{"id":18256,"date":"2015-09-19T00:43:12","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T23:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=18256"},"modified":"2015-09-19T00:43:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T23:43:12","slug":"is-it-a-clock-or-is-it-a-bomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=18256","title":{"rendered":"Is it a Clock? Or is it a Bomb?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Americans aren\u2019t very good at this sort of thing. The story of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year old pupil at MacArthur High School, has been all over the media the last few days, but I particularly like this write-up from BGR<\/a> which proves that some Americans at least have got it together.\"Clockwork\"<\/p>\n

Ahmed brought a homemade clock into school to show off his technical skills to his teachers. One of them decided it was a bomb and called in the police. Ahmed was then questioned by four of them, handcuffed, and taken to a juvenile detention centre. At no point did he say it was anything other than a clock. Conversely, at no point did the police consider that it was anything other than a bomb.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,\u201d one of the cops told The Dallas Morning News<\/em>. \u201cHe kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Texas police don\u2019t appear to be all that bright, because like many of their kind they insist on trying to use big words when interviewed. They really shouldn\u2019t. If it was a clock, what possible \u201cbroader explanation\u201d could Ahmed give?<\/p>\n

At the time of the original story, the police were still thinking of charging Ahmed with making a \u201choax bomb\u201d. Remember that he never claimed it was a bomb, and he maintained throughout that it was a clock, so quite how this \u201choax bomb\u201d fits in is anyone\u2019s guess. The Texas police trying to save face, I would guess.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to seem to be paraphrasing the BGR article, but they\u2019ve done such a good write up, and it\u2019s pretty much what I\u2019d have written if I\u2019d got there first. For that reason, I apologise for also mentioning that Ahmed is Muslim, although as BGR\u2019s follow up article notes<\/a>, he is a native Texan (by which I assume they mean he was born there).\"Ahmed<\/p>\n

Mind you, when you look at the picture of Ahmed\u2019s clock \u2013 which you initially assume to be mechanical (well, I did), but which turns out to be digital \u2013 you can see how lesser intellects might become alarmed. It\u2019s about the size of a small briefcase. On the other hand, it clearly operates from the mains and it has a huge display. Of course, it also has no explosives in it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sad indictment of the times we live in that such distrust exists. This extends to the support that has been created for Ahmed by his sisters, as mentioned in the Dallas Morning News.<\/p>\n

Is it only me who thinks that the hash tag @IStandWithAhmed could be considered inflammatory? You know, with the unfortunate combination of the letters \u201cI\u201d and \u201cS\u201d? Yes, very sad times.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, Texas police could easily have realised early on that it was a false alarm. But for whatever reason, they didn\u2019t. In the meantime, Ahmed has got an invite to the White House to meet President Obama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Americans aren\u2019t very good at this sort of thing. The story of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year old pupil at MacArthur High School, has been all over the media the last few days, but I particularly like this write-up from BGR which proves that some Americans at least have got it together. Ahmed brought a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87,101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world-related"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}