Kevin Drum is being way too optimistic here.
But his latest howler at a town hall in New Hampshire—especially after his weak debate performance last night—might finally be his death knell. Note: the issue isn’t the questioner. There are lunatics in every crowd. This one declared, “We have a problem in this country: it’s called Muslims….They have training camps growing where they want to kill us.” Then he asked “When do we get rid of them?” Did he mean all the Muslims? Just the fantasy training camps? Who knows. But all Trump said was this: “We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things.” No pushback, no nothing. I’m sure he’ll be walking this back soon, but it might be unwalkable. If there’s any justice, this might finally do him in.
Among all the stupid, bigoted, ridiculous things that Trump has said, why should having him agree to someone saying We have a problem in this country: it’s called Muslims
be the one that does him in? We’ve had a presidency built around the Muslim threat that killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and Dick Cheney is still going on bragging about it. Has there ever been any substantial downside for people who want to denigrate Muslim lives?
After all, we have one dead famous atheist who advocated bombing Iran, and responded to pragmatic arguments that that would just create more terrorists by suggesting that the solution to that was to kill them all. And we’ve got another live famous atheist who could write this:
We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.
He still has swarms of defenders. And these are the supposed smart people.
I’m hoping the Trump balloon pops soon. I don’t have much confidence that his open pandering to bigotry will be the pin that does it.
Jesus. Bill Maher.
Bill Maher really went off on the case of Ahmed Mohamed and said maybe liberals should drop the political correctness and consider that maybe being cautious is a good thing.
Maher made it clear that of course the Texas teen deserves an apology for being arrested over a clock, but said there’s nothing wrong with being a little suspicious when there’s a young Muslim student with something that “looks exactly like a fucking bomb” and there are young Muslims “blowing shit up” all over the world.
The exact quote, in defending the Irving police “erring on the side of caution”, is this bit of blinkered bigotry:
For the last 30 years, it’s been one culture blowing shit up over and over again.
In case the reference is unclear, he’s not talking about the United States of America.
He also claimed that we put [arrested] a kid after school for a couple of hours. This is not the end of the world.
No, it’s not, but way to go, minimizing injustice, Bill Maher and panel of three wealthy white guys!
I don’t expect Maher to lose his show after this long pattern of egregious bigotry, just as I don’t expect Trump to suddenly be shunned for one more incident. But it won’t even end the reverence the atheist community has for Maher.
Trump says out loud what the bigots say in their hearts and that’s a mighty scary thought.
The only thing that might hurt Donald is that he didn’t support his bigoted supporter enthusiastically enough.
Whereas for Maher, why anyone who uses the phrase “politically correct” turns out to be an asshole?
Trump is popular cuz he speaks aloud what people think silently. People are tired of conventional politicians saying different, contradictory things to different groups, ie “pandering”. People find a loud mouth bigot a-hole to be a refreshing change from the usual meelymouthed politidiots.
That Trump’s popularity was not just a momentary blip, but is long lasting (and growing), disproves the above W.A.G. That WAG was my attempt at optimism but… no more… me sad. It’s easy to accept Trump as the blowhard ahole he projects, yet the polls are appallingly disappointing.
any rationalization for the arrest of Ahmed for that suspicious device looking like a bomb is (in Jon Steart’s words) pure bullshit. where was the bomb squad? school evacuation? why hours of interrogation alone in teacher’s office? Even the cop’s justification “it looks like a movie bomb” is BS. looks nothing like even a movie prop for a bomb.
For Maher to say it was a reasonable detention, given all the bombs there are, all over, so to be a little suspicious and the response was minimal, is still a crock of $%^$&$%&. If the response was so “gentle and reasonable”, then why handcuffs and jail time (regardless of whether 2 hrs or even 30 seconds)?
Even if one tries to rationalize it as a “deliberate show” as a form of deterrence from future “shenanigans”; uh uh. still doesn’t fly.
Maher really doesn’t get it. Weird white kids for the last 15 years or so have been bringing guns to school and shooting the place up. Should we arrest every weird white kid who turns up to school with a long gym bag?
Anyone who has seen the clock and has two brain cells to rub together can clearly see this is not a bomb. Do people really think everything in the movies is real? Hint: You don’t live in the ‘Mission Impossible’ universe. Why would anyone who wanted to plant a bomb put a big ticking clock on it? Not to mention a clock that is counting up, not down. Why would you show it to your teacher? And there is obviously NO DETONATABLE MATERIAL to be seen. These idiot teachers and police need to think for a second.
And Maher needs to understand that what happened to Ahmed is just straight racism. Again, in high schools across the US its the loner white kid he ought to be profiling. And as for blowing shit up for the past thirty years – this is why US citizens get treated with great suspicion and even get their heads cut off overseas. That’s profiling. But then, if Bill Maher was looking for some dope I bet he would ask the black guy.
Handcuffs & jail was OK, because there was no cage or burning, like ISIS does.
Fuck, I hate the “dear Muslima” argument.
When viewed from up here Canada, the statements made by Donald Chump are unbelievable in terms of his candidacy for high political office.
Because “political correctness” is a dog whistle for people who are complaining about how they’re not longer able to make racist, sexist, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, transphobic, etc, comments without getting called on it anymore. And that saying “I was just joking” and “I’m sorry you were offended” is no longer a Get Out Of Jail Free card.
@ ^ When viewed from most places I reckon that’s the case. Its hard to believe he’s leading the polls, it means you really cannot underestimate the intelligence of some – too many – people doesn’t it?
Lemme guess .. Islam ..?
But, wait a second – that’s not just one culture but actually many! Indeed its not even a culture just an overarching religion divided like most religions into a whole mob of sub-religions (Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi, Wahhabi, etc ..)
So that can’t be it. So .. Hmm .. Not America not Islam neotehr of whichare actually cultures as such. A single particular “culture” eh? (Presumably non-fungal.) Er .. We talking neoconservative here maybe? Or Daesh /AQ / Salafi jihadist? Now how do we pick which one? Or are there others ..?
This is a pretty absurd statement considering it’s from the same show where Maher was vocally criticizing the Iraq War.
Once again, this Chomsky quote applies: “It’s only terrorism if they do it to us. When we do much worse to them, it’s not terrorism.”
It looks astounding from Australia too. And keep in mind that until a few days ago we were ruled (and I use that term deliberately) by this guy:
Tony Abbot at his worst. (Youtube link)
The above (#9) was directed first @ 7 Dick. Sorry.
Oh for fuck’s sake. The clock did not look exactly like a fucking bomb. If something actually did look exactly like a fucking bomb, I imagine the reaction would be a tad stronger that “a little bit suspicious”. Christ, these idiots will say anything in defense of their bigotry.
While Trump’s open bigotry seems like it should immediately disbar anyone from high office to many non-USA-ians as Dick points out @ 7, it seems doubtful to me that it will impact Trump’s campaign negatively, and indeed is probably his strongest campaigning card (I refuse to make the obvious pun), since as others have observed on the thread he is simply saying openly what legions of Right wing, mostly religious bigots already think privately, and he has successfully marketed himself to them as a ‘straight shooter’ who has the ‘courage’ to spout this bigoted poison publicly. That alone is a worrying spotlight on the current state of the American political discourse. The Overton Window has moved so far Right at this point that it has fallen off the end of the house.
It is also worth bearing in mind that none of the Republicans are significantly better than Trump when it comes to the policies they endorse and the attitudes they embody, even if some of them come off as marginally less gratingly offensive than the toupee warrior. The entire political Right in the US is irredeemably corrupt, and the Democrats seem to be rapidly following suit.
The school administrators and the police in the clock/bomb incident either did not seriously suspect that the clock was a bomb, or else they are incredibly ignorant about what to do when a suspected bomb is found. They didn’t follow any of the standard procedures for dealing with a suspected bomb: didn’t evacuate the school, didn’t call the bomb squad, didn’t remove themselves to a safe distance from the device, etc. They carried the device away from the school in an ordinary squad car. (Credit to Andy Illes for bringing this to my attention.)
If youa re already having a bad day, DO NOT look at the comments over at the OP.
Anyone daring to suggest there is no such thing as islamophobia ad/or brining up the old canard of “anti-muslim isn’t racism because muslim isn’t a race” shoould be shown a link to that post.
@ 13. Caine : Exactly. If they seriously though Ahmed’s clock was a bomb the very first thing you’d think they’d do is evacuate immediately – all students and / or throw it as far from the building into as empty an area as possible!
Did they do that? Nup.
Bullying Islamophobic bullshit pure & simple.
re @15:
EXACTLY!!
I remember incidents, during my hischool years, when the school would be evac’d based on a simple phone call making a bomb threat. No devices evident anywhere. Yet to be confronted with a device which (they claim) looked just like a bomb, and then do nothing, just question the kid for hours then handcuff him and put him in lockup?
Can’t even say they “overreacted”, cuz they didn’t actually react. Their supposed reaction, can actually be categorized as casual. They attacked him ( {presumably} to get back at his father) on the flimsiest excuse possible.
A pet peeve of mine but:
Neither the school nor the police ever thought nor did they ever claim, even in the very beginning, that they thought it was a real bomb. The claim and the arrest were always on the charge that Ahmed brought a “hoax bomb”, i.e. that Ahmed deliberately made something to scare people into thinking it was a bomb.
Go back and read the original news reports. Not only is it clear if you interpret and read between the lines, it’s explicitly stated.
So, no, no-one “erred on the side of caution” about anything. They intervened in what they thought might be (if I’m to be generous) intended to be a scare before it happened, presumed guilt on the flimsiest of reasons, involved the police in what (as it wasn’t an actual bomb) an internal school matter, and *arrested* in *handcuffs* a fourteen-year old kid. “Erring on the side of caution” in this case, where there was no bomb, would mean to consider that maybe the clock only coincidentally looked like the thing we see in movies and maybe the geeky kid might actually have not realized that because of movies everyone seeing a digital display and one wire would think of a bomb. Perhaps if a “hoax bomb” was a serious consideration the most prudent idea would be to take the kid before the principal for a talk. “You know, son, some people might see this and think it was something dangerous. Did you think of that? Was it your intent to make people think it was a bomb? Do you realize what harm that may have caused.” “No, sir. It’s a clock and I never thought other people would think anything else. (you racist asshat.)”
@ ^ woozy : I don’t buy the “hoax bomb excuse either. Still doesn’t seem appropriate as a reaction.
Cross-posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
By the numbers:
– 61% of Trump’s supporters think Barack Obama is a Muslim
– 61% of Trump’s supporters think Barack Obama was not born in the USA
Looking at those numbers, I don’t think Trump will apologize for his recent failure to correct statements made by an audience member at his town-hall event. He is counting on those people to keep his poll numbers up.
Link
Cross-posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
Donald Trump’s campaign office issue a policy statement today on gun control. He wants to expand gun rights.
The short statement proposes nationwide concealed carry permits (the permits are presently issued on a state-by-state basis), and he wants to end bans on magazines that hold more ammunition.
Other points:
– no ban on carrying guns on military bases
– no ban on carrying guns in recruiting centers.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/second-amendment-rights
Cross-posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
The White House statement on the racist and stupid comments made by members of Trump’s town-hall event:
Cross-posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
A followup on the news about Trump’s failure to shut down anti-Muslim/birther comments from audience members in New Hampshire:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/09/18/3703000/fear-of-uptick-in-hate-crimes-following-donald-trump-supporters-get-rid-of-muslims-remark/
As far as Ahmed and the supposed “hoax bomb” go, if the police thought it was a bomb why did they keep in the same room at the school where they interrogated the boy? Five officers sat in there with a bomb?
I don’t think so.
Certainly it was a hoax bomb!
The hoax was, however, perpetrated by the school staff and the police.
Donald Trump has responded via Twitter:
@Lynna, OM :Thanks for that. I guess.
Although it does make me wonder just how horribly willfully ignorant some people can be. Depressing but informative. I do wonder how many are really that ignorant and actually think that and how many are just saying it out of spite and tribal / ideological hate.
More response from Trump:
Trump (tx Lynna, OM)
If the person is addressing a lie directly to you, then yes.
Actually a slightly clever comeback. Probably written by a staffer and not by the Trumpmaster himself.
Trump can mind-read? Wow, maybe we should consider him as president.
Trump doesn’t understand free speech.
And… a straight up lie.
Stay classy Trump, stay classy.
@ ^ Lynna, OM : “The bigger issue is that Obama is waging war against Christians in this country. Their religious liberty is at stake.”
Whut? Oama is waging war on Christians how? With what? Really? Just NO. He ain’t. Prove otherwise if youreally think so.
As for their so-called “Religious liberty” again, Hell no!, I think Dana Hunter summed things up best here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesverdad/2015/09/15/dear-religious-liberty-brigade-youve-lost-youve-always-lost/
Also those words, I do not think they mean what they think they do ..
***
Yup.Me too. Although I’m mostly amazed and somewhat appalled that it got off the ground in the first place and now seems to be flying so relatively high.
agreement. When a statement is just “something bad” or “controversial”.
When someone states an blatant falsehood, it is not “defense” to correct the error. To not only remain silent by respond, “yeah, we’ll address it when I’m in charge” is worse than “not defending” and worse than “silent agreement”.
tsig @ #1 — “Trump says out loud what the bigots say in their hearts”
slithey tove @ #3 — “Trump is popular cuz he speaks aloud what people think silently.”
The bigots I know have no problem saying it out loud. The only difference: he’s on national Tee Vee.
Here’s a connection between Donald Trump and Ahmed Mohamed. Trump is being defended by The Center for Security Policy, an organization that Trump supports, and an organization that partners with a lot of Republicans to foster anti-muslim activism.
The Center for Security Policy vice president Jim Hanson said that the clock, “looks exactly like a number of IED triggers that were produced by the Iranians and used to kill U.S. troops in the war in Iraq.” He said the clock “was half a bomb.”
Frank Gaffney is the founder and president of The Center for Security Policy. Gaffney agreed with Hanson, but went one step further. He thinks the entire event was a sort of false-flag operation, an “influence operation,” planned and executed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (a group that supports Muslim civil rights).
Gaffney went on to say that the Council on American-Islamic Relations wants to promote “professional victims” and that they are trying to start a war, a “civilization jihad.”
Gaffney was acting assistant secretary of defense for a short time during the Reagan administration. He has promoted the “Obama is a secret Muslim” lie for years.
Last month, Donald Trump spoke at a rally in D.C. that Gaffney’s group hosted. Gaffney’s group gave the mayor of Irving (where Ahmed lives) an award for her anti “Islamic Sharia court” activities.
Reference link:
The Intercept
Here are a few more rightwing responses to the arrest of Ahmed.
I snipped text covering Hanson’s and Gaffney’s remarks, which are covered in comment 34.
Raw Story link
Interesting take on the Trump town-hall event — from The New Yorker.
Ahmed narrowlly escaped a FELONY charge. A young, minority, male teen was arrested and nearly charged with a felony.
There’s a reason that the “cash for kids” judge was given a life sentence.
Jailing teens, especially male minority teens, can be FUCKING DEVASTATING.
This wasn’t a little thing! Arresting kids is not a little thing! I am so tired of people that arresting and very nearly RUINING A TEEN’S LIFE OVER A FUCKING HOME MADE CLOCK is no big deal.
It is a big deal. A huge deal. A potentially life-changing big fucking deal.
What I don’t get is where this “looks like a bomb” thing is coming from. I mean there is nothing in that experiment that remotely resembles an explosive. Without that, all you have is a circuit board and some wires. Yes, it can be used as a device for setting off a bomb but then so can a cell phone or a digital watch. Are we going to start arresting Muslim kids with cell phones and watches now?
– RM
Thanks for the updates Lynna, OM.
That’s some crazy shit.
Sorry meant to edit “crazy shit” but accidentally hit “Post”.
The irrationality is stunning.
PS You honor Molly’s memory.
rgmani @ 38:
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is already going on.
I don’t mean to Godwin this, but the talk about the “Muslim problem” and the “Illegals problem” both sound a lot like the “Jew Problem” from a few decades past.
Is it just me, or are high profile atheists steadily getting dumber?
There’s also this.
PZ:
I’m not able to see whatever that is. Probably a good thing.
It’s a picture of a nasty-looking gun cobbled together from parts with the text, “calm down, it’s just a clock!”
PZ:
Oh for…I’m at a loss anymore. I keep telling myself that no, the States hasn’t been completely consumed by the stupid, the ignorant, the fearful, and the hateful, but that’s getting more and more difficult.
It was only missing all the things that a bomb needs to actually explode.
Woozy @19:
I get where you’re coming from, but I think at least one person suspected the clock was a bomb-one of his teachers:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-9th-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school-so-you-tried-to-make-a-bomb.ece
****
Somewhat related to this (not, IMO, related to the racist bigotry of the school officials and police), a friend left this link at my blog-an article by an electronics whiz who calls into question the origins of the clock Ahmed built.
http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering-ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/
@PZ Myers #44 & 46: What are the odds that the shitbag who put together that inept meme would happily and positively share pictures of young white kids carrying similar arms? White kids should be encouraged to handle firearms and go hunting and go to gun ranges and take their guns everywhere, brown kids doing anything that looks even remotely the same is proof of the coming jihad.
Tony:
With a couple of exceptions, the commenters there are crowing right wing talking points, and absolutely gleeful to be able to trash Ahmed.
Tom Foss @ 50:
It wasn’t all that long ago that people were scared to death white kids carrying arms, because school shootings. I guess that particular fear has been superseded.
This thread has been made infinitely easier to read with the excellent browser add-on found here: Some Rich Asshole
Marcus @39 and 40, thank you. Molly Ivins was a far better role model. She certainly set the bar high.
The quote is from an essay Molly Ivins wrote in 1993.
Remember when Trump financed an investigation into Barack Obama’s birth in 2011? He set the birther ball rolling faster then:
This is a followup to comment 21.
A different poll shows a lower, but still alarming, percentage of Trump’s followers believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Link
If she thought it was a bomb then she should have evacuated the school and called the bomb squad. She kept it in her desk and called the police a period later. The police transported it in a squad car with them.
You may (or may not) have misunderstood what I was trying to state. I think it is quite possible that the teacher saw it and thought that Ahmed had specifically made it for the purpose of making something that looked like a bomb (and the principal called the police on the belief; and the police arrested him on that belief). But I don’t think she actually thought Ahmed had created an actual bomb.
I’m not (yet) paranoid to think that the teacher knew Ahmed only thought it was a clock but she saw a good opportunity to pin something on the Muslim kid.
I like this article (Irving-police-chief-admits-cops-knew-ahmed-mohamed-didnt-have-a-bomb-when-they-arrested-him/) which states that the police and the principal allows considered this a “hoax bomb” and never a real bomb. Yet somehow they seemed to have assumed this would be an acceptable response to a possible (but not a proven certainty) of a hoax. It isn’t.
If anything the “hoax bomb” pisses me off more than a “honest bomb mistake” as in an “honest bomb mistake” would be an err on the side of caution. (Except then their *first* concern should be safety of the school and students; second arrest of the supposed bomber.) This is come down heavy for flimsy reasons.
That’s another pet peeve of mine but it’s a bit less relevent. Ahmed is certainly a bright boy but this clock of his is not (and probably was never intended to be; he only spent 20 minutes on it) a sign of pure boy genius and engineering master work as the hyperbole would make it out to be. It’s not a “cool clock” as Obama put it but more of a “it’s really neat that you like to do this stuff”. I also balk when Ahmed refers to it as one of his “inventions” but, *sheesh*, the kid’s 14 years old. We can expect him to mangle language. (I think I frequently said similar things when I was 14; I would have figured it was someone’s invention and I was using it to understand how it was put together and how it was invented so— it’s *an* invention and I own it so it’s “my invention”. Of course, *I* didn’t invent it. C’mon! I’m only 14!)
=====
Okay, that was a bit of a derail that’s utterly irrelevant to general purpose of the story. Sorry.
@52 Caine
It’s only scare when a white kid carries around a gun if you think he’s going to shoot the popular white kids with it.
re @56:
agreed.
Even the “hoax bomb” justification fails the smell test. Even if Ahmed was intending to try to hoax the device for a bomb threat; WHY would he bring it in to school to show his engineering teacher the device he just built?
I suspect, the cops were trying to force a “plea bargain”. As in, get him to admit it’s a “hoax bomb”, in order to avoid getting hauled away to prove his innocence in court. (that’s why they kept asking him what it was, when the answer is obvious, and the sheriff hinted at the desired answer with “look’s like a movie bomb”.)
ack, This incident just raised my hackles so much: I be willing to fabricate all sorts of sinister motives behind the police response.
I just saw some folks in the village with a Trump piñata with long yellow strips of paper for “hair” and a red baseball cap.
Don’t worry about Trumper or any of the other clowns because of this rainbow cloud seen in Costa Rica recently. It means the “End of Times”. You can almost see Jessie peaking through the colors.
The same shit being told about Jews eighty years ago is being told now about Muslims. Bill Maher is Jewish, one thinks he would know better.
Taslima’s reaction on twitter is equally lamentable.
For 530 years there’s been one culture plundering, raping and genociding on a global scale: one culture which invented dozens of bullshit pseudo-philosophical argument to justify dividing the world between a minority of inbred aristocrats and a crushing majority of disenfranchised people forced at gunpoint to do the strenuous works necessary to maintain the aforementioned inbred parasites’ sybaritic lifestyle.
***
There’s always been dumb atheists with authoritarian masturbatory fantasies including their ilk beating the rest of the world into submission.
The difference between the US and, say, my own homeland is that your dumbfuck atheists recently got out of the closet while ours outed themselves during the late XIXth century.
Maher’s response to Ahmed Mohammed is pathetic. Stereotyping all Muslims is not a sensible or feasible way to fight terrorism. Further, in the context of the U.S., there have been more White terrorists (Timothy McVeigh, Dylan Roof, etc.) than Muslim terrorists.
http://time.com/3934980/right-wing-extremists-white-terrorism-islamist-jihadi-dangerous/
As to Trump, the GOP deserves him as their presidential nominee since they’ve been sowing the seeds of bigotry for decades now. They shouldn’t be surprised that many of their voters love Trump’s vocal bigotry.
slithey tove (#18)
Same here, and that was well before 9/11. One time they found a pipe in a shoebox in one of the bathrooms and we all stayed outside for hours while they got it cleared. I remember being contemptuous of their caution, but, thinking back, it was probably pretty reasonable.
Meanwhile, up in Canada, white teenagers can get away with bringing actual pipe bombs on planes. (Story is a couple years old, and the teen, who said he hadn’t brought the bomb on purpose, was smart enough to leave it on the ground.)
Just glanced at her Twitter. Holy fuck! What the fuck has she been getting into. She sounds less like an experienced writer and more like Victoria Jackson nowadays.
Taslima 16h ago
Right. When every single Jew was exiled from Britain for centuries that wasn’t antisemitism. Nor were the Pogroms of Russia.
Just because people misuse a word and unjustly accuse their opponents with it, doesn’t mean that it does not aptly describe a real problem. I’m a critic of Israeli occupation and of much of the Torah, but I can still recognize that antisemitism exists and is a real problem.
@#61, F.O.
Not that this sets them apart from anyone else*, but: the Israeli treatment of Palestinians has amply proved that at least a very large number of Jewish people are perfectly fine with applying against others the same tactics used by antisemites. (If an Jewish Israeli is willing to do things like collective punishment which got high-ranking Nazis tried at Nuremberg, then it’s clear their only objection to the behavior of the Germans in World War II was the selection of targets.) Maher is undoubtedly one of these, and the fact that anyone still watching his show by now probably agrees with the sentiment gives him no incentive to stop.
*And I really mean that; there are horribly depressing parallels in various degrees all over the place. (Look at how transgendered and asexual people get thrown under the bus by gay people — and vice versa, such as Caitlyn Jenner’s inability to support gay marriage. Or how a lot of white feminists lose their enthusiasm when it’s a question of black women at risk, or the various places where different groups of immigrants — or even refugees — resent being discriminated against but are perfectly willing to discriminate against each other.) The word “intersectionality” has the amazing optical property of being more difficult to see the more relevant it becomes.
I would like to add some perspective on what constitutes an “invention” to a child. Taking something apart and then reassembling it in a different way would often be considered an “invention” to a child, since they don’t really understand the precise meaning of the word. This is also true of many adult “inventors” who actually copied someone else from long ago, or even invent something that cannot work because it violates physics, etc.
As a illustration, a small boy whose age I have forgotten (this happened *many* years ago) showed a couple of adults the flashlight that he had “invented”. Unfortunately his flashlight didn’t work as well as he thought it should so he was asking some adults for help. (NOTE: I am an CS/EE but I will try to keep this understandable for a non-technical audience.)
A normal flashlight has a source of illumination (in past times an incandescent bulb, today LEDs would be more common) and a very simple circuit connecting the lamp to one or more cells in series with a switch to interrupt the flow of electrons. When the switch is closed the electrons flow from one end of the cell through the switch to the lamp and then back to the other end of the cell.
What this young inventor had done was to tape the ends of the bulb wires to the opposite ends of a single AA cell; this of course made the lamp light up. However, to shut it off he found that he could place another wire that was also taped to one end of the cell, on the other end of the cell, shorting out the cell. This indeed turned the lamp off, but obviously shortened the lifetime of his flashlight. The longer it was off the weaker the cell and the dimmer the light. He knew that “real” flashlights did not seem to suffer as much from that but didn’t know why.
As someone who “played” with electrical things from a very young age a *long* time ago, I find it very easy to believe that a 14 year old would imagine that he invented something by merely transporting it into a different form factor. Since the clock still worked after the transplant he at least understands the concept of a circuit (literally – to go around). Cut the kid some slack, I would be very happy to teach someone that age how to design with solid state devices, include transistors, diodes and simple logic ICs. In fact I am currently working on a robotic device for teaching robotics to grade school children. The “fact” that his invention isn’t really new should not be a reason to disparage him. With some encouragement and guidance he would very likely be able to make something much better.
This whole thing is depressing as hell but adults sitting around poo-pooing a 14 year old’s project as being “not even that great pfft whatever” is pretty damn pathetic as well. I’ve seen it a lot with people who are otherwise speaking sense on this issue. He isn’t getting all these invites and donations because people think he is the next Einstein. He is getting it to make up for the horrible and terrifying treatment he got for being a brown kid with curiosity. I wonder if those kind of people look at kid’s drawings and then google the Mona Lisa to show them they are terrible artists…
re @70:
*bravo*, well said. exactly. thank you for speaking. ;-D
@woozy 19: Point taken, but the hoax bomb claim is very lame, too. As I understand it, the kid never said or implied that the device was anything but a clock.
Precisely. My point was that even if you “sincerely believe” the intention was a bomb scare (which, all right, I have to admit would be serious) you can’t railroad a child into a public arrest with handcuffs. First of all accusations, whether they be for chewing gum in class or for attempting to assault another student, require evidence and reasonable assumption. Neither were here. And they require the student being allowed to explain his side, and if reasonable (as this clearly was) to be listened to and considered and for fuck sake handcuffs and police are totally unwarranted if the *scare* threat (which was never real bomb threat) has been avoided.
At the very, very, very worst this is like a kid bringing a swiss army knife to show-and-tell in a school with a no-weapon policy (actually it’s not even that bad– but this was the best analogy I could think of). I’ve heard of ding-dong school boards suspending a kid for that (and the response is usually an outcry of what ding-dongs they are) but I’ve never heard of the police or handcuffs involved Okay that’s actually a lousy analogy because a swiss army knife can conceivably do *some* damage and a no weapons policy is more serious, more clearly worded and a violation of it can do more harm than a no -fake-scary-objects policy. So, yeah, this is *much* worse than that.
Re: Trump – The points that are likely to cause him trouble in the primaries are his lack of objection to abortion and his insufficient Christian position. The only reason he is front runner is that thee are many other candidates, several of whom are in agreement on many issues.
A note for Bill Maher. I’m sure the IRA, ETA, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and FARC, to name just four, would be surprised to find out they’re Muslims.
It’s understandable that so many would fear Islamist terrorism singularly, because so many receive their worldview from so few finely-controlled sources, ie. “mainstream media.” And that is the reality that is portrayed. Basically, one must be their own diligent journalist or suffer from misinformation from the piped-in noise-box. Curiosity– and a willingness to actually read words instead of merely to view images– are required to see that terrorism is hardly limited to the religion of Islam. And should Islam for some impossible reason cease to exist, there is ample supply of various religious stripes to compensate.
To stop religious violence is to end tribalism and vastly improve the entire world’s living conditions and education standards. Doesn’t sound so hard, now does it?
The anti-vaccer and alt-med idiot Bill Maher said something awful? How utterly surprising. Does he still receive reverence in the atheist community? Because I certainly stopped giving a even the last toss when I learned about his medical views.
I think I see a parallel between American attitudes toward Muslims since 9/11 & attitudes toward the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. My late grandmother hated the Japanese until the day she died, more than 50 years after the end of the war, & insisted that they couldn’t be trusted.
I think the difference is that there weren’t any politicians running on anti-Japanese platforms in the 50s.