artvoice | So, this story about a 14 year old boy in Texas that was arrested on
suspicion of creating a bomb hoax (who, apparently just wanted to show
off his latest electronics project to his teachers) that has blown up
(no pun intended) all over the news and social media, caught my
attention immediately. Not because of his race, or his religion, the
seeming absurdity of the situation, the emotionally charged photo of a
young boy in a NASA t-shirt being led off in hand cuffs, the hash tags,
the presidential response… no, none of that. I’m an electronics geek. I
was interested in the clock! I wanted to figure out what he had come up
with.
I found the highest resolution photograph of the clock I could.
Instantly, I was disappointed. Somewhere in all of this – there has
indeed been a hoax. Ahmed Mohamed didn’t invent his own alarm clock. He didn’t even build a clock.
Now, before I go on and get accused of attacking a 14 year old kid
who’s already been through enough, let me explain my purpose. I don’t
want to just dissect the clock. I want to dissect our reaction as a
society to the situation. Part of that is the knee-jerk responses we’re
all so quick to make without facts. So, before you scroll down and leave
me angry comments, please continue to the end (or not – prove my point,
and miss the point, entirely!)
