The Ahmad Hoax Is Not Going to Hold, and The Media Will Be Massively Discredited

I suppose that headline is a bit optimistic -- the media is very good about suppressing stories that expose them as frauds; see the Gosnell coverage.

But we're coming to a point where the media's continue refusal to acknowledge the obvious is going to become very embarrassing to them.

IBD states the obvious. (I can't quote it because it's short, but it dispels so much of the previous myth-making here; do read it.)

Suggesting, to me, that we're about to hit the moment of Peak Media Embarrassment is the fact that the tech community is now openly referring to this as a hoax. They focus on the fact that this kid did not "invent" anything -- he took a mass produced clock, took it out of its case, and put it into pencil box that looked like a small suitcase to make it look like a "cartoon" bomb.

People who do tech know that no one, not even a ninth grader, would think he did anything of value here, unless he were mentally slow, which this kid is not said to be. Some in this thread call it simple "plagiarism." That is the exact analogy I used in talking about this: It would be as like a ninth grader simply xeroxing "The Old Man and the Sea" and then telling people "Look at my story."

No one who is not mentally slow would think that mere act of photocopying made it "his story," and no ninth grader who was not mentally slow would imagine that taking a mass produced clock out of its case and putting it into another case constituted making an "invention" or even "building" a clock.

Two videos to illustrate the difference between an electronics hobbyist building a clock and someone not building a clock.

First, here is someone actually making a clock:

Now, here is what Ahmad the Genius Clock Inventor did:

Anyone see a difference? A slight difference?

Why would someone -- apart from someone who is mentally slow -- imagine that the latter "invention" was worth showing off at school at all?

I was once a ninth grader. If I had, say, taken a bit of blue transparent plastic and laid it over the red screen of a digital clock, I would have made the numbers appear purple rather than red.

This would have been more of an "invention" than Ahmad achieved -- I actually would have changed, in a minor way, the performance of the device -- and yet I would never have thought for one second that such a minor, trivial, idiotic alteration was worth showing off to anyone.

Worth doing? Who knows; maybe if I were going through a Prince phase.

But worth showing off to multiple teachers?

Hardly. I'd think they'd think there was something wrong with me for being so proud of something that a baby could do.

But we are told that this kid is a genius -- so much so he's getting scholarship offers from MIT -- for a hoax, and for a plagiarism.

Why would anyone think was an "invention" worth bringing to school?

posted by Ace at 03:29 PM

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