Can we stop saying Ahmed Mohammed "made a clock"?

[s_stabeler]

there's also a couple of other things to consider. Most mega-geniuses did not, when they were young kids, just start coming up with ideas of their own- quite often, they would do things like this kid did- because they were interested in how things work. So no, you can't say the US definitely lost the next big inventor. However, the fact of the matter is, he COULD have been.

Also- and this helps explain why things are so high-profile- how do you know that the next big inventor isn't watching all of this play out, and being discouraged from pursuing their interest in engineering, since they think it'll get them labelled a terrorist? Part of the reason it's so high-profile is to try to spread the message that "not everyone feels like those idiots- if you are interested in engineering, don't be afraid t pursue that interest"

Third, I'm 99% sure there is a shortage of engineers. Even if this kid would never have amounted to much, that's one more person who can't help to fill that shortage. Not to mention, again, the chances are that people that were going to study engineering have been put off by this,

Fourth, I'll bet IS- and Al Qaeda- are laughing about this. Why? because, ultimately, this is a case where someone brought something interesting into school, and because he was Muslim- or at least had an islamic name, I'm not 100% sure if he's muslim or not- he was treated like a terrorist trying to blow up the school. It gives terrorist recruiters ammo to back up their claims that they are the only people who care about muslims.

[Canarr]

We didn't lose some Mensa level talent. We lost a kid who was interested in electronics. The world will move on. Focus on the racism issue, not the we lost some mega-genius issue since that was never an issue.

All articles and discussions I've read did focus on that - it was a shitty thing to do to him. Nobody - to my knowledge - claimed he was a genius. The tone was more in the direction of, there you have a kid who liked tinkering with stuff and received entirely disproportionate punishment for a non-issue due to his name and ethnicity.

It's not a "the US lost a genius!" but more, "the US shows again the ridiculous lengths their fearmongering will drive them to!"

It's sad, more than anything else. Because you've certainly lost a lot more than one child engineer.

[Gravekeeper]

That was never in any of the articles that came out when the story broke out.

IRVING — Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High on Monday.

Is literally the first line of the original article that first reported the story the day after he was arrested. It was accompanied by an interview in his room explaining what he did, what he likes to do, etc while surrounded circuit boards and crap.

After that, every interview at his house told the same story and showed his tinkering around. Then, as is the ouroborus nature of news media, the same story, images, footage get copy pasted about over the next 24 hours as they all cite the original article.

I mean cripes, even Fox and Brietbart cited it originally and Brietbart still thinks he's a secret terrorist. Fox even showed the footage of the kid in his room messing with stuff. It would have been harder to find a stories that didn't manage to show or tell anything about the kid's tinkering.

You'd have to go even further into the bowels of the interwebs than Brietbart and if you're going that far down as your main news source, well... >.>

[Greenday]

there's also a couple of other things to consider. Most mega-geniuses did not, when they were young kids, just start coming up with ideas of their own- quite often, they would do things like this kid did- because they were interested in how things work. So no, you can't say the US definitely lost the next big inventor. However, the fact of the matter is, he COULD have been.

Big inventor? Maybe but improbable. Genius? No. You know by 14 if the kid is a genius.

Also- and this helps explain why things are so high-profile- how do you know that the next big inventor isn't watching all of this play out, and being discouraged from pursuing their interest in engineering, since they think it'll get them labelled a terrorist? Part of the reason it's so high-profile is to try to spread the message that "not everyone feels like those idiots- if you are interested in engineering, don't be afraid t pursue that interest"

I highly doubt there was one single kid that said, "Hell, look what happened to Ahmed. Screw engineering, I'm going to fingerpaint for the rest of my life!"

Third, I'm 99% sure there is a shortage of engineers. Even if this kid would never have amounted to much, that's one more person who can't help to fill that shortage. Not to mention, again, the chances are that people that were going to study engineering have been put off by this

Oddly enough, the unemployment rate for electrical engineers has been slowly increasing. There's no huge need of electrical engineers in the US.

Fourth, I'll bet IS- and Al Qaeda- are laughing about this. Why? because, ultimately, this is a case where someone brought something interesting into school, and because he was Muslim- or at least had an islamic name, I'm not 100% sure if he's muslim or not- he was treated like a terrorist trying to blow up the school. It gives terrorist recruiters ammo to back up their claims that they are the only people who care about muslims.

Well, yes and that does suck.

[Gravekeeper]

Oddly enough, the unemployment rate for electrical engineers has been slowly increasing. There's no huge need of electrical engineers in the US.

Thats really not a valid metric of the problem. The US has been losing in STEM fields for some time now ( well over a decade even ). Largely thanks to dysfunctional government fuckery, immigration fuckery and the anti-science bent of congress. The US is no longer the place to go if you've got the talent and ideas. Other countries are more supportive and welcoming.

Hence this is bad optics for the US and good optics for Qatar. You can say its just one kid but its indicative of a much larger problem the US is facing as it encourages its own brain drain. You're bleeding the talent you need if you want to stay on the cutting edge of science and tech.

Thats why everyone from NASA to MIT jumped in on this. NASA especially who has seen their budget continually shrink over the years to a laughable fraction of what it was. Despite the massive economic boon that funding NASA historically provided. Never mind that whole landing on the moon thing and what it did for the public consciousness.

[s_stabeler]

a) when I was 14, my teachers wrote me off as a lazy troublemaker. It has since turned out that- while I make no claims to be a genius- I'm not- I'm also neither lazy, or a troublemaker. ( I have also been struggling to get over the effect being written off at 14 has had on me) You cannot say with any certainty how someone will turn out when they are 14.
b) it's more a case of the attitude this exposes. This mess gives the impression that a muslim kid who builds something that has a timer on it- which is what a clock actually is, essentially- then it should automatically be assumed they are a terrorist. that is the issue- since, if that is believed, then kids who might have gone into engineering might well be discouraged.
c) we aren't that far out of the last recession- I don't think the increase in unemployent for electrical engineers has anything to do with the long-term issue that not enough are being trained to replace retiring ones.

[mjr]

The US is no longer the place to go if you've got the talent and ideas. Other countries are more supportive and welcoming.

Tell that to all the H1B holders who are here.

[NecCat]

The point has been that he was discouraged and profiled for his race, and discouraging kids from learning is bad. Whether they would end up as the next hero of creation or not, it's still a bad thing to punish someone for trying to learn. So the reason he got the whole hero's treatment thing, is that it was an attempt to undue the punishment. A sort of prodigal son situation.

Yeah, the articles were entirely about him being mistreated. That was all anyone knew when the story broke.

there's also a couple of other things to consider....

Also- and this helps explain why things are so high-profile- how do you know that the next big inventor isn't watching all of this play out, and being discouraged from pursuing their interest in engineering, since they think it'll get them labelled a terrorist? Part of the reason it's so high-profile is to try to spread the message that "not everyone feels like those idiots- if you are interested in engineering, don't be afraid t pursue that interest"

I'm probably a little slow on the uptake, but when I first read this story I didn't consider the race of Ahmed to be a factor, I thought this was just another example of the school systems, the reactions to the school shootings, metal detectors and police in high schools, lockdown/intruder drills and the rest of the fear of adolescents that seems to exist in society.

Even with the media helpfully pointing out the brown skin/terrorist angle, Hyena Dandy and s_stabler points still stand. Everyone going overboard to encourage this kid (for what was admittedly a somewhat minor achievement) is very important to prevent other kids from being discouraged in trying things like this. It also important to make amends in this situation, he was mistreated, and the people who did the mistreating made no effort to correct their mistake or make things right, so it falls to the rest of society to make up for those who don't know any better.

More to the point, by making a public big deal out of making things up to Ahmed, society in general (and especially the public figures, up to and including the president) are telling the police, mayor and school officials in this town that their behavior was unacceptable. Hopefully the next group of community leaders who are in the same position will remember that lesson and behave better.

[Gravekeeper]

I'm probably a little slow on the uptake, but when I first read this story I didn't consider the race of Ahmed to be a factor, I thought this was just another example of the school systems, the reactions to the school shootings, metal detectors and police in high schools, lockdown/intruder drills and the rest of the fear of adolescents that seems to exist in society.

It's related to be sure. Especially with Texas who has had the zero tolerance shit going on for several years now. However, its the zero tolerance thing that gave them the "legitimate" excuse to throw him in handcuffs and interrogate him. The school and police still have discretion over how to handle the incident at ground level.

I'm sure it doesn't come as a shock that Texas's zero tolerance policies are disproportionately used against non-white children. -.-

[Hyena Dandy]

Do you necessarily know if a kid is a genius by 14?

I mean I guess if you gave them the IQ test, you'd know. But it's not like a brief investigation is going to show if a kid is a genius at that age. Hell, I'm a genius. Geniuses can be people that you don't know just by glancing. They mostly seem like bright students at that age, which he was.

But the thing is, this was never a referendum on him personally. You're the ones making it about him, and acting like everyone else has been claiming he'll be a savior of techology.

[Greenday]

Do you necessarily know if a kid is a genius by 14?

I mean I guess if you gave them the IQ test, you'd know.

That'd depend on your definition of genius. I scored 140s and once above 150 when I was young. Does that REALLY make me a genius? No, it just means I'm a good test taker. IQ is not a fully functional diagnosis of extreme intelligence levels.

But yea, there's a drastic jump to the genius level and while I like to think I was gifted that young, geniuses would have put me to shame. Geniuses are already masters at something by that age. Whether it's music or art or science, they already put most adults in that field to shame.

[Gravekeeper]

Tell that to all the H1B holders who are here.

That's part of the mess.

H1B holders are subjected to a litany of, as I was saying, immigration fuckery as well as corporate fuckery. As the largest receivers of said H1B visas are foreign companies that specialize in outsourcing IT support services followed by US companies that like outsourcing IT support for cheaper labour. Who do indeed by and large use the program as a method of outsourcing instead of having to hire American workers. When the intention of the program is suppose to be to fill skilled labour gaps in the US work force.

Its not being used to develop and pioneer America's scientific and technological progress. Its just outsourcing positions and as such, training people that will eventually take those skills back to their own country.

[mjr]

That's part of the mess.

H1B holders are subjected to a litany of, as I was saying, immigration fuckery as well as corporate fuckery. As the largest receivers of said H1B visas are foreign companies that specialize in outsourcing IT support services followed by US companies that like outsourcing IT support for cheaper labour. Who do indeed by and large use the program as a method of outsourcing instead of having to hire American workers. When the intention of the program is suppose to be to fill skilled labour gaps in the US work force.

Its not being used to develop and pioneer America's scientific and technological progress. Its just outsourcing positions and as such, training people that will eventually take those skills back to their own country.

Except that in many cases, those workers are here in the U.S.

Many of the "foreign" STEM workers are right here on U.S. soil. And I would wager that a number of them (how large that number is, I don't know) are H1B workers.

[Gravekeeper]

Except that in many cases, those workers are here in the U.S.

Many of the "foreign" STEM workers are right here on U.S. soil. And I would wager that a number of them (how large that number is, I don't know) are H1B workers.

I don't think you understand. Outsourcing doesn't mean they all have to move workers out of the US ( though some certainly do ). They replace workers by contracting with an agency connected to a foreign company that's technically in the US but who only hires H1B temp workers. Who in turn work for less than American workers but are not American citizens and thus not permanent residents.

The two largest employers of H1B visa workers are foreign companies based in India. If the program was working as intended no foreign companies would be involved. Let along the primary beneficiaries.

Being here on US soil changes nothing because an H1B is a temporary work visa.

[mjr]

Being here on US soil changes nothing because an H1B is a temporary work visa.

that visa can get renewed yearly, however.

And not only that, the U.S. Government claims (because business tells them so) that there is s "shortage" of "domestic" STEM workers, so they need to increase the H1B program.

I'm here to tell you: There is no shortage.