Diary: Leering Arabs

At the University downtown school is back in. Groups of young people are everywhere on the street, moving furniture, some carrying bedding, as they move into the apartments near the school. As I cross the street I'm cut off by a distracted driver in an SUV pulling up to the far curb in front of one of the student apartment buildings. I go around behind him and pass him on the sidewalk to his left, before changing my mind and turning around to go the other way. As I pass the car I hear the driver from inside calling, with a Middle Eastern accent:
"Hey. Hey you!"
Great, I think; this asshole is starting trouble, after I was so gracious in not so much as giving him a second glance after he cut me off. I stop and approach the lowered passenger side window, ready for whatever--there's only one of him, at least. I lean toward the car and he says:
"No. Not you."
I look the other way and see two young girls, attractive, lively, utterly oblivious to me and the skeevy looking Arab in the car's shadowy interior.
"You. Hey you. You want a ride?" He calls out. They don't even seem to see him, as they move off in the other direction. I move along myself, thinking, would it really be such a bad thing if I was to drag him from the car and give him a lashing (assuming I could pull it off )? Is "stay away from our women" really such a bad sentiment? Is it really bad for women?

When I lived in California I used to joke that I wanted to start a band called Leering Mexicans. People, even Mexicans, got the joke. The leering Hispanic would-be street-suitor is a commonplace in Southern California; it's a commonplace here in the Northwest now--I recall once experiencing revulsion at the sight of a Hispanic man in a car who appeared to be in his thirties making a gesture with his mouth--that I can only compare to what Hannibal Lecter does after that ridiculous "...fava beans and a nice Chianti" line--in the direction of two girls on the street who looked to be barely out of middle school. He did it in the same instinctive way I've noticed cats call out to birds (and the expression was very similar):




But this is Portland now. Young vulgarian Muslims and others (make that Others, capital O) mingle with tattooed, decadent American youths.

What is good, America?

Sanders v. Trump, 2016

You're going to miss us when we're gone

The Awful Things Straight White Males Do For Free (vol. MXI):



From Open Source.

Clock-Blocking America

All the best people, all the way up to our Poser-in-Chief, are very impressed with young Ahmed's homemade alarm clock. The White House, Google and Twitter headed the roll of the trolled, inviting him to visit.  MIT called (well, tweeted). But, despite the president asking for him to "bring his clock" to the White House, no one seems much interested in this evidence of the young man's genius, which must be rescued from the inherent bigotry of Texas school-teachers.

Well, here an electronics hobbyist has analyzed the clock that stopped time and, quelle surprise, it's less an impressive piece of work than it is, yes, a suspicious device:

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!)
For starters, one glance at the printed circuit board in the photo, and I knew we were looking at mid-to-late 1970s vintage electronics. Surely you’ve seen a modern circuit board, with metallic traces leading all over to the various components like an electronic spider’s web. You’ll notice right away the highly accurate spacing, straightness of the lines, consistency of the patterns. That’s because we design things on computers nowadays, and computers assist in routing these lines. Take a look at the board in Ahmed’s clock. It almost looks hand-drawn, right? That’s because it probably was. 

Computer aided design was in its infancy in the 70s. This is how simple, low cost items (like an alarm clock) were designed. Today, even a budding beginner is going to get some computer aided assistance – in fact they’ll probably start there, learning by simulating designs before building them. You can even simulate or lay out a board with free apps on your phone or tablet. A modern hobbyist usually wouldn’t be bothered with the outdated design techniques. There’s also silk screening on the board. An “M” logo, “C-94” (probably, a part number – C might even stand for “clock”), and what looks like an American flag. More about that in a minute. Point for now being, a hobbyist wouldn’t silk screen logos and part numbers on their home made creation. It’s pretty safe to say already we’re looking at ’70s tech, mass produced in a factory. 

So I turned to eBay, searching for vintage alarm clocks. It only took a minute to locate Ahmed’s clock. See this eBay listing, up at the time of this writing. Amhed’s clock was invented, and built, by Micronta, a Radio Shack subsidary. Catalog number 63 756.

Ahmed's clock may be junk, but the Narrate-o-Matic is working fine; bullshit goes in, narrative honey comes out. So yes Ahmed, do bring your clock when you report to the White House; it doesn't matter if it's any good, it needn't actually tell time even (the President knows what time it is, I assure you). But after you, it's the second most important prop for this presidential photo-op. 

Trolling America

Call me a conspiracy-theorist, but if I wanted to provoke a 24-hour outrage like today's #IStandwithAhmed global orgy of virtue-signalling I could do no better than this:

Ahmed's clock 

Suitcase bomb

This has several elements of media manipulation. The innocent child, the "racist" authorities overreacting out of irrational "phobia" in, of all places, Texas (!), the immigrant angle, the police involvement. What you wouldn't know if you were just following this thing on Twitter or blogs (as so many do) is that the kid wasn't accused of carrying a bomb to school, but of playing a hoax, by carrying the understandably suspicious looking contraption above to school. Call me a jerk, but I want to know if this kid's parents are involved with CAIR.

Update: I posted this before I saw this:

His father, Mohamed ElHassan Mohamed, is a fascinating figure in his own right. He's a Sudanese immigrant who has twice declared himself a presidential candidate in Sudan. When Florida pastor Terry Jones put the Quran on trial and later burned it in 2012, Mohamed was the Muslim holy book's defense attorney...

Curiouser and curiouser. Or, rather, less and less curious.