About/Contact Bad
The Bad Idea Blog is a discussion of lousy thinking, wherever it may be found. It can’t be bargained with. It doesn’t feel pain, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until we aren’t dumb.
That said, the Bad Idea Blog also greatly welcomes being called on its own lousy thinking: corrections of faulty fact and awful argument will be issued after a brief period of hemming and hawing in denial culminating in a final, tearful breakdown. Cookies will not be issued.
“Bad” is not a mystery man, nor famous enough for anyone to care about the mystery, but he doesn’t (and more importantly his employers don’t) much like being Googled in any case. You’ll just have to be content knowing that he’s a swell science geek in his 30s who has been a long-time yammerer in the science, skepticism, and unbeliever community under various silly pseudonyms.
And sorry ladies and gents, but Bad is married.
You can email me at bbadidea (at-sign) gmail period com
Story ideas and other suggestions are more than welcome.
October 23, 2007 at 11:59 pm
re: Ben Stein in Hot-Pants for Intelligent Design. Statements like yours, “There is a battleground here, and plenty to lose.” so eloquently make Stein’s point. If science and Darwinism are so perfect what do you have to fear? Knowledge? Information? Are books next? It should be plain for everyone to see that ID is an outrageous, preposterous theory, no? Why should ideas and debate be subject to such loathing and disdain? There was a time when I believed wholeheartedly and without question in Evolution without deity… I evolved.
October 29, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Don’t you think, like, an article on Expelled might be a more sensible place to put this comment, Mr. Smartypants?
What we have to lose is the integrity of science and knowledge. What we have to fear is ignorance and dishonesty becoming common coin in scholarship. But trying to portray those fears as a refusal to debate ID is just dishonest on your part. Scientists do debate the claims of ID all the time: the disdain is shown by folks like Stein that have to lie and misrepresent and selectively present events in order to win over people to their cause, all the while carefully avoiding doing any real work or research or providing evidence for their points.
November 11, 2007 at 3:12 am
The debate is touted as a fair argument, when in fact it’s an evidence-based theory vs a fairy tale. This swings people over who’d rather go back to the heady days of religious power, church schools and the old-fashioned letter A, to name but a few.
The ramifications of believing in an insubstantial wisp of a story go far beyond a mere deabte however, into a battle for the minds of children. And it’s only one candidate amongst many equally insane ones, including chelation therapy and AIDS denial, both of which kill.
Ideas and debate are not loathesome, but when they are designed to limit the human scope of exploration and thought, they become a tool of the tyrant. Did we ever have a debate on the Grimm brothers vs Watson and Crick?
(PS: Apologies to Bad for not having inserted this in the correct post)
November 24, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Your defense of Darwin, reason, science, good manners, Mom, apple pie and the flag over at Seedlings is quite wonderful. As you know, “forester” has banned me. I couldn’t do as good a job as you have of making him look mean, angry, and ill-informed.
Keep up the good work.
(For those of you unaware of Bad’s performance, go here:
http://seedlings.wordpress.com/2007/06/28/darwinism-in-need-of-revision/ )
November 26, 2007 at 10:00 am
For the record, I have fully reinstated Ed Darrell on my blog.
Feel free to read about what prompted the ban, and why it was removed, at the link Ed provided above. It’s a long thread but an interesting one.
January 8, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Interesting. I’ll be reading here later.
January 10, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Speaking of bad thinking, Mr. Bad is too dumb and too lazy to research the fact that the name of a university is BAYLOR, nor BRAYLOR, as he repeats several times in his post about the “Expelled” movie.
Be careful when you self-righteously point out others’ “bad thinking.” It often comes back to bite you.
January 10, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I’m not sure spelling or typing counts as research. Given that I’ve read countless articles about Baylor, and misstyped it anyway, a correction is certainly in order (and in fact, I just now typed Braylor AGAIN, despite responding to a post about how it’s spelled Baylor!). I’m not sure it says much about my credibility though, and you seem entirely too eager to dismiss my arguments without even addressing them. If I’m so poorly informed about Baylor that what I’ve said about events there is false, then those things need correction. But what I’ve said does not rest on my word or my credibility: it’s either factual or false, and it’s the facts and falsehoods that are out there that I am discussing, as should you.
In addition, if you’d done more than a cursory examination of this site and of myself, you might also have noted that I welcome and respond to criticism, and pre-admit to being error prone and in need of correction. That is, after all, one of the core ethics of the liberal scientific method.
January 23, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Don’t discount others’ ideas on the basis of poor spelling or grammar. You can miss some real gems that way.
January 24, 2008 at 9:54 am
²David Dean
Come on, we want children to understand that fire gives more heat when they insert more coal, and not when they pray in front of it.
One is science, the other religion. Don’t you mix them!
Anyway, interesting blog - I love bad ideas!
Regards.
January 29, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Glad to have found your site! Keep up the good work!
February 7, 2008 at 5:37 pm
PLEASE! Don’t go to this movie! You might have to consider God…eeeewwww!
February 13, 2008 at 1:20 am
It can’t be bargained with. It doesn’t feel pain, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until we…
Terminator? I thought I recognized that line. :p ha ha ha
February 16, 2008 at 12:56 pm
There is no “movie” mentioned in the “about” article. You have failed the internets. Please start over from the beginning.
I’m happy to consider God, by the way. If you click on the “God” tag of this blog, you’ll see some of what I’ve considered so far.
February 25, 2008 at 8:34 pm
http://tinyurl.com/2fcl6f
March 13, 2008 at 11:03 am
Great blog here. You’re definitely added to the blogroll of Super Jesus. Deal with it my friend, deal with it.
Evangelically yours (in a completely heterosexual way)
Super J.
April 17, 2008 at 11:36 am
Am I to undertsand that questioning the scientific community is to be branded as heretic?
When does the Inquisition begin?
April 17, 2008 at 12:06 pm
That’s what some people want you to “understand” certainly. But they’re full of it. In fact, the scientific community is a hotbed of criticism and questioning. The real problem is that many of these self-styled “heretics” have little substance to their arguments beyond trying to posture as martyrs.
You know, one thing I love on a hot, humid day is a nice Blizzard from Drama Queen.
And exactly how did you decide to post this to an about page instead of like, an actual thread?
April 21, 2008 at 3:59 am
Mind if I ask what the thing in your avatar is? that wet skin thing with a big nose or something.
I was always curious.
April 21, 2008 at 10:59 am
It’s what a deep sea fish looks like when its… not in the deep sea.
April 21, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Expelled: An embarrassment to the Academy
By Steve Cornell
http://thinkpoint.wordpress.com/
Is it really too much to ask for people to not post long copy/paste articles into…. my about section? It’s not like I haven’t written a zillion articles on Expelled where even a copy/paste would make more sense as a response to me. The only reason I originally allowed comments on this page was for people to comment on the content of the about page. Instead, people have started to treat it as if it was my personal email box. No. Send me an e-mail if you have general comments or things to tell me that don’t fit into any existing post. Comment here only if you want to ask what fish my icon is, or are requesting a cookie.
Since this entire comment is already a post on your own website, folks can read it there, and respond to it over there. Myself, I’ve already addressed pretty much all these arguments in posts over here on my site: if you disagree with my refutations, I invite you to read what I have to say, and comment in the relevant comment threads. -Bad
April 30, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Bad:
Hey man. Just writing to see if you could drop a plug for my yesterday-posted CarnivUL of The fraudless - the first carnival on Scientology. Given that it is not a breaking news item, it has a good probability of quickly falling off of (or never getting onto) the radar, which is something I’m trying to avoid given that I invested 8 hours into it and think it’s pretty good.
http://theframeproblem.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/carnivul-of-the-fraudless-exposing-the-cult/
Any help would be much appreciated.
Ron
May 7, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Oh, is THAT what that is! I always thought it was a really pissed off Ziggy on steroids. ;>)