bmartin
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Post by bmartin on Sept 21, 2015 10:55:25 GMT -5
The fact that the kid's clock was basically the equivalent of a hobby kit is now being presented by the paranoid as somehow evidence of fraud. He never claimed he had invented time or that this was some unprecedented invention. He seems to me to be just the kind of curious boy who takes things apart to figure out how they work, and he wanted to show his science teacher what he had figured out. Not a diabolical genius, just a very normal 14 year old boy.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Sept 21, 2015 12:21:39 GMT -5
Thanks to government officials' penchant for abusing their power, there are far too many victims of school officials showing no common sense -- each day really -- for the President of the United States to personally devote time and attention to all of them. Kendra Turner Alex Stone Josh Welch Erin Cox Kiera Wilmot Courtni Webb The list goes on and on. School officials do indeed do lots of dumb stuff all the time. I would argue that what makes this case more worthy of attention - and why it became a national issue that role to the presidential and wannabe-presidential level (like the aforementioned Governor Jindal) - is the evidence that it is reflective of institutional bias on the part of the school system against a particular group. Again, there's some evidence that Irving is more than a little paranoid on the topic of Muslims. Granted, the degree to which one thinks that institutional discrimination - or discrimination against Muslims specifically - is a significant problem, or even a problem at all, does have to do with one's politics, as Dr. Carson's recent comments make clear. So in that sense, politics is certainly part of the equation. At the end of the day, though, equal treatment is still the law of the land, and it's perfectly appropriate for a President to call out instances where it appears the government is falling short of that. Except that there's a lot more evidence of school officials being paranoid, and overreacting, to benign actions by students of all races and faiths. Look, zero tolerance has plagued schools for years, school administrators often are petty tyrants, and being a Muslim probably made it worse. All three of these can be true. However, when a sixth-grader in the gifted-and-talented program at Bedford Middle School in Bedford, Virginia was suspended for one year after an assistant principal found something that looked like a marijuana leaf* in his backpack, I think the kid's faith was a minor factor and the officials would've reacted the same if he was a white kid whose father was the local Baptist preacher. *The "leaf" found in the student's backpack wasn't what authorities thought it was -- it tested negative for marijuana three separate times.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Sept 21, 2015 16:45:48 GMT -5
Except that there's a lot more evidence of school officials being paranoid, and overreacting, to benign actions by students of all races and faiths. Look, zero tolerance has plagued schools for years, school administrators often are petty tyrants, and being a Muslim probably made it worse. All three of these can be true. However, when a sixth-grader in the gifted-and-talented program at Bedford Middle School in Bedford, Virginia was suspended for one year after an assistant principal found something that looked like a marijuana leaf* in his backpack, I think the kid's faith was a minor factor and the officials would've reacted the same if he was a white kid whose father was the local Baptist preacher. *The "leaf" found in the student's backpack wasn't what authorities thought it was -- it tested negative for marijuana three separate times.Yea, that's all totally fair. I think that in the current climate, this particular scenario (government profiling Muslims) has particular resonance - which, again, is why it became a big media thing in the first place, while the many other examples of overreaction generally didn't. And that's fine: the point gets made that schools and police departments need to not jump to conclusions, guard against biases, and act proportionately, which they should be doing regardless, and everyone moves on. It's on par with every after-school special in the 80s and 90s. Meanwhile, the inability to admit to a mistake, the need to believe that it was a hoax or a setup or whatever, is more damaging and just stretches the story out longer.
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Elvado
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Post by Elvado on Oct 21, 2015 10:43:25 GMT -5
And off to Qatar he goes. Good luck carrying suspicious packages around over there.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Nov 23, 2015 15:21:35 GMT -5
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Elvado
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Post by Elvado on Nov 23, 2015 17:01:56 GMT -5
With that money he could buy a clock, or fund some jihad...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2018 9:07:52 GMT -5
This thread is perfect.... It really has everything and says so much.
Wowza...
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