"Damn! They never thought he had a bomb!"

[Old Crow]

24. Wait a minute.

This Facebook post sets up a false dichotomy. Either:

(A) They believed he had a bomb that could blow everybody up; OR
(B) they never thought he had a bomb.

But isn't it possible--likely, even--that some of the people involved were thinking the following?

(C) This looks like a timer and detonator that could possibly be triggered by a cell phone. It looks way too complicated to be "just a clock." We don't see any explosives, but we need to find out if this kid has built something designed to detonate explosives.

Yes, I know: The news stories you've read have reported that they thought he had "a bomb," not "a detonator." But in fact, the teacher involved stated that she thought it was "possibly the infrastructure for a bomb" and some of the police appear to have used the word "device." The adults were not bomb experts and may not have been all that up on the terminology. Some of them, no doubt, used the word "bomb."

Don't get me wrong. I'm outraged that this technologicially gifted 14-year-old was led out of the school in handcuffs based on nothing other than prejudice and ignorance. But if you ask me, that Facebook post is a clever but misleading piece of writing.