[geeks] Ahmed, the accidental terrorist?

[Mark Benson]

On 19/09/2015 13:30, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> A couple quick points:
>
> At 14 he's smart enough to know that rearranging the parts of a store-bought
> clock is not 'inventing' the clock.

A fair point. Effectively no-one can 'invent' an alarm clock these days, 
it's a ubiquitous concept and any design that claims to be original 
would be plagiarism at best most likely, or maybe rather use of 'open 
source' material. Sure if he'd made the board, soldered it and crafted 
it himself that'd make him super-smart and really talented... but he'd 
not have invented anything. That's like lending actual truth to those 
adverts auto makers put out about having re-invented the car.

Also did anyone ever claim he invented it, i.e. his father? I thought he 
just 'made it at home' and wanted to show someone?

> His father is the Iman of the local mosque. I and of itself that means
> nothing, but coupled with the history of this particular mosque in town, in
> which it tried to establish it's own parallel Sharia Law based court in
> Irving, TX and at least MY spidey-senses tingle and tilt me towards political
> theater. I personally doubt the father planned this with the his son, but I do
> believe once the father was called in, he chose to milk the situation for
> political gain by playing the victim of racism.

It explains the post event reaction and the fact that a Twitter account 
sprung up @IStandWithAhmed within 12 hours with videos of the kid saying 
how people should be themselves, it also explains how his father held 
court with the press really well. It *might* unearth some unease between 
the school and the family that might have triggered a cynical attempt to 
deface the family's reputation. Who knows. Really, without independently 
investigating every aspect of this we'll probably never know the whole 
truth.

> I fully expect his supporters to attempt to redefine the word "invent" to
> include re-arranging components of someone else's invention.

I expect most of us will have forgotten about this in 6 months time. :)

-- 

Mark @ DECtec.info
twitter.com/DECtecInfo