Why “Clock Boy’s ‘Science Project’ ” Should Have Raised Eyebrows – and Alarms
Jonn wrote an article the other day about “Clock Boy” – the 14 year old in Irving, Texas, who took apart what appears to be an old Radio Shack digital clock and put it into some kind of carrying case, then took it to his school.
Many seem to think what happened after he took the device to school was a gross overreaction on the part of local school and police officials. Some even say that the lad’s “science project” could not possibly have been a “hoax bomb” (illegal under Texas law), was obviously innocuous, and should never have been treated as anything suspicious.
Perhaps they’re right. But let me make a couple of observations regarding the situation.
• The case into which the clock appears to have been installed looks to be about 9” x 6” x 2”, more or less.
• The clock’s working parts take up very little of the case’s interior space; virtually all of the interior of the case remains free.
• An M18A1 Claymore Mine is approximately 8.5” x 5.5” x 1.5”; it weighs about 3.5 pounds.
• The parts of a Claymore that “make bang/dead” only occupy somewhere around half of a Claymore’s total volume, give or take. The rest of that 8.5″ x 5.5″ x 1.5″ volume is taken up by the Claymore’s case, sight, and the case’s curvature.
• The equivalent of that “make bang/dead” part of a Claymore will easily fit within half of the case in which the lad mounted the Radio Shack clock parts, leaving the rest of the space inside unused.
• Add a couple of other things – which I won’t list here, but which terrorists know quite well – and you essentially have a home-brewed Claymore with integral timer/detonator.
• Those “couple of other things” will easily fit into the unused volume in that case after the clock and “makes bang/dead” parts are installed.
• The total package would weigh maybe 5 pounds – probably less.
Bottom line: this kid’s “science project” is about 1/3 of what’s needed for a homemade and quite deadly little time bomb. The other things needed are well-known to terrorists. The fabrication required to finish the job is decidedly low-tech, not particularly difficult, and wouldn’t take very long. And with the clock side towards a wall or otherwise hidden, it would also appear innocuous enough that wouldn’t be all that hard to hide it in plain sight.
Yeah, maybe this was all innocuous and innocent. But the possibility exists it wasn’t completely innocent, either. Hell, the kid could have been duped into making it and taking it to school by someone else.
. . .
We Americans want to believe that people are inherently good, and that the world is a safe place. We usually act as if that’s the case – and in the past it’s usually been the truth, at least in the USA.
However, reality is now different. There is indeed evil in the world; there are those who would kill us simply because we are American citizens. And some of them are here among us today – just as they were living here among us on 10 September 2001.
Denying that reality and refusing to act accordingly is not only deadly. It’s also monumentally stupid.
Now, tell me again why this kid’s actions were “no big deal” and why what the authorities did was an “overreaction”? Especially since, roughly 4 months prior, a group of terrorists had tried to attack a “draw Muhammed” cartoon contest 10 miles or less from where this kid went to school?
Author’s Addendum: for what it’s worth, it’s quite possible that an entire M18A1 Claymore would fit in the case the lad used if the case is indeed 9″ x 6″ x 2″, as it seems to be above. If the case were slightly larger than that, it would fit easily. In either case, there would almost certainly be plenty of space left over for the clock entrails and other items required to convert the case into a truly nasty little time bomb.
Under those conditions, there would also be very little fabrication work required for that conversion.
Second Addendum: here’s a link to a nice bit of reverse-engineering on “Clock Boy’s” little “science project”. It appears to have been based on a clock sold by Radio Shack in the 1980s:
Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock… and Ourselves.
Category: Liberals suck, Society, Terror War
It is a big effing deal, that. And I am astounded every time we take this shit lightly and the Pied Piper makes light of this and that like it’s also nothing. Not out of the ordinary for him, mind. But now, we have the idiots of the left using comparison charts to show that Obama has kept us “safer” than any modern day President. AYFKM? The guy is letting in more non-vetted Muslims than Europe and we’re supposed to be nice to the 14 yo? That would be a negative.
Let’s also not forget that the boy’s father is also a CAIR activist. Yes the boy is also muslim and they’re using that as part of their “Victim Card Play. I’ve done my time in the ME, and I’m naturally suspicious of Muslims from that alone as well as from the history of what muzzies have done. Candyassed bleeding-heart-on-the-sleeve liberals pine, snivel, bawl and cry for us to coexist, but how often do we see muslims even remotely trying to coexist with other religions? Try to build a church, synagogue or temple in any ME Muslim country and see how they react, yet we’re supposed to bend over for them as soon as they reach our soil? Overreacting? Look at the bomb detonated at the Boston Marathon, it was built out of a pressure cooker. The Tsarnev brothers? Yes, Muslim. Thus 9/11 hijackers? Yep. Muslims have given us barge loads of reasons for us to be suspicious of them and I DONT GIVE two hoots of a moldy ratshit fuck if I hurt their feelings or “offend” them.
^^^ THIS ^^^
But, but, but…Timothy McVeigh and umm…okay, I give up. Wikipedia’s page on domestic terrorism is pretty in-depth, but the criminals there mostly pale in comparison to what has been done in the name of Islam in recent decades. Today’s society is inherently suspicious of anyone who fits a certain profile. Racial profiling is prohibited, but I wonder how effective it would be. If I know a certain type of minority commits a certain illegal act, why shouldn’t I be able to use that knowledge in my attempts to make an arrest? In this case, a Muslim kid takes what appears to be a bomb in the production phase to school. Officials act the same way they would if a white kid brought a gun to school, or an Asian kid was caught with illegal drugs, and the nation just eats it up as an anti-Muslim occurrence. I don’t trust people who are fervent about things linked to extremism. Islam, by its very nature, expects its followers to abide by its laws and teachings. Whether they are of the “good” variety and assimilate into American culture otherwise, or of the bad variety that wish to see Americans killed, they follow their take on the religion before anything else. Shortly after Hassan committed his attack on Fort Hood, my company got a Muslim commander. He and his wife were Americans since birth, but I never fully trusted him. That distrust was deepened when he took a day to conduct Islamic sensitivity training. Funny, but I doubt the Army conducted Catholic or Buddhist sensitivity training during Vietnam. Simply put, most rational people don’t link an enemy’s religion to their cause unless there is a good reason. The Japanese didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor in the name of Buddha or the Shinto religion, and the Germans may have killed millions of Jews and other people, but they didn’t do it in the name of their god. Heck, back during the invasion of Iraq, I never viewed the Republican Guard and Iraqi Army as anything other than enemy Soldiers. They weren’t Muslims or even Arabs in… Read more »
My opinion on racial profiling is that it came from an attention-whoring PR stunt by Johnny Cockroach (*OOPS!*, Cochran) when he made a big hoopla about “being pulled over for driving while black” which ended up with a bunch of PC bullshit. The Israeli airline El Al uses profiling in their security procedures, and the number of El Al flights ever hijacked remains at zero. There were things that airport and airline security personnel were told to look for prior to 9/11, things like Arab males purchasing one way tickets via cash, something the hijackers did, and it was ignored, probably out of fear of some damn PC lawsuit over “offending” behavior.
Even TSA uses profiling. You can even argue that every human profiles others (it used to be called ‘to pre-judge’).
I was even told once in an airport years ago, “well, you fit the profile.”
I know it wasn’t because I was a white heterosexual male, because that was in 2004. Though now I’m guessing it would be.
Dead on, Hondo. Fire for Effect.
Lars will not be happy with this thread.
Fakheem.
No, they are not harmless.
No, they do not have good intentions.
Yes, they hate us in indescribable ways.
Yes, they want to kill us off.
(By ‘us’, I mean any nation with a long history of western culture.)
It is essentially ‘us or them’. If we want it to be ‘us’, we have to be willing to do whatever is necessary to make that happen.
And before Lars arrives to tell us that it was not a bomb and that no one called the bomb squad, permit me a preemptive statement: No shit, Sherlock. That aside now, the family (I assume that there is a mother but in a Muslim household, mothers are to be neither seen nor heard) reuses to authorize the release of the school or police action that resulted in the detention of the twit. How convenient is that? They get to say whatever they want and the school and police are restricted to boilerplate and general statements. He’s a juvenile and his record is protected from public release. I remain curious if he and CAIR DADDY either made it to Mecca for the Holy Stampede or, if not, whether they have now cancelled their plans.
Did everyone catch the article few days ago that stated that the clock boys older SISTER also was suspended from school in the same district 3 years ago….for the SAME type of thing…BOMB HOAX !
Haven’t seen that. Link, please?
Lower part of the article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/17/man-i-went-viral-my-day-with-ahmed-moahmed-the-most-famous-boy-on-earth.html
After the MSNBC segment, Eyman and I sit down in the hallway where she says the same thing happened to her as Ahmed.
“I got suspended from school for three days from this stupid same district, from this girl saying I wanted to blow up the school, something I had nothing to do with.”
Eyman talks with the slightest lisp, almost imperceptible, but it becomes stronger as she gets emotional.
“I got suspended and I didn’t do anything about it and so when I heard about Ahmed, I was so mad because it happened to me and I didn’t get to stand up, so I’m making sure he’s standing up because it’s not right. So I’m not jealous, I’m kinda like—it’s like he’s standing for me.”
Eyman said her suspension was in her first year of middle school, “my first year of attempting middle school in America. I knew English, but the culture was different, the people were different.”
Don’t forget that this came to the attention of the teacher because the countdown timer began beeping in class…….it doesn’t have batteries. According to the pictures, the countdown timer had to be plugged in.
So the 14yr old plugged in his countdown timer, turned it on, and then allowed it to run down in the middle of class……this was a set up.
The photos of the device show a battery backup capability (9V battery backup was used on the Radio Shack alarm clock the lad cannibalized to make his “project”). It’s unclear whether he used a battery or plugged it in as you suggest.
Here’s the f. You know where to put it.
Here’s what gets me… If this kid would have taken that “clock” through airport security, he would have been detained. If he would have been found in a government building, he would have been detained. If he would have been found with this at a professional sporting event, he would have been detained. But since he was found with it at a public school…racism and stuff.
Dirty little secret that the government and the fans of government don’t want you to know. Come close and I will whisper it in your ears. PUBLIC SCHOOLS, INCLUDING STATE UNIVERSITY, ARE GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS AND LOCATIONS.
Pulling cheap electronic gadgets apart and seeing how they work sounds a lot like what I used to do when I was a kid. I know times are different, but there never would have been a question about it being a bomb. Granted kids did make bombs back then–which also wasn’t the big deal it is now, but whatever.
I suppose I’d just rather live in a world where I accept a slim chance of getting blown up every day than one where the government takes naked pictures of me when I fly, and walks kids through metal detectors to get to school. As if any of that stuff has any significant impact on my chance of getting blown up anyway.
This place has gotten nearly intolerable since 9/11. This is America–the uncivilized edge of the civilized world, where we’re supposed to be patriots or cowboys, but turned into a big pack of pussies.
The first teacher that Clackmed showed his “clock” to, told him to turn it off and put it away in his locker. So what did Clackmed do?? Take it to all his next set of classes, where it went off (counted DOWN to zero and alarmed) more than once.
Innocent? Hmmm. . . . .
I do like the name ‘clockmed’–think I’m going to have to steal that one.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, the plotters tried at least one “dry run” to see if they could smuggle weapons on board (see pages 158-59 of the full report).
I had heard, don’t remember where are from whom , not even sure if it is true …. but , that this “clock” was more of a countdown timer than it was a clock. Not sure just sayin.
I hadn’t heard that, but it’s pretty likely that it had that function. Most alarm clocks these days come with a sleep timer function, and that’s what the device looks like it started out its life as.
What I’ve read was that it was a
1990s-eramid-1980s Radio Shack digital clock, removed from it’s original case and reinstalled in another case (about 6″ x 9″ x 2″). Don’t think “countdown timer” was a common feature on digital clocks 20 years ago.A countdown timer is only really necessary for those who can’t figure out how to set an alarm for N minutes from now, or who can’t tell time. (smile)
Seems to me the only differences between a countdown timer and a snooze button are a) variable length of time vs fixed and b) display counting down. But a snooze button is very definitely a fixed-period countdown timer.
True – the snooze button does initiate a fixed countdown timer prior to another alarm. But for a number of reasons it’s not particularly useful in this context.
It’s doesn’t even need to be a snooze button. With the right electronic know how. You can take that clock and have the alarm circuit be the trigger mechanism.
In my high school science club a kid built an juicer that pressed oranges and mangos using that knowledge. The clock was wired up the alarm went to a relay that pulled a switch which turned a battery on which powered a drill which drove down the fruit cup onto the juicer device and there was a collection cup on the other side to get the juice. A little Rube Goldberg like, but that was sort of the purpose of the assignment. Build a complicated device to replace an every day task using only parts from around the house. Replace any of that after the clock with nitro and here comes the boom that shakes the room.
Just like Doc Brown did in Back to the Future huh? Cool!
One word, desensitization.
That would be my guess – along with intimidation through claims of “racism” and “profiling”.
No, I wouldn’t say “desensitization” or “dry run”, rather this is in the nature of the black campus activists who have nooses hung on their locker or the gay activist who has hateful words spray painted on her home – and it turns out, in almost every case, that they did this themselves (and let’s not forget the cop who “tagged” his own car with anti-cop graffiti.)
IOW, a ploy for attention and a way to paint himself as a victim, since victim = hero in today’s culture.
Oh and as for the headline? What you did there – I see it. 😉
The man in Texas, who was arrested for “vandalizing” his own vehicle wasn’t a cop. But he does claim to be a disabled vet. Not sure I believe that, either. http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/09/12/disabled-vet-my-truck-was-vandalized-over-pro-police-message
On reflection I think you are probably right. Though it could serve both purposes together…if something is done, squawk “oppression!” If nothing is done, make a note of it and take advantage of official cowardice in other ways.
In other words: a probe, with a prearranged alibi/cover story if detected.
Or a “win-win.”
The fact that it he was told to take it to his locker and put it away but instead took it to more than one class tells me he was looking to try and get a reaction. When he didn’t get the desired reaction from the first teacher, he kept going to his next class until he finally got the freakout he was looking for.
When my ex and I were in Denver in 2010, we took a taxi downtown, and were making small talk with the driver, who was from Somalia, and was Muslim (he told us both of those things, in our conversation). In one part of the conversation, he said with great enthusiasm, “America is a great country!”
I smiled and said, “Yes, Americans are wonderful people.”
He looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “No. I meant the land.”
I learned everything I need to know about why they’re here, right then.
This kid appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Nightly Show” the other day. You can see the video here: https://youtu.be/avAatzhL4m4
He says that he has made more complicated things:
“I’ve built more stuff that’s very complicated like CPUs and… and soldering them.”
CPU’s? Really? No one in the tech world is believing this kid anymore.and the rest of the world is coming around as well.
People have looked at pictures of his room and seen other disassembled items that he claims to have “invented” or “made.” None of it is true.
People hate being lied to and hate liars even more.
If you thought John Stewart was a whining liberal, holy crap larry willmore is 5 times worse. Plus, he’s not even that funny.
I’ve watched the show two or three times and its a ridiculous level of un-funny whining about Republicans being evil, white people suck, minorities are victims, etc etc.
Lots of kids take things apart when they are kids to see what’s what and try putting them back together. That doesn’t make him smart. It just makes him a kid.
https://hackaday.com/category/clock-hacks/
The amateur inventor and builder community is up in arms. Even more so about this “plagiarism” that this kid did. Then to double down with some SJW salt into the wound is getting them all wound up. It’s kind of funny since in a few places I have read this kid didn’t invent a single damned thing, he didn’t build a single damned thing. Nope as one commentator put it some place else, he took a Ford car and put a Yugo body on it and then claimed he built both in his garage.
Speaking of kids doing things, when my brother was 5, we had a bunch of old oil lamps that my paternal grandmother gave us. He spent his tiny allowance to buy parts to turn those lamps into electric versions. That was 1955. I have one of them. It still works and I can now get an LED bulb for it.
He’s also built two airplanes from plans, and flown them to the EAA fly-in at Oshkosh, WI.
There’s a huge difference between being smart and creative, and being an attention whore.
I think we’re getting into technical definitions here – I built CPUs when I was younger, absolutely. Not modern, 64-bit, multi-pipeline 32-nanometer process CPUs on billion doctor fabs, of course, but 8-bit CPUs, on breadboards, interfacing with count-down timers, number pads and capacitor banks.
I also made robots as a kid – mostly they were activated by remote controls, not autonomous, smart robots, but I made robots. Out of plastic, wires and a few motors. If I claim, as an adult, I invented a robot, people expect a lot. If I had claimed, as a kid, I invented a robot, … the bar is a lot lower.
As for inventing things, Amazon.com claims to have ‘invented’ a method of clicking on something once to buy something. Invention is another blurry word – very few things are invented, in the strictest sense of the word, any longer. It’s more they’re adapted, re-shaped, tinkered with, etc. If a kid wants to call that inventing, no problem. Got kids that make paper airplanes? I bet if they fold things in a new way they might claim they invented it. Even though they didn’t.
Long story short, I’m going to give the kid as pass on the claim of ‘inventing’ stuff. He’s a kid, as was I, and I did similar shit and called it similar things.
He took some clock internals, reworked them on to a breadboard and a case of his own(*), that sounds pretty decent to me.
LC
(*) I have a fishing tackle box which opens up with ICs, resistors, capacitors, LEDs, wires, batteries and a big breadboard. I’m not trying to hide what’s in it, there’s plenty of extra space… it’s just convenient for messing around with electronics.
Ahmed didn’t use any breadboard or rework any internals. He took the stock circuitry out of the case and then put it unchanged in another case.
Actually, he seems merely to have removed the existing mid-1980s-era digital clock’s working circuitry and transplanted that to a different case without much if any alteration (read the last link in the article). Not much “inventing” involved – more like repackaging.
Yes, he’s the most famous kid now. FYI, his sister did brag that she’d been kicked out of the same school district:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/17/man-i-went-viral-my-day-with-ahmed-moahmed-the-most-famous-boy-on-earth.html
All that article showed me was that Clockmed wants to be famous.
It leans more and more towards this being a stunt to get attention and he got what he wanted.
It just pisses me off even more about this issue. He doesn’t even have any remorse about anything, just “I’m famous!” “I’m trending!” “I’m going to be on this show and that show and intern here and get a job there!”
At that, name 3 white people who have built IEDs to kill others? I can name 1000 Muslims / Middle Easterners. Its really easy because 999 of them are named Mohammad or some variant.
And again, he’s taking things apart and putting them back together. He can use a soldering iron.
And when he takes his radio shack clock to the White House, guess what? The Secret Service will be racist too. They’ll open it it up, take it apart to examine, search him and his family, etc., to make sure it isn’t really a bomb.
All so Big Daddy Cair can get some attention for a terrorist organization.
I said this yesterday: if you recall the story of the boy who cried ‘Wolf!’, he did it once too often.
The ploy for butthurt attention in the spotlight is grandstanding, but as we all know from the number of SV phonies who have been brought to our attention right here, there is a consequence to attention-seeking behavior. It is not necessarily what the attention whores want.
As fm126 points out here: http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=61981&cpage=1#comment-2680552 you do reap what you sow.
That is basic karmic law: you get back what you give out. The energy from what you do comes back to you nine times over. Reap the reward or face the consequence.
If you remember, when Jokhar Tsarnaev was finally taken into custody and his mug shot appeared, every horny teenage and junior adult girl got twitterpated about it and said he was too cute to be the Boston bomber. And then at his trial, he flips the bird at everyone, more than once. Go ahead. Keep thinking with your crotches, you moronic little twits. This is what it gets you.
I am quite sure there are more of these ‘Look at me – I dindu nuffin’ episodes are coming in the near future. Unfortunately, when you cry ‘Wolf!’ too often, people stop listening and the wolf may kill you.
So let the libbytards whine and jump up and down and wring their little fists. They’re wrong, and we all know it. Let them make all the noise they like. What’s the most likely job an immigrant from the ME gets here? Cab driver. Where do taxicabs line up for passengers? Train stations and airports. If I were Tom Clancy or John le Carre, I could have a field day with this. But this will come to a head. Count on it. There is a consequence for bad behavior.
As the sowing, the reaping.
I read all posts, then sent it to a old buddy of mine. His reply was “Your friends are absolutely correct and we came to the same conclusion. If military personnel can see what we did, why are others so blind. Everything that was explained by the HONDO FELLA is 100% correct”.
After we talked I thought to myself, why hasn’t anybody brought this up via newspaper or news reports?
Thanks HONDO, for your great article. I read about clock boy, but missed everything between the lines. Now I understand.
Ahmed Mohamed, the kid who gutted an old clock, placed its parts in a new case and called it his own, is in the news again. He and his red-blooded, America-first family are moving to Qatar. Buh-bye. And he met with the Scrotum Shaver, not to mention (and the WaPo story doesn’t) that he also met with Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, the “Butcher of Darfur.” You could not make this shit up.