Title Change?

My mother, who is sort of an involuntary blog reader, suggested to me that my earlier post about the behavior of our Congress last week was testimony in contradiction to the title of my blog. Perhaps I need to re-think the title?

There Is At Least One Bad Idea

Doesn't really have the same ring to it.

Really, I believe I stand by the sentiment of the existing title. Its not the ideas that are bad. George Carlin used to do a routine about words, saying that there were no bad words, that there were bad intentions. I think the same might be true about ideas.

The whole root of the thought that there are no bad ideas is that discussion is always a good thing, trying to come up with alternatives is always a good thing. In my technical design class I teach students that sometimes when you're blocked a good way to get going again is to try to think of the worst possible way to approach something. The thought being that it gets the wheels moving, and even by identifying a solution you know you won't use, you might be lead to the bit of the thing that is causing the block, and once you can see it you may be able to solve it.

So I don't think its the ideas that are the problem. It's the follow through, the action. The problem isn't that the idea itself is bad, its that it is an idea that shouldn't be realized. Truthfully, that's not even the problem. The problem is that the people involved are so misguided that they don't recognize that their idea will not work well in application.

In the particular cases I was ranting about, it wasn't that someone had the thought "hey we should bring in a bunch of baseball players and talk to them," or "we really ought to make a law to try to save this one woman from dying," but rather that there wasn't anyone standing next to them that they believed in to say "you know, that's some powerful lateral thinking, but I don't think that's going to be the best approach."

This is why women go shopping with friends, right? And this is why guys go to the bar with a wingman, yes? Just in case they wander off the ranch out onto the savannah, they'll have someone there to remind them that they are perhaps being too innovative in their thinking, or shopping taste, or drunken dating.

I wonder who's job it is to serve as a congressional wingman. I assume this is their chief of staff or something. Some of those guys ought to be updating their resumes.