Science that's important!
In the run-up to the release of a big summer movie, the ridiculous tie-ins can be annoying as hell. Even without TV the whole thing can get saturating, bogging you down and making you sick, just sick, of the whole thing and waiting for the summer movie season to just end so that the newsweekly magazines can return to their proper role of terrifying statistically-illiterate Americans with fables of school violence and epidemics of diseases that only four of them will ever catch (and one of them not even that badly, really).
But there are exceptions to any rule. I fully approve of a book explaining the kinesiology of Batman right before (coincidentally, I'm sure!) the opening of The Dark Knight. Sure, it's a little disappointing to realize that becoming Batman takes roughly 15-18 years of training and then only about three years of being at peak and you really ought to retire no later than age 55 or so; on the other hand, it makes Bruce Wayne even more impressive--the dude started fighting crime in 1939 and is still going pretty strong for, what, a guy who must be approaching 100? (Let's figure he's ten when his parents are offed by Joe Chill, then goes right into training. So he's 25 in 1939, right? Which means he was born in 1914? So he's 94? A very spry 94.)
And I also approve of running an interview with the author of Becoming Batman, E. Paul Zehr.
My inclination is to be funny about how all science should be like this--i.e. it should all be about comic books. Of course, the joke lacks credibility coming from me: after blogging about astronomy and biology and computers, nobody is going to believe that my only interest in science is when it's about Batman. So never mind, then. Go read the interview, and I hope you're having a good evening. 'Night!
But there are exceptions to any rule. I fully approve of a book explaining the kinesiology of Batman right before (coincidentally, I'm sure!) the opening of The Dark Knight. Sure, it's a little disappointing to realize that becoming Batman takes roughly 15-18 years of training and then only about three years of being at peak and you really ought to retire no later than age 55 or so; on the other hand, it makes Bruce Wayne even more impressive--the dude started fighting crime in 1939 and is still going pretty strong for, what, a guy who must be approaching 100? (Let's figure he's ten when his parents are offed by Joe Chill, then goes right into training. So he's 25 in 1939, right? Which means he was born in 1914? So he's 94? A very spry 94.)
And I also approve of running an interview with the author of Becoming Batman, E. Paul Zehr.
My inclination is to be funny about how all science should be like this--i.e. it should all be about comic books. Of course, the joke lacks credibility coming from me: after blogging about astronomy and biology and computers, nobody is going to believe that my only interest in science is when it's about Batman. So never mind, then. Go read the interview, and I hope you're having a good evening. 'Night!
Comments
Matt: it might be genetic, or it might be that Thomas Wayne was a lifelong and fanatical adherent to the work of John Harvey Kellogg. A childhood of corn flakes at every meal and routine enemas made the young Bruce Wayne far tougher than most mere mortals!