Purely out of curiosity...
The Jonathon Hunt Experience
newtalkingwall at gmail.com
Fri Dec 11 09:48:03 CST 2015
"if he re-assembled clock parts in a box and took them to school, he broke
the law."
Is this why he wasn't charged with a crime and the police department
apologized and he is likely to receive a sizable payoff for the whole
affair? Is this the usual outcome when a 14-year old breaks the law?
"Why did he do this? What was his motivation? "
I mean, there are reports that he liked to take apart and build things and
routinely brought them to school, but I suppose it makes more sense to
ignore those and assume he knew this non-explosive device would be confused
for an explosive device, the police would handcuff him and the U.S. would
sympathize with a Muslim kid and he could use this to cash in. When it's
this easy to get rich, it's surprising nobody has done this before!
On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 9:34 AM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com>
wrote:
> You sum it up, Ish: "a rare act of....welll not courage, but decency."
>
> I think everything you say is right, and I agree with your focus on the
> decency, though I think in a lot of these cases there is courage involved,
> too. How many teachers and administrators have been blamed, accused,
> formally or not, when a student actually does do something horrible, and
> there is some event in the student's past that in retrospect should've made
> it obvious, or when, in retrospect, there is some obvious measure that an
> authority figure should've taken that would've prevented the whole thing...
>
> Being afraid, having to worry so much about protecting your own ass, is a
> real demotivator in terms of helping other people.
>
> One q: you say that "school is the safest place in the world for
> students." I would like to believe that is true, and I'm guessing it is.
> But is there some hard evidence backing that up?
>
> It reminds me of this thing I heard in a psych class in college about how,
> statistically, in terms of just behavior and impulses, babies and young
> children are the most violent people on the planet, violent even toward
> their immediate family, only they don't quite have the... gumption(?) they
> need to make much of it.
>
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 9:13 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Was the clock a school project? In other words, did a teacher, a club
>> adviser, any adult in the school assign a project, and did the clock fit
>> the assignment? Or did the young man make a clock and bring it to school?
>>
>> As far as I can tell the young man did not build a clock or make a
>> project, or in any way bring something to school that was part of an
>> assignment from any adult in the building. It was not a project. It was not
>> show and tell. It seems the student took apart a clock, re-fashioned it and
>> put in in a box and brought it to school.
>>
>> Why did he do this? What was his motivation?
>>
>> Whatever his intentions, if he re-assembled clock parts in a box and took
>> them to school, he broke the law. While 14 year old boys, and sometimes 14
>> year old girls, are instructed that bringing a clock in a box, a plastic
>> gun, a plastic sword, a paper bomb or dynamite etc..., even on Halloween
>> is dangerous and against the law, young people do make these kinds of
>> mistakes, from time to time. Best if they make them in school as school is
>> the safest place in the world for students. Obviously, doing so in the
>> street may get one killed by a police officer or even a gun toting citizen.
>> In a school the child, age 14, will be interrogated, handcuffed,
>> probably, and asked to write a statement explaining his or her intentions
>> and the police will contact the guardians and book the kid. This is the
>> law. It matters not the race or religion of the child.
>>
>> From time to time, a brave administrator, more likely an experienced
>> teacher will protect the child with a slap on the wrist, but the current
>> mood in the country and in schools is making this a rare act of....welll
>> not courage, but decency.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 9:02 AM, The Jonathon Hunt Experience <
>> newtalkingwall at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Is there any evidence that the kid "only" took apart a store bought
>>> clock and put it back together, beyond people online pointing out that
>>> doing so is a thing that people can do? Beyond that, if the child acted as
>>> maliciously as Richard Dawkins and others would like to believe, this means
>>> his whole plan hinged on the knowledge that his teachers and police would
>>> confuse a circuit board and some wires with something that can explode. If
>>> our teachers and police are this stupid (which seems to be the case, here),
>>> then we are lucky in getting off with a $15 million dollar fine.
>>>
>>
>
--
Are you hip to Easter Island?
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