You, Too, Could Be Batman In 10 To 12 Years

jmcbain tips a fascinating interview in Scientific American with a professor of kinesiology and neuroscience (and a 26-year practitioner of Chito-Ryu karate-do). The question was, how much training would it take for a normal person to become Batman? The professor says: "You could train somebody to be a tremendous athlete and to have a significant martial arts background, and also to use some of the gear that he has, which requires a lot of physical prowess... In terms of the physical skills to be able to defend himself against all these opponents all the time, I would benchmark that at 10 to 12 years." The problem is, even after that amount of training, no one could remain on top of their game for more than a few years. And "Batman can't really afford to lose. Losing means death — or at least not being able to be Batman anymore."

Comments

Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

and replace them as they 'fail' ... that way we've always got a batman.

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[digitalhermit]

That would be an insane morale buster for the bad guys. Say you knife the Batman -- actually see your knife tear into his guts -- but he shoots his BatRope and BatDisappears for ten minutes. When he comes back he's replaced and as strong as ever, but you don't know that. All you know is that the Batman can't be killed. Maybe he's an immortal?? Maybe he's a demon?? It would be like one of those bunker busters that just completely deflate the enemy..

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[Mechanik]

and replace them as they 'fail' ... that way we've always got a batman.

I am not the real Batman. My name is Ryan; I inherited the Batmobile from the previous Batman, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Batman either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Batman has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[nospam007]

>I am not the real Batman. My name is Ryan; I inherited the Batmobile from the previous Batman, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Batman either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Batman has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.

Inconceivable!

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[bigtimepie]

This is the exact premise of The Phantom. The son replaces the father as The Phantom, but the bad guys think it's always the same guy.

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[Siridar]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[itsthebin]

it makes us wish he was not conceived

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[shaka]

The Phantom is the greatest comic evarrr! Disregard the horrible movie with Billy Zane, here's the comic: http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/phantom/about.htm

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[EricTheMad]

The Dread Pirate Batman?

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[ThomsonsPier]

Don't be so Batronising.

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[sconeu]

the next step would be to adopt an official royal uniform that again hid the face and body

It's been done.

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[operagost]

Never get involved in a flamewar on Slashdot, or never go in against a Troll when your Karma is on the line?

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[pragma_x]

with rumors that he's gay [blogger.com].

I can't answer to the rumors, but I think that this may be a nod to Japanese Animation cultural influences in Western cinema and art.

I have seen several examples of characters in Anime where male sexual ambiguity is used explicitly in villains, usually in conjunction with some form of insanity. This is also heightened by cases where even the gender of the character isn't revealed until later in the series/movie, thanks to a highly androgynous character design and careful voice-acting.

Anyway, one could draw a line between homophobia and such a character design; I disagree with that. Personally, I see this as a kind of hint of "hypersexuality" - a complete lack of selectiveness for a mate - that suggests a very reckless personality, even at the most base and carnal level.

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[h4rm0ny]

Correction - it was stolen from Alan Moore's 'Watchmen.' That, in several ways, is probably the most realistic superhero book ever written.

Re:Then we'd need to train a bunch of people...

[Blakey Rat]

Except, of course, that Ace is replaced by other Rimmers from parallel universes, not by his son. And when the Rimmer we know and love became Ace, that was probably the end of the chain, as by that point he was a hard-light hologram -- pretty much impossible to kill.

Damnit, don't force me to be geeky.

The Parallel-Rimmer that passed the torch to the Red Dwarf-Rimmer was clearly a hard-light hologram, and he died from a bullet wound. They say in the episode that it penetrated his hard-light and struck the light-bee inside, damaging it. When he opens his jacket, the light-bee is clearly malfunctioning, spewing random streams of light out from the bullet-hole.

In any case, Legion never said hard-light holograms were indestructible, he said "practically indestructible". He probably didn't anticipate being shot at, he was probably referring to thinks like stubbing your toe.

Glad I don't subscribe to Scientific American

[mrbluze]

The problem is, even after that amount of training, no one could remain on top of their game for more than a few years. And "Batman can't really afford to lose. Losing means death â" or at least not being able to be Batman anymore."

So, after all that, we should all stick to our day-jobs? Thanks Slashdot, you saved us again!

Re:Glad I don't subscribe to Scientific American

[CRCulver]

Looking at Scientific American articles from even fifty years ago, let alone a century, shows how sadly dumbed down the magazine has become. It used to target a readership of average citizens who were keen on the nitty-gritty of scientific developments. Now it all flash and no substance, little different from Popular Science. The lesson American media teaches us: nothing good is every ultimately profitable as is.

Re:Glad I don't subscribe to Scientific American

[owlnation]

Not to mention that there's a great deal of viral marketing in it now -- vis a vis this "article"

Re:Glad I don't subscribe to Scientific American

[smussman]

If you want magazine that does a good job summarizing recent developments in science in layman's terms (or pretty close), I've found Science News to be pretty good. I certainly enjoy reading it, and I feel they do a good job of summarizing without dumbing down.

Re:Glad I don't subscribe to Scientific American

[MightyYar]

I like Scientific American - I don't think you're being fair. The "fun" articles are obvious and they are careful to make no claims of certainty. Actually, I really have to put my thinking cap on when they get into Astrophysics these days.

Just as a for-instance, their medical articles are top-notch... my wife is a physician and will often read them. Their environmental articles are also often very interesting. It's not like the whole issue is full of Batman trivia!

Of course, I also like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics - but those I approach more from a comic book angle. At least Popular Mechanics has practical car and home project advice.

I'd go with the Charles Atlas method instead

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only 90 days from being a weakling to stopping bullies from kicking sand in your face. Isn't that what most nerds here really seek?

Bonk

[usefulidiot127]

I've still yet to figure out how I can get things like "Bam, Pow, Biff, Boom" to pop out in the air when I hit people. I think that would require more training than anything else.

Why spend all that time training

[DeltaStorm]

when you can just get hit in the head.

How many years for the morals?

[Scotteh]

10 to 12 years for the physical training, but Batman was more than physical ability. He was in a position to determine right and wrong. That takes a lot longer to learn and not everyone is capable of such a task.

Re:How many years for the morals?

[CauseWithoutARebel]

A large portion of the Batman storyline revolves around the question of whether or not that's really true.

One of the more poignant observations made in the comics was by Commissioner Gordon when he pointed out that there were always regular criminals in Gotham before Batman arrived, but there weren't any supervillians until after Batman made room for them.

Re:How many years for the morals?

[Shotgun]

Haven't you heard. Might makes right. So training for the skills is the same as training for the morals.

Re:How many years for the morals?

[CopaceticOpus]

Isn't that because they keep all the super-villians locked up, and then release one at a time randomly for Batman to fight? That's how it seems to work. The real trouble in Gotham is that doctor at the psych ward who keeps saying things like, "Yeah, I think the Joker is rehabilitated now." Batman should just fight that guy.

Re:How many years for the morals?

[CauseWithoutARebel]

Well, if you're going to remove yourself from the context of the storytelling, obviously there aren't going to be any supervillians like the Joker...

But within the context of the story, the point was this: Batman attempted to impose order by brutalizing the criminal element until it was too beaten and scared to stand against him. When that happened, only a few well-financed, high-powered, or outright-insane villians could continue to fight him, and with organized crime no longer in control of the underworld in Gotham, they had an arena in which to do it.

By taking street crime and organized crime out of the picture, Batman removed a barrier that prevented the supervillians from moving in to take Gotham, because the "common" criminals had just as much a reason to oppose the supervillians, in most case, as Batman does. No matter how deadly Joker is, he can't exist in a world where both the corrupt police AND organized crime have a reason to oppose him because they'll hunt him down and destroy him, but if he's only opposed by Batman, he's a one-man army facing a one-man army.

A common theme in Batman his how Wayne is tortured by the fact that he may have caused a lot more suffering in Gotham by donning his mantle than if he had simply internalized his own suffering and let it him alive.

The question becomes: Did Batman help Gotham by taking up his crusade, or did he just unleash the pain he was suffering on the entire population?

Re:How many years for the morals?

[Notquitecajun]

That's how we get the character Harley Quinn - she was the Joker's psychiatrist, and HE drove HER crazy.

Obligatory Neal Stephenson:

[Mongoose Disciple]

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Re:Where do we sign up?

[bsDaemon]

Well, given the size and scope of Bruce Wayne's awesome shit, I'd say quite well.

That, or its being a self-loathing billionaire industrialist that pays out.

Frankly, its probably not even in the scope of most slashdotters to end up being ATHF's Meatwad... after all, Meatwad makes the money, see; Meatwad gets the honeys, G...

and we don't :(

10,000 hours

[OzPeter]

I remember a stat that I saw a long time ago (I can't remember who to attribute it to). But basically it said that with 10,000 hours of training you can go from zero to a world class practitioner in *any* field you choose. That could me artist, scientist, astronaut etc.

But I doubt that many people have the finances or drive to keep up such a regime until you achieve your goal. And thats what separates the world class people from the rest of us.

Of course some people do have a natural ability that also gives them a benefit. So I doubt a really short person could ever be competitive in a world class basketball - unless there was a league for really short people.

Re:10,000 hours

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That's about six hours a day on most days for five years. With world class teaching and appropriate practice facilities, that sounds pretty consistent with what I've found in everything from playing a musical instrument to martial arts. Obviously there are going to be some prerequisites: someone is going to have to be fairly smart to become a world class chess player, or fairly tall to become a world class basketball player. But you can get seriously good at most things if you have the resources and you're willing to devote the time to it.

The thing I always regret with my hobbies is that I never appreciated the difference a really good teacher and training facilities can make when I was young enough to take advantage of them. By the time I found a teacher who could answer my deeper questions in most cases, I had already spent several years studying with mediocre teachers and without access to the best facilities, or in one case well over a decade just messing around and learning by experimentation without any guidance. These things do work up to a point — after all, someone had to work each difficult thing out first — but for most of my hobbies, I could probably have achieved in 1–2 years what in reality took me 5+ with a lesser teacher and limited facilites, or a decade of experimentation on my own.

Re:10,000 hours

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I think you have hit on a very important point there, perhaps unintentionally. You wrote:

When you are starting to learn something, does it really matter if you are working with the best of the best, or just with someone who knows the basics and can get you started without major mistakes?

It has been my experience that the difference between the "master" teachers and the "journeymen" is precisely that the masters will teach you the right thing, while the journeymen will teach you something that superficially looks, sounds or appears similar, but gets the effect in the wrong way (in the sense that you will need a different approach to improve further).

This is not to say that journeymen cannot be useful teachers. They have greater experience than the student, and perhaps can pass on the wisdom that multiple teachers of their own have shared with them. Usually this will help the student much more than harm them, and a student can learn a lot from such a teacher, particularly if they have access to multiple teachers so they can spot the inconsistencies that might betray a misunderstanding on the part of any one teacher.

However, the master has moved beyond this, combining the guidance of his teachers with his own experience of both practising and teaching the subject, and thus developing his own personal insights. Where the journeyman mostly repeats advice based on the understanding of others, the master understands the subject deeply himself and can therefore create advice on demand in each specific situation.

This makes a significant difference in at least two circumstances. One is where the journeyman teacher has never themselves progressed beyond a certain level of understanding, and they are teaching a way of doing something that can only get their students to the same level, where the master's approach would achieve the same effect at the same level of development but also allow for further growth. Thus the student picks up a bad habit, which must be unlearned and replaced with the better version before they can make further progress.

The other big difference is in a field where people must adapt. For example, if I were coaching a short, stocky, strong Batman, I would teach him very different fighting techniques to those I would teach to a tall, fast, agile Batman, to take advantage of his attributes. A journeyman teacher who is short, stocky and strong and has received advice from teachers that play to those strengths might not have good advice available to pass on to the tall, fast, agile student. The master, in contrast, has developed experience beyond their own learning and practice of the skill, studying alternative perspectives and forming a more rounded view of the subject, and so can customise their advice based on the specific needs of each student. Again, much of the advice during the first years of study would probably overlap, but the master will identify the differences immediately and again prevent the need for the student to go back and make adjustments later.

This is just IME, and YMMV. That, after all, is the point. Whether it is worth paying the greater costs of going to a master teacher from the start (not just in terms of money, but also travel time if there is no-one that good who lives near you, etc.) is debatable, because of course much of the subtlety of their understanding really is wasted on a beginner at first. However, other things being equal and money being no object since we're talking about Batman, there are definitely advantages to avoiding the journeyman teacher and learning from the master.

(Incidentally, I personally find the study of how different people learn, the stages of development a student goes through as they learn a new skill, and how best a teacher can help them, to be a fascinating area. There is a lot of interesting research about it, which you might like to explore if you're interested and haven't seen it already.)

Oh he'd stay on top of his game

[bigattichouse]

Staying on top of his game is all part of his psychosis. If you hadn't noticed, he's a bit of a whackjob himself.

I prefer some 'Real' expert opinions

[burtosis]

And am awaiting the panel at Comic-Con.

Batman? Phooey

[Henry V .009]

Batman is a wanker. Now, how many years would it take to become an awesome superhero, like Rorschach?

• Physically — Not that much work involved, but you should be bad-ass in a bar fight
• Gadgets — Buy a case of pantihose, paint some black splotches on it and you're there
• Mentally — Spend at least two hours a day meditating on the fact that most human beings are whores and scum

its pop science

[circletimessquare]

pop science is important. it is a gateway to serious science for many youngsters and average joes

you are dismayed it does not feature serious science

ok, so go read something else

why the hate for a magazine of pop science?

it serves a valuable function. are you angry that some obscure technical journal is not popular? so why are you angry that a piece of pop science is doing what a piece of pop science must do?

if it is serious science, it is relegated to obscurity, as a rule. because it needs to be digested for the masses, where anything popular takes place

why don't you understand this?

Re:its pop science

[CRCulver]

Scientific American as it was had a unique role, presenting things in an approachable fashion but still being quite rigorous. It's shift towards a wider demographic means that there is no longer a magazine at that level. In terms of popular science magazines, there's already Discovery and Popular Science, so it's not as if without the new SA there would be no science gateways for young people.

It's more than physical ability and big money...

[jvp]

Yeah, the character has an almost super-human physique. And yes, he's got a big pile 'o cash that helps him afford the toys and tools he uses during his "night job". But there's more to it.

Wayne can out-think any of his opponents. His schtick is that he's 5-10 steps ahead of anyone. If he gets into a fight, he's already out-thought the opponent and knows exactly how the fight's going to end.

That's harder to teach. You could work someone for years so that they're at the peak of physical ability, and then dump a cubic f'load of cash on top of them. But they'd still be missing that keen tactical mind that Wayne has.

Finishing the quote

[hansamurai]

Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

I don't care how good you are...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

...more than a couple of attackers, and you're in trouble. Facing ten bad guys, short of some super-exo-skeleton that boosts your strength and armours your body against instantaneous impact and sustained pressure and torsion, you're going down hard, quickly. And no, they don't always helpfully attack one or two at a time: watch half a dozen cops taking down a violent drunk some time.

And if you're facing multiple bad guys with no possibility of escape, the only credible strategy is to try to put at least all-but-one of them down so hard they no longer present a threat. That means at least knocked out or injured seriously enough that they can't fight, not the cutesy pain compliance stuff. If they are weak and clueless when it comes to fight, you are fit and highly skilled when it comes to fighting, you can find some sort of weapon, you are lucky with the environment, and there aren't too many of them, you might just do this for long enough to create an opportunity to escape. Maybe, if you're really lucky.

But it's a fun read, I'll give it that. :-)

Re:I don't care how good you are...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

10 attackers is quite a few, and is very difficult, but not at all impossible if you're well trained and well prepared.

If you honestly believe everything you wrote in that post, then I can't help but think that you've trained some sort of martial art or self-defence class that teaches basic tactics for dealing with multiple opponents, but never really tried it in a free-for-all, full-contact, anything-goes experiment. I promise you, it's an experiment you'll only ever need to do once, because the result is absolutely guaranteed.

Re:I trained in Kung Fu for 6 years

[dino2gnt]

When you find yourself in a fair fight, it's time to reevaluate your tactics.

You wouldn't be batman ...

[oneiros27]

For those of us already in our 30s, we'd be over the hill in 10-12 years.

It's much more likely that we'd be end up more like Captain Jackson, Zetaman, Captain Prospect or some other "real life superhero"

I can see it now.....

[mr_nazgul]

The Batman workout video collection...

How much will you pay for this?

900$?

NO!

500$?

NO!

For a limited time, just two easy payments of one parent!

Batman has more then strength and speed

[jmoo]

I think what I liked most about Batman Begins is that it gave a reasonable explanation as to why Bruce Wayne would dress up like a bat. As much as Batman is a skilled fighter, he is also good at using psychological warfare on his opponents. Consider that during the fight at the docks, he had been playing enough mind games on the crooks that they were off balanced when he attacked them in a large group.

Now granted in real life most people would piss their pants laughing at a guy dressed up like a giant bat (also a viable attack strategy) but the idea is that batman is such a terrifying character that you are thrown off and are easier to take down.

Fuck that.

[GungaDan]

Hang out in the YMCA locker room and you can be Robin in under 5 minutes.

Become a super villain instead!

[Techguy666]

That just takes a spray of acid to the face or a dunk in a chemical vat. No training time whatsoever.

On another note, I get peeved by everyone ignoring Batman's "World's Greatest Detective" moniker and generally accepted reputation as one of DC Universe's smartest humans. Everyone focuses on Batman's physical skills where, in "reality", having keen observational skills and an intellect allowing superior strategems probably alleviates a lot of the need for ultimate physical skills.

"The Cost of Being Batman" (Forbes)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.forbes.com/digitalentertainment/2005/06/20/batman-movies-superheroes-cx_de_0620batman.html

http://xrl.us/batman

Being Batman
David M. Ewalt, 06.20.05, 7:28 PM ET

Dark clouds have gathered over Gotham. Crime is rampant, despair is
widespread and no one is safe. Who will rescue the metropolis from
itself, fight the forces of evil and save the good people of the city?

Why don't you do it?

Plenty of us would love to fight for truth and justice--if only we had
magic powers or mutant genes. We all love superheroes. Last weekend,
Batman Begins was the No. 1 film in the U.S., pulling in $71.1 million
over its first five days. The Batman movie franchise is also one of
the most lucrative of all time, with five movies (not counting Batman
Begins) grossing nearly $1 billion.

OK, so he also has a couple billion dollars. Batman's alter ego, Bruce
Wayne, is an old-money heir and the owner of Wayne Enterprises, a
massive international-technology conglomerate. In our Forbes Fictional
Fifteen, we estimated his net worth at $6.3 billion. If he were a real
guy, he'd be the 28th richest person in America, right behind News
Corp.'s (nyse: NWS - news - people ) Rupert Murdoch.

Wayne uses his riches and corporate connections to equip himself with
the latest and greatest in military hardware, and uses those tools to
help him fight villains like the Joker, the Riddler, and Ra's Al Ghul.

But you don't have to be a billionaire to become a caped crusader.
Using commercially available training, technology and domestic help,
the average guy could conceivably equip himself to become a real-world
superhero, provided he's got at least a couple million to spare.

What would it cost to become a real-world Dark Knight? Click here.

The Training
Cost: $30,000

You'd better be ready to defend yourself if you plan to take on all
the thugs and super-villains that call Gotham home.

In the new movie, young Bruce Wayne goes to Tibet on the mother of all
study-abroad trips and ends up learning the martial arts from a group
of vigilante ninjas called the League of Shadows. But similar training
is available to those not lucky enough to get plucked out of obscurity
by Liam Neeson.

A good place to start would be an internship at the birthplace of kung
fu, the Shaolin Temple in Henan, China. One month of training at the
prestigious Tagou school costs about $740, including a private room
and training with a personal coach. It'll take a while to get good
enough to stop the Joker's worst thugs, though, so count on spending
at least three years and about 30 grand for the trip.

The Suit
Cost: $1,585

They say the suit makes the man, and Batman's no exception. Without
his outfit, it'd just be Bruce Wayne running around out there, and
there's nothing particularly scary about a billionaire playboy in his
underpants.

Batman's suit is a modified piece of infantry armor built by the
applied sciences division of Wayne Enterprises. It's waterproof,
bulletproof, knife-proof and temperature-regulating. Paired with an
impact-resistant, graphite-composite cowl and spiked ninja-style
gauntlets, it allows Batman to protect himself against everything from
swords to machine guns. Wayne Enterprises also supplies Batman with
his cape, a specially designed nylon-derivative fabric that stiffens
when hit with an electric charge, allowing Batman to use it as a
glider. All this doesn't come cheap. In the new movie, Wayne's told
that the armor alone costs $300,000.

Real-world superhero wanna-bes will have to go with a much more
prosaic solution. We recommend a lightweight ProMAX OTV bulletproof
jacket, which will cover your ar

Glad I don't read slashdot

[iwein]

Looking at Scientific American articles from even fifty years ago, let alone a century, shows how sadly dumbed down the magazine has become. It used to target a readership of average citizens who were keen on the nitty-gritty of scientific developments. Now it all flash and no substance, little different from Popular Science. The lesson American media teaches us: nothing good is every ultimately profitable as is.

Looking at /. from even 5 years ago, let alone 10, shows you how lame it has become. It used to be about news for nerds and stuff that matters, now it is just about wannabe nerds whining about Popular Science. The lesson: making useful comments ultimately ever informative as if.

Re:Where do we sign up?

[nomadic]

My high school girlfriend was a runner-up and spirit award winner for Miss Teen VA when we were 16

Alright, that does not add to the conversation. You're just using this opportunity to gloat.

RAIB?!

[morgan_greywolf]

Would that be a RAIB?

Redundant Array of Interchangeable Batmen?

or more like a High Available Batcluster?

Re:RAIB?!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Killing Grendel, then taking out the Joker ... I don't think the words exist to convey exactly how badass a Beowulf cluster of Batmans (Batmen?) would be.

Re:People we can get but the real question is...

[montyzooooma]

http://www.toysrus.com/

Re:Where do we sign up?

[ottothecow]

It would add to the conversation if he included pictures

Re:Where do we sign up?

[bsDaemon]

I've made many a greasy anime nerd scoff in disbelief before, so perhaps, for public health concerns, as well as the general welfare, its best that I don't.

There's no more good writers

[tjstork]

It used to target a readership of average citizens who were keen on the nitty-gritty of scientific developments

It's bad writing.

SciAM got political and that turned a lot of people off, the same way NYT or WashPost did. They tried to dumb things down while still pretending to be smart and all it did it was anger their core readership and they bailed.

Science has exploded beyond the ability of writers to manage... It used to be that 50 years ago, you could probably have a smattering of what's new in physics and a few other fields, but right now, what's new in physics is a highly specialized thing and it takes way too much to understand what's even old versus what's new. The baseline education of some high school teaches a mathematics based on a level of calculus that's 100 years old at best, physics that's basically newtonian mechanics and chemistry is just doing the old "let's make break up water trick" when right now scientists are looking at individual atoms.

All of this points to a colossal failure in writing. We have a body of technical knowledge that is so disorganized that it takes way too long for humans to really communicate it to each other in order to share the knowledge. Roger Penrose made a heck of a go at it in his book about how everything works, but even he falls into the horrible trap of using bad names for different mathematical constructs. At least biologists got it right when put a taxonomy on species ... but in math we have Fourier Transforms, Newton's Method, and it's just a disorganized mess, and on top of that horrible language, we stack everything we know about the basic laws of the universe.

What the world needs is a bank of good writers that also know math and physics to go in there and get rid of biographically named crap, and organize things in a more direct and intuitive fashion. For the love of god, you can't let a scientist in the field do it, because they are just terrible at naming and organizing.

Writers, step up, and take command!

Re:Losing != death

[Tatisimo]

Never leave home without shark repellent! I always wondered if he kept a bunch of belts on the car and changed them according to terrain. Would he carry bear, shark, and tiger repellent on the same day? Maybe on a trip to the zoo.

Brains as well as physical training

[hellfire]

What about the expert skills in chemistry? Forensics? Psychology? Research? His business skills? Batman is also a consumate detective, so given his expert skill in these areas how long would it take to get those levels of ability?

You would think a Scientific magazine might also be interested in the mental aspect?

If I only had a brain...

[kannibal_klown]

What about the mental component? While the movie Batman Begins didn't do too much with it, Batman's greatest asset is his mind.

He's a genius and one of the greatest minds in the DC universe. He uses it be one of the greatest detectives and occasional research, and use strategies/tactics to take down even the greatest forces (even Superman).

It isn't his physic and toys that let him stand with the greatest heroes and face the most dangerous villains, but his greatest asset: his mind.

Without his mind he's just some generic tough guy.

I'm already a superhero!

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

I was bitten by a radio active sloth and now I can do the laying around of TEN men!

Re:Street fighting

[objekt]

Just because you can't beat multiple opponents doesn't mean others can't.

My grandfather was a golden gloves boxer turned weight lifter. 5'10" 225-240 lbs when he competed. Could dead lift 500 lbs with one hand. Actually came from the same area as you. :) He was a natural athlete all his life and a veteran of many street fights. He could take on 5 guys, and did on more than one occasion. Would confront gangs of punks well into his 60s.

Took 7 strong men to drag him to the old folks home. Alzheimer's + elite athletes are a dangerous combination.

Re:I trained in Kung Fu for 6 years

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the best lessons I learned in martial arts is there are two kinds of fights, those you fight dirty and those you lose.

That's So Starfire

[tepples]

Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven.

You mean Raven from That's So Starfire?

Re:Where do we sign up?

[Omestes]

goth chicks... And the original copy of her birth certificate... with out that, she's dead, right?

Making her a better goth?

On a more serious note, does any one care? I'm very happy your in a (slightly) happy relationship, but it doesn't matter, a lot of other people are as well. If you can't be happy without telling others, then you probably aren't happy.

Re:Where do we sign up?

[nomadic]

"I wish I were your derivative so that I could lay tangent to your curves" that fail.

But that's my best line!

Re:i've been reading sciam for a long time

[Omestes]

By rigorous he means that they weren't afraid of having articles published by actual scientists, discussing their own field. They had rather technical stories on genetics, quantum theory, and cosmology, where the authors were actually writing about their discoveries, and doing so in such a manner as to not talk down to their readers.

Think of it as more than for laymen, but less than reading Nature, it was a good bridge for people who are not completely ignorant (used not as a value judgment but as a quantifier of knowledge) to know more about various fields. I think that is what the parent means by "rigorous", not that the other magazines lie, or have bad reporting, but lack the depth of SciAm.

Yes, it is a pop science magazine, but it always aimed towards a more informed, or sophisticated, audience.

Xerxes and his ten thousand "immortals"

[wisebabo]

By the way, this is the thinking behind the ten thousand "immortals" of Xerxes army. His hand picked crack troops were always kept at this number with replacements making up the dead/injured.

You can see one fictionalized representation of them in the movie "The 300". They were the warriors who went up against the greeks wearing the shiny silver masks. As befitting their awesome reputation, they were the first ones to draw greek blood (although they still got slaughtered).

Multiple opponents

[sjbe]

The trick behind multiple attackers is moving around enough so that they eventually line up and come at you one or two at a time.

Yeah I had my martial arts instructors tell me that too. Problem is that realistically you'll never be on favorable terrain and you aren't good enough to put your opponents down quickly or avoid entanglement. The human body can take a lot of abuse and odd are you'll get tied up with one opponent long enough for the others to get to you.

You *might* escape but that's the best you can hope for. Pretty much you have to hope the exit is close and you can get somewhere safe quickly. I'm not saying you shouldn't defend yourself but recognize that the odds are heavily against you.

Disclosure: I've been a martial arts student for about 20 years. I'm not any sort of exceptional talent but I do have enough experience (including real world) to understand what is possible. Multiple opponent situations are VERY difficult even if you are better armed and much better trained than those you are facing.