11-year old "engineer" needs counseling

On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:43:26 -0700) it happened don wrote in :

US has turned into a bunch of paranoid schizofrenics.

ote

No, the U.S. has turned into a place where there's a reasonable chance of being harmed by crazies using anything from handguns, to assault rifles, to homemade bombs. When confronted in the classroom with an unrequested homemade device about the size of a bomb, bearing wires, what would you do - ask the kid to demonstrate its safeness?

-- Joe

On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:49:10 -0800 (PST)) it happened "J.A. Legris" wrote in :

Well, I am capable enough to ask what it is and judge for myself. And enough judge of charatcter to see such a thing coming.

Do not forget to look under your bed for Al Quada before mammy tucks you in tonight :-)

Nah! It's part of a plo^H^Holicy to provide employment for an otherwise useless part of the population as "counselors", "therapists", and so on...

;-(

That's right !!

Shoot first, ask questions later.

and make sure the press release blames the parents.

don

That's sad. I wonder what "school policies" he supposedly violated?

A guy I'm acquainted with was telling me the other day that he build a Xenon flash bulb driver circuit from Popular Electronics back in the '80s, took it to school, and tried to convince his "friends" to touch the output terminals while he hit the trigger button. :-)

I suppose these days you'd get expelled for that sort of thing...

When I was in high school I built various "photogate" sensors and timers... the photogates were made out of PVC piping (cheap, strong, and readily available); no doubt that'd get you in trouble today too.

Make Magazine must be considered terrorist literature by now...

---Joel

Come to think of it... when I was in high school, my biology teacher -- who was into RC aircraft -- asked me to build him a little trigger (run off a servo output) for a "solar ignitor" so that he could outfit his aircraft with mock missiles made using model rocket engines. (Solar ignitors are two wires coated with something nicely flammable -- you shove them into the end of a model rocket engine, run a few amps through it, it starts burning -- very hot -- and ignites the rocket engine itself.)

So I did.

I delivered it to him at school.

Although I was disappointed that he decided, in the interim, that there was a significant chance a missile firing off would destroy his plane in the process, so he never tried it out in the air.

These days he'd undoubtedly be in jail and I'd be at court-mandated "counseling."

Sheesh.

If you could actually spell it, you MIGHT garner a small bit of credence. As it stands, you have yourself hovering at just over zero.

Did they ask? No... Funny how a bit of communication could resolve so many problems, but instead it full tilt towards the nearest windmill.

wrote

..

That's a fine example of bogus Liberal "thinking". The entire Earth has *always* been such a place. If it isn't other humans, it's a carnivore (or many herbivores), a quake/volcano/wet airmass with an attitude, insect, microbe, or just old age.

Here's a shock for you- life is not safe; it's dangerous and ultimately fatal.

Humans with dangerous machinery of any kind are only a threat when they're ignorant/stupid enough to believe and act on the bullshit that truly dangerous people like warlords and certain religious fanatics feed them. They are NOT a valid excuse to disarm everyone that ISN'T that ignorant/stupid. I live next door to a guy with enough weapons and ammo to arm the whole neighborhood for a really good firefight. I suppose you condone the BATF pre-emptively killing him and his family, right?

No, I'd politely ask what it was, and assess any potential hazard on my own. Why, do you need Official Help to do so?

Mark L. Fergerson

Joel Koltner wrote:

Here's what's really sad: :The school, which[...]emphasizes technology skills[...] : :the project was made of an empty half-liter Gatorade bottle :with some wires and other electrical components attached : :A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students :[...]and was concerned that it might be harmful : The problem here is that the adults who are supposed to be teaching the kids technology can't tell an empty bottle from a nuclear bomb.

:San Diego police were notified[...] : ...and, apparently, neither can the cops.

:A MAST robot took pictures of the device :and X-rays were evaluated. : Substituting expensive toys for intelligence.

The 1925 John Scopes "Monkey Trial" was the turning point. The chance that kids might actually learn evolution made sure the Scientific Method was gone from the classroom. Sputnik was a temporary reprieve, but since the Berlin Wall fell we have the Bible Thumpers at it again.

Way too much effort. Just plop down your Mystery Shock Box and wait for curiosity to have its way.

When I was in school I took a jar of homemade napalm to show around. Teachers were quite impressed. Of course, that was in the 1960s.

Well, yes. That's a cruise missile.

I wore a Dan'l Boone outfit, including a .22 cal pellet rifle on two occasions at our elementary schools. They were loaded.

We used to take rockets to school too.

I used to hit .22 rounds on a flat rock with a hammer a lot too... before our sub-division got completed.

And let's not forget the chem and physics class where bored students rolled balls of mercury along the bench.

org/- A UK political party

The whiz kids at my high school learned how to make nitroglycerin and butyric acid.

You _are_ an idiot.

Absolutely! If it (was) unsafe, the kid would become a poster child for the annual Darwin award. Naturally, the teacher, whatever would take safety precautions shortly befor the demonstration...

"A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students..." Terrorists show their bombs around? "... *empty* half-liter Gatorade bottle with some wires and other electrical components..."

Common sense. And common sense (Hollymood movies) teaches, that cylindrical objects are not batteries but dynamite and the wires are used to ignite the dynamite. But it is also general knowledge how to deactivate any bomb: Wait for the counter to go down to 00:05 and the cut the *blue* wire. (Never cut the red wire!)

BTW: Are cars allowed near U.S. schools?

Falk