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VMI77 wrote:

jimlongley wrote:

VMI77 wrote: . . .
As to the red...I already gave my answer in a previous post: putting the disassembled clock in something other than the original enclosure makes it look "homemade." His motive was probably to claim he created something when he actually did not. The case is 8"x5.5"x2"....pretty small...and he didn't add anything that looks like explosive material which would be easy to do. Another reason for the case is to carry the disassembled parts.....how else could he transport his "invention" except in some kind of box? . . .

But he didn't just transport his magnificent invention in the case, he assembled it in it. And from the pictures the case could hold enough explosive, in the form of a sheet concealed under the foam, to yield about 700 volumes of gas at 8000+ meters per second. As seen over Lockerby that would be quite enough to take down a plane, and it could do a pretty nasty job on a classroom.

It looked like just loose components to me in the photo but later in the thread someone says that the timer was outside the case with the ribbon cable leading inside. If that's the case it changes my interpretation as I alluded to in a previous post when I said if someone wanted to make it look like a bomb they'd put the clock/timer on the outside.

Beiruty wrote:

mrvmax wrote:

You and others keep saying it looks like a bomb or a hoax bomb...hooey. As the photo above shows it looks like, and is, a disassembled alarm clock. I get that scientific and technical knowledge in this country is at pretty pathetic levels, but one would pretty much have to be a technophobe or have a pretty lurid imagination to turn something so obviously prosaic into an explosive device. The idea of a hoax bomb is to make people think it's a bomb. That could have easily been accomplished by adding something that could be mistaken for an explosive charge. That "hoax bomb" wouldn't have hoaxed my grandma.

Since you seem to be an expert on explosives, how many real bombs have you seen? I am just wondering what real experience you have to be making determinations on what does or does not look like a bomb. If you have read through this entire thread you will see that I do have actual experience working with explosives and I doubt seriously you have any real experience but I may have missed something in this thread.

Is that too complicated to imagine, a timed bomb comprises of timer and a bomb. A bomb comprises of an explosive material and an initiator/primer/cap a device to start the explosive material. Whatever it was in that case is just the timer/clock thingy.

What is wrong with you guys? Any kid at school has a cell phone more advanced and more dangerous than that the timer/clock thingy in that case. I do not need to say more.

Dragonfighter wrote:I was a major nerd and built an Argon LASER for my 7th grade science fair. Lost to a mold experiment. In fifth grade I built a random logic circuit and lost to something equally lame. So I understand nerd, I am a card carrying nerd. But I also realize when someone does something for a reaction.

To me it's like the kid who put oregano in a baggie then got upset when he got in trouble for it. This little sociopath KNEW what his gadget looked like, he knew how they'd react. And now we have Twitter, MIT and the POTUS kissing his feet. I wonder if a Caucasian protestant kid did the same thing, whether he'd be White House bound? No? Thought not.

FWIW, I agree with Excalibur's scenario.

Beiruty wrote: What amazes me is that the school, the PD did not retract or apologized for the suspension or the arrest.

Beiruty wrote:So what is hoax bomb? And do you show a hoax bomb to your teacher???! In layman terms, hoax bomb is device wired and made to look like bomb but no real explosive material. Something like this yu'all kidos:

VMI77 wrote: . . .
As to the red...I already gave my answer in a previous post: putting the disassembled clock in something other than the original enclosure makes it look "homemade." His motive was probably to claim he created something when he actually did not. The case is 8"x5.5"x2"....pretty small...and he didn't add anything that looks like explosive material which would be easy to do. Another reason for the case is to carry the disassembled parts.....how else could he transport his "invention" except in some kind of box? . . .

philip964 wrote: . . .

I did somewhat notice that. The photo seems to show a digital clock taken apart and put in a large pencil box. It wasn't like he took components and designed a digital clock. So the thought that he is the next Nick Tesla may be premature.

I'm still of the belief this was an internal school matter, not a police matter.

If the boy's original intent was to get his 15 minutes of fame, everyone certainly did there best to help him.

BTW, I said Nick Tesla because I had trouble coming up with a real inventor. Seems Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the Wright Bros, etc. didn't invent as much as I thought.

Beiruty wrote:

Right2Carry wrote:This is how the waters get tested and the frog ends up getting boiled. There is more here than meets the eye. Common sense tells you not to bring that thing to school. Another agenda is in play here!

Be realistic. He is just 14 yrs old US kid, no malicious connections with anyone else.

Beiruty wrote:The boy won fame and respect and the Irving PD and ISD got shamed.

Excaliber wrote:There is another possibility here:

The device was designed to look suspicious but be provably innocuous in order to generate the response it actually got from teachers and police who could be foreseen not to use common sense when confronted with a situation like that. It is certainly the sloppiest and ugliest simple function clock I've ever seen and hardly what I would call a triumph of junior engineering. A non genius could do much better with a few cheap parts from Radio Shack.

Following this hypothesis, the purpose would be to present a situation that could be exploited in the media as blatantly unfair treatment of an innocent boy based on "islamophobia". When you think about it, that's not as far out as it seems at first. It is entirely predictable that the media would react as it did, that enormous sympathy would be generated for the "victim," and that he would be given all kinds of opportunities he otherwise would have to have earned. The police description of passive-aggressive behavior by the student during his interview would support at least considering that his motives were not as entirely innocent as he presents them to be.

Would that scenario take an adult a cynical worldview and some thoughtful planning behind the whole deal? Sure, but it would be consistent with the level of sophistication we're seeing from radical islamists, who are media aware, highly manipulative and much better grounded in reality than many of what passes for leaders these days.

I have no idea if that was the case here or not, but from an investigative standpoint I would treat it as one of the lines of investigation that should be followed until it is either proven or disproven.

Even if that was what was really going on, a little common sense from the police would still have ended the situation quickly and without fanfare. The bomb squad would have been called and determined that the device was neither dangerous nor designed in a manner consistent with a trigger for explosives, and the police would have handed the kid back his "clock" and told him to have a nice day. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and that's why we're looking at the stinking mess this case has become today.

JALLEN wrote:It's hard to see details in the photo, but it has AC power, a couple of circuit boards, a display. It could be a clock, a digital voltmeter, or both, any number of things, not including a bomb or baritone sax, or a left handed IWB for a Glock, either.

I enjoy and try to exercise my sense of the absurd as often as possible, but this one will wear me out.