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.
Note: Due to the rather high volume of spam requests, I don’t do “link exchanges” by emailed request, even if you really are on the up and up. If, however, you ever happen to link to my blog in some way, and I follow that back to your site, and like something you wrote, rest assured that I’ll find a reason to link you at some point. And if that happens a lot, I’ll add you to the blogroll. That’s how it’s supposed to work, after all. All nice and organic-like.
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. ;>)
June 26, 2008 at 4:30 pm
I was about to ask what your avatar is. (Been wondering ever since you used to visit my Assured Scorn blog.) Now I’m curious what kind of fish it is. I mean, wow, it’s no wonder that poor thing lives out of sight in the deep sea, huh?
August 16, 2008 at 12:31 am
Um, Mr. Bad, um, sir, if, ah, you believe in evolution… why in the world do you care about integrity? Um, if we are apes, and we are simply a super intelligent next phase in evolution, why do we care at all about integrity? Or dishonesty? If an argument gets us ahead, if it gets us published, if it gets us money, if it gets us fed, in other words, if we survive, haven’t we just adapted? Is not survival the ultimate imperative? Why should we care if it is true? I mean, is there even such a thing as truth?
If we are the latest stage in evolution, we have no imperative except the imperative that has always been the imperative; namely, that we must survive. Anything else is arbitrary, and, frankly, an inconsistent adherence to psuedo-religious traditions, that if evolution is true, have nothing to stand on.
August 16, 2008 at 11:28 pm
How the “if” clause in your question is connected to “why” part is a complete mystery to me. What does ANY descriptive state of the external world have to do with what I care about?
Again, I don’t see how us being apes has anything to do with why or what we care about. We care about integrity because such a concern is central to our societies, social relationships, and moral values. Nothing about us being apes precludes or problematizes any of that, as you seem to be implying. If you think it does, you’re going to have to explain why better than this.
You really do seem to be confusion descriptive explanations with values. They aren’t the same thing. And you don’t understand evolution: survival is not itself an imperative that necessarily any particular creature has, though as it happens, most do have drives to survive. The importance of survival is in understanding how it is that it impacts things like allele frequency over time. But if someone values sacrificing their life to save someone else over reproducing, that’s what they will do. No “law” of survival prevents them. Rather, their failure to survive simply has certain implications for future generations.
Again, while most of us do have a psychological imperative to try and survive, it is not the only nor even necessarily the most important one we have. And evolution is a description of what happens in the natural world. It isn’t a law or a guide to anything that anyone has to follow.
You really do quite totally misunderstand the thing in this regard, which seems to be responsible for your caricatures.
If we are the latest stage in evolution, we have no imperative except the imperative that has always been the imperative; namely, that we must survive. Anything else is arbitrary, and, frankly, an inconsistent adherence to psuedo-religious traditions, that if evolution is true, have nothing to stand on.
August 19, 2008 at 7:24 am
Are you working on a piece now that deals with the Saddleback Civil Forum, or are you ignoring it. Just wondering?
August 19, 2008 at 10:44 am
Haven’t really had much to say about it in particular that hasn’t been said pretty well elsewhere. I didn’t watch it, and the summer is sort of a busy, slow time around here. Seemed like some pretty predictable politicking, in a forum heavily favoring McCain, with all the usual self-serving “oh my guy did great” stuff from both sides.
August 20, 2008 at 8:45 am
Yeah there has been a lot of pontificating from all directions. Fair enough, thanks!
September 19, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Please remove all “comments” someone sent representing me.
Thank you
September 19, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I only have the one, here on this page: that wasn’t written by you?
September 27, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Well, I found my way over here from some link via Google Analytics as I got hits on mine from here…somewhere! :P But hey.
nice work.
November 14, 2008 at 7:12 pm
It is not out-of-date information? Because I have other data on this theme. http://lukyfilm.ru/map.html
February 12, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I have some question off the record.
April 14, 2009 at 10:52 am
Dear:
I have two as bad ideas:first,after my a international news and there are all bad men contacted me,but my wisdoms won them and found some very important questions,so i felt it that is a good way for continue associate to those bad men in the World.Second,another i found,our education and teaching in colleges and should be let those bad students write out their all bad actions to post by the blog,it will offer very good messages to our teachers and a Law.
July 16, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Where have you been? I am in need of some sanity. I’ve been exposed to too many idiots in life and in cyberspace of late.
Doc