After hearing more of the story, it is seeming more and more like this probably was a fishing expedition for 'racial and/or religious injustice'.
He was, reportedly, repeatedly asked by numerous teachers to put his clock away, as it would make some people nervous (and already had), instead he continued to take it to class after class until one teacher (in an English class, his 4th class?) insisted on an explanation about what he was showing around the class, and he steadfastly refused to give any at all.
He could not have intentionally made himself any more suspicious without putting a ski mask on, IMO. I hope all these offers dry up if it becomes more clear this was all intentional on the student's (parent's?) part. I sure don't want to see that kind of baiting behavior rewarded.

EDIT: As a side note, any clock with an alarm could actually be a bomb...or at least a trigger. My brother was suspended in the 80's for an altoids tin with a battery, mercury switch, and buzzer. When you picked it up it buzzed, and inside was a note saying "boom, this was a bomb, you just died"....he played 'gottcha' at the time (kind of a spy vs spy game played at schools back then, where you had an assignation target and someone else targeted you) and that was his best way of 'killing' his opponents. It was also proper to suspend him for bringing that totally safe device to school then, IMO.

Because Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the rest... "CO2 is good for the Earth, it helps plants" (ignoring that most plants are absorbing about as much CO2 as they can already, and ignoring the bigger problem that very little of the Earth is green, and no walls or ceilings to keep the CO2 where plants are), "compact fluorescent bulbs are stupid, they have mercury in them!" (ignoring that the mercury in them and the mercury put into the air by the power plant is less than the mercury put into the air by the power plant to power regular bulbs). And the news media paints it as a debate, having one climate change scientist debate one climate change denier (though the media still refuses to call them deniers and paints them as skeptics) and this isn't just the right wing media, almost all the media in the US presents it as a debate. They don't present the fact that a 97% consensus exists.

Then there is religion. They talk how insane it is to assume that humans, made of God could destroy God's work. That we can't damage the Earth as God made it... of course they take the idea of destruction literal, and not in the way people actually mean when they say it's destroying the Earth. They also don't care about the repercussions of future generations as "Jesus is coming soon, well before any of this will matter"... more or less an actual quote. They believe also that God has granted mankind all authority over the Earth and not that it was stewardship over the Earth, so we can and should do whatever we want.

There's also ignorance. The media, especially the right wing media, portray the idea of climate change as presented is being presented as being only 100% caused by humans, they claim that the pro climate change scientists won't acknowledge any part of it might be natural. The media is playing it as an all or nothing scenario, either humans caused it all, or caused none of it. This isn't what any scientists are saying. They are just pointing out the natural uptick vs the uptick we are seeing is explained by human burning of fossil fuels, and that's what the 97% consensus is about, the uptick we are observing vs what would be expected naturally. But not understanding, and thinking science is ignoring all possible natural causes, they deny the whole thing.

Heck, just look at the media uproar over the supposed mini ice age that is coming in 2030 or so. Of course the actual paper never mentions an ice age or climate at all, and neither did the presentation. The problem was the press release for presentation mentioned the Maunder Minimum and linked to the Wikipedia article about it, and from there the media assumed that would mean a new mini ice age, even though the mini ice age during that time was started before the Maunder Minimum. Nobody in the climate change community is really calling for a mini ice age (just like it was never widely thought in the 70s that we were heading for global cooling, it was understood even then it was warming, the cooling thing came from an article in Time if I recall correctly, not exactly a peer reviewed science journal) come the 2030's, at best we may get a very small slow down of the warming, but CO2 levels are 40% higher than during the Maunder Minimum. Anyhow the media tends to mislead the public with things that wasn't actually said. The right wing media machines especially know that their audience won't vet their sources or information and will trust them and talk about conspiracies to hide the truth. Heck most of the media never even cleared the air over climategate emails, so most of the deniers still cite the climategate emails as a valid thing, even though in context and with scientific understanding none of the climategate claims are valid, and in fact still point to global warming... (http://www.iflscience.com/environment/mini-ice-age-hoopla-giant-failure-science-communication)

There's also the change from "global warming" to "climate change" which they don't understand to be an escalation of the term, and think instead it's toning it down.

Anti-vaxxers are a funny sort, they're the kind of people who will berate you on how toxic vaccines are with their mercury, chlorine and aluminium while eating their tuna sandwich seasoned with salt and a sprinkle of lemon juice out of an aluminium foil wrapper. Dude, you just ingested more toxins than you'll ever will with a lifetime of vaccinations.

I was thinking the same thing. We had a good deal of choice of what classes to take. I didn't take Lit, but I did do the basic English classes, where we read some Shakespeare and the like, but not to the degree the Lit students did. I didn't do any complex math classes either, I did Algebra. But then I also did Applied Business, or whatever it was called. I did Civics with the base History classes. I did Home Economics in 9th grade, not a required class, but an elective. Woodshop was another example of an elective class. Have they removed electives from schools? If not then it's this dude's own fault for not choosing the proper electives. If they are gone and all that is taught is the core, then there may be too much core.

I got to disagree with the video's premise that Math, History and the cores aren't needed. Do you need Calculus, no but you should graduate with a strong understanding of basic Algebra. History is important to, though I'm not sure the methods used are effective, route memorization of facts and dates for tests, rather than a general understanding of history and how to avoid the same mistakes. Teaching for tests period is a problem... Lit isn't important and should remain an elective, but having read some of the "classics" is important too, even if it is just a quick Cliff Notes sort of version of it (do they still have Cliff Notes?) Actually a Cliff Notes rundown of lots of the "classics" would probably be better than what most English classes do, while encouraging students to read more modern what they want fare for reports and the like. I didn't take Biology, but basic Science understanding is important, problem is it's politicized and rather than stick with the facts, too many people want to introduce at the very least doubt about the facts if not introduce ideological ideas that contradict the facts and are based on a misunderstanding of what the facts actually say... due to a messed up literal reading (well when it's convenient to take literal, other times things are dismissed as "literary" or "poetic" be it about the Earth not moving or bats being birds and on and on) of one particular bronze age book.

Also you can't teach people who to vote for... you gain understanding of the issues in History and Civics... so...

How to move away from testing is a tricky thing. You need to prove you have an understanding of how to form an Algebraic formula and to solve one. You need to prove you understand the issue(s) of the Civil War and the basic era (I'm not convinced you need to remember exact dates, know it was the 1860s), same with the other wars. What was one's nation's involvement in the World Wars and what caused those wars in the first place, and again basic era, if you don't know the exact year of the bombing of Pearl Harbor or D-Day or the dropping of the atomic bombs, okay, but a basic close approximation of the years. For English you need to prove you can write and read, and a basic understanding of literature, not details of classic books, but narrative structure etc. There should perhaps be more time spent on critical thinking and how to vet sources. You need to have a basic enough understanding of science not to dismiss things as "just a theory" which proves you don't know what theory means in science, and don't ask ridiculous questions like "if we came from monkeys why are there still monkeys" instead you should be able to answer that. You should be able to answer properly if somebody notes that CO2 is good for plants or that compact fluorescent have mercury in them so they aren't better for the environment than older bulbs.

How does one prove these things without tests? That's the question. And it needs to be Federally standardized to a degree to ensure that you don't have lose districts teaching that the Civil War wasn't about slavery nearly at all, rather than the fact it was the primary reason, or that Evolution is "just a theory", or deny the slaughter of the Native Americans or interment of Japanese Americans. You need to insure that all students are getting the same basics, and insure they have a good range of choices for electives. It's the basics though that basically need tested for, and I personally can't figure out a way to prove a student knows say what caused the Civil War or that they know what Evolution actually is, or how to form an Algebraic formula to solve a real life problem without a test.

I'd say they should be worried about the mercury vapour from the flouro tubes, but I don't think they'll be breeding or live long enough for it to be a problem...

Tyson's only interesting statement before Nye spoke was to suggest Dawkins' question was wrong, or at least premature as he wonders, "...whether there is no such thing as consciousness at all".

It is a silly suggestion because we all agree we experience consciousness, therefore, de facto, it exists, as an experience. The question is why we have the experience, not whether we have it. This conclusion that experience of consciousness might not exist is what Nye was reacting to because Tyson hadn't said anything yet about where our understanding of it might come from.

After Nye's comment, Tyson says our understanding of consciousness might come from some place altogether unexpected. Most answers to the big questions do. That's why they're big questions. So to a scientist, that's an unremarkable statement, not worthy of comment. But you can't go from there to, "asking why is a bad question". Tyson's analogy with the procession of Mercury was a bad one because nobody suggested that perhaps Mercury's procession didn't appear out of whack. It did. People only asked why it did.

In saying that it's possible the 'answer of consciousness' could come from somewhere completely unexpected, or unrelated, to what people are thinking now. Like the example he gave where it took something completely new (General Relativity) to explain Mercury.

It seemed pretty self-explanatory in the video.

This stuff is pretty damn scary too, IMHO :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylmercury

a few drops will absorb through latex gloves within seconds, but kill you in a very agonizing way (mercury poisoning) several months later. After death of Karen Wetterhahn, it's lab usage is not recommended.

Oh...so it's OK with you to simplify and 'falsify details' significantly by modeling the earth as a perfect sphere, but not ignore the mathematically insignificant and immeasurably small possible movement of the earth in some direction or another due to multiple immeasurably small gravities?! WHAT?!? ;-)

....Um...1 degree on earth is 111.2 KM, there's such a tiny difference (1 cm+-) they are in the same place for all possible measureable purposes, nothing like 1 deg apart. My scientific calculator won't give an answer, 1 deg * (1cm/111.2km) =0.00deg on it. (OK, it's not hard math...1/11120000 deg.) Because of this, yes, they WOULD cross the imaginary line, AND hit the earth at the same time by any possible measurement. If the smallest distance measureable is FAR larger than the distance they differ by, and the smallest time measureable is MUCH longer than the difference in time they hit, normal (and most abnormal) people say it's exactly the same.

And again...the experiment properly ignores any infinitely tiny immeasurable movement of the earth in ANY random direction for the obvious reasons already stated. There's far more difference based on the precise position of mercury than the position of the bowling ball and feather, especially when they are nearly touching...You know and understand this.

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Freddie Mercury Tribute~Wembley Stadium 1992~Full Concert. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

Let's hope 'terrorists' don't watch the sift or youtube, or can't find any gallium or mercury. I don't think the TSA is looking for mercury or gallium, and it seems it could be disastrous if 'combined' with a plane's aluminum skin. Scary stuff....and neat!

Isn't this somewhat similar to mercury? low melting point and eats aluminum..

Well, that guys backyard is a toxic playground.. Pretty sloppy handling of mercury, do not try this at home.

There's a touch of Freddie Mercury in his delivery as well.

Back to the video at hand, I find it a bit hypocritical that the U.S. is criticizing the hunt. Yeah, dolphins are cute. The idea of someone killing one is probably uncomfortable to pretty much any culture that hasn't spent centuries eating them. But I think there's a bit of ethnocentricsm going on here.

How many cattle, chicken, and turkeys get slaughtered every day in the U.S. in the most horrible ways--nevermind the horrific conditions most have to endure from birth until death? Where's the international outcry over that?

The primary complaint of this video seems to be that the dolphins die slowly, but the video fails to mention that's only if the procedure is done wrong. It's done that way precisely because Japanese laws require the butchering to be done quickly and when done correctly they die within seconds. I imagine the whales killed by Inuit's in their traditional hunts don't die much quicker (see http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20131008/save-whales-inuit-whalers-wary-whaling-commission-quotas for more details).

Basically, while I find the method they use to kill disturbingly inhumane, I also don't see the need for the international community to intervene in the hunt unless it can be shown that the hunt is adversely affecting the population. The primary reason hunting dolphins is stupid is because the meat contains alarmingly high concentrations of mercury which pose a major health risk to humans that habitually eat the meat.