Yep you have pretty much. 
If that was the case I would be busy submitting links to everyones sites with bad neighbourhood or even better banned sites :rasta:
The whole idea of link popularity is to ensure other people cannot directly or indirectly affect your natural rankings. Only you can do that – ok it is not full proof but the big three engines ( google, yahoo, msn ) are very good at tweaking their algos when required to ensure this remains the case.
The article on google bowling is interesting and is something that has cropped up on the black hat seo sites. I’m not convinced though. ( I also do not advocate Black Hat Seo Tactics )
Who you link to can however effect your rankings. If you link to a site penalised by a search engine, ( ie banned etc etc ) this could effect your site rankings.