Ahmed Mohamed Doesn't Live Here Any More

A good news story polarizes friends. Ahmed Mohamed and his family are moving to Qatar after his meeting the President of the United States following his arrest for bringing a clock to school. Apparently, the clock was old Radio Shack from the 70s. He took it from its housing and put it in a "pencil box" (metal art supply box). The third teacher who saw it called it a bomb and the principal called the police. It was easy for me to see Ahmed's point of view. My conservative comrades disagreed.

We did agree that no news story provided all of the same significant facts. Read Huffington Post, Breitbart, and Wikipedia to piece the story together -- and consider the sources.

Huffington Post 9/21: "The clock, which he invented, and built in 20 minutes using basic materials, led to his arrest ..."  
​Still on 10./22: "... arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school,..."​

​But putting "ahmed mohamed did not build clock" into Bing and Google returned a slew of articles from right wing sources.  Among those, though, was Mark Zuckerberg's interview in which he conceded that the kid spoke intelligently about electronics, but that he could hear Ahmed's sister in the background coaching him on the politics of the incident.

From Wikipedia:  "Some of Mohamed's teachers at Sam Houston middle school were surprised to learn that staff at the high school called police, as they have known Mohamed to bring more elaborate gizmos to their school."[7] [7]  Selk, Avi (September 26, 2015).Before Ahmed's fame: fantastic inventions and a fight with authority". The Dallas Morning News. Archived from the original on September 27, 2015. Retrieved September 27, 2015.

An "elaborate gizmo" is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. Last winter when Laurel wanted to build a security system for the house, I took out the Radio Shack project kit that she bought me one Christmas long ago. In a couple of weeks, we had integrated circuits on breadboards, and she was programming the controller.It is pretty easy to do.  But by comparison, I went to a computer security conference a couple of weeks ago, and one of the vendors had two motorized animals built from Leggos. I thought that was impressive.

Then, consider that this is about politicizing the behaviors of children. And the response of the police to an ignoramus.  The teacher who sounded the alarm teaches English.  Ahmed's technical teachers had no problem with what to them was obviously a clock.  

All of My Friends Got in Trouble in School

Texas law, it is said in an article, makes it illegal to possess a fake bomb. Well, OK, that's like robbing a bank with a fake gun, so I get that, but in order to fake a bomb (or fake a gun), it has to resemble the intended object.  In Iraq, they set off IEDs with cell phones.  So, are cell phones fake bombs?  The kid had a clock.  A clock is a clock -- unless you are an English teacher.

As for his having built a clicker to take control of the classroom projector, so what?  It's a prank for a moment.  Laurel had an uncle. When he was in high school, he brought a brown paper bag to class and told the girl next to him that it was candy for later....  knowing full well that the girl in front of him would put her hand in the bag... and find a snake. 

At our Model United Nations meeting in 1966, one of the delegations came with a "bomb" in a briefcase: a tape recorder that played tick-tock tick-tock .... and then boom!  

Of course that was before Columbine., 9/11, Homeland Security, and the militarization of the police. Those new conditions are real. For an insightful analysis of the sociology of mass violence, see "Thresholds of Violence" in a recent The New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell.

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The First Dagny

We met in the student lounge through a friend of hers.  Another friend of mine from Young Americans for Freedom had handed me Anthem as we passed between algebra classes. After I read it, I gave it to Jan. 

  

Prom Night 1967

 In 1966, Janet M. Matyas was my high school sweetheart.  She was a year younger than I, and in the “major work” program of Cleveland Public Schools for gifted and talented students.  (I was not. I went to summer school to catch up.)  She played the violin.  After Anthem, we went on to read all of the existing books. I subscribed to the Objectivist Newsletter and took the “Basic Principles” class.  Several of our friends also had read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead.  High school romances are transient; and I changed schools the following year.

Cleveland as seen from Lakewood

For that year, we had the steel mills and trains, a high rise apartment for viewing the city from the lake and some penthouse parties (though no Penthouse Legends) with our friends.  At a spring dance that year, we were there with everyone else and happy to be on a date, but oddly enough, the band played "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" which is in 6/8, and we danced it as a waltz -- not a big deal, but, when we were done, we looked around to find the floor empty, except for us.

Winton Place is the tallest. At the left in front is
Edgewater Towers where we lived
(but not where I grew up).

Janet and I cringed at the classical architecture of the banks.  We had great universities, corporations dedicated to electrical research, and John D. Rockefeller as the model of the hometown boy who made good.  Riding into downtown on the Rapid, we entered beneath the Terminal Tower, staring hard and deep into the many tunnels into which other train tracks disappeared.  The Terminal had a concourse with a tobacco shop.

 

It does not get more romantic than this.

About 1989, we found each other through FidoNet.  We exchanged a few letters. The last I heard from her was in 1996. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Anthem as a Graphic Novel

Atlas Shrugged Opening Show

The Influence of Ayn Rand's Objectvism

Autobiography of a Worker