'm jealous.
Ahmed takes the guts out of a common or garden digital clock and stuffs it into a little carry case - result: world wide fame and and audience with the president.
At his age we were building radios and transmitters with tubes and transistors, bit later I built a digital clock with TTL and Nixie tubes, my own custom circuit and hand etched PCB design.
Did I ever get invited to meet Harold Wilson or Edward Heath? No
http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-seriously-hooked-ahmed-mohamed-150152426.html
I guess using TTL and Nixie tubes isn't something that will go viral.
In my version of that Trayvon BS (people wearing hoodies etc), I now try to work on Electronics projects in the mall to educate people. Hope to do it every week. We'll see how much time I have to keep doing it.
Quite so.
Sometimes the story is not about what actually happened.
In this case: "It's because Ahmed is a muslim" they will say, or "it's because of the backward creationist nature of Texas" others will say, or "it's about the the sorry state of education and teachers in the USA" others will argue. Whatever, etc, etc, etc.
Any and all of which may or may not be true. Who knows?
No, in an instant the story is about the story itself not the actual events. It becomes a debate, ill informed perhaps, with supporters for all possible sides arguing whatever point they want argue and using the subject of the story as the "handle" on which to hang their arguments.
I have one little bone to pick with Ahmed, he did refer to that box of alarm clock guts as "my invention". Now I don't know if he was trying to be smarter than he is, or was he just using the word "invention" in place of "idea", or was he just generally misusing the English language as Americans are apt to do?
Anyway, I don't care, he hacked that clock to bits, as any kid should be hacking anything and everything to bits.
Hey, how do you get to work on electronics projects in the mall? I'm sure if I tried that here I would be immediately shutdown. A soldering iron is a fire risk you know. Or at least its loitering.
Heater,
Can we knock off the religion bashing? Just because Dave Jones did it in his video doesn't mean we need it here.
C.W.
There was no religion bashing my me in what I wrote there. Or anywhere else as far as I remember.
Dave Jones did not do any religion bashing in his video either.
I should have put those statements in quotes to indicate they are not my opinions but a statement of arguments I have heard around the net. In fact I will edit my post to make that clear.
I just bring my stuff and work on it. Yesterday I got my XBees to work and sent data back and forth to an ActivityBot.
Lead to a long conversation with the guy who contracts for the signs in the mall (backlit etc). He brought up this story from Texas.
C.W.,
I didn't take it as religion bashing.
But how exactly?
Do you just set yourself up in the mall, set up work bench, layout all you gadgets and test gear and start hacking?
In any mall around here I can imagine being thwarted at the "set up work bench" step. For sure that would be seen as some trader trying to set up a pitch. Bounced out immediately.
"backward creationist"...is there any other way to take that comment?
C.W.
I don't either. But using quotes around the statement, and then indicating where its being cited from is next. And Keith where are you doing this? An Activity Bot and a XBee? Interesting pairing.
As I said, I was not making that statement myself, rather I was quoting it as an example of what your come across as arguments in this and many other such stories. My whole post was about the nature of a viral stories rather than the actual story itself.
Thank you for pointing out that ambiguity, I have fixed my post.
I have a lot to debate with both the religious and the un-religious, but this is not the place.