Batman Training 10,000 Hours per Ability

In the comments to This War Continues a couple of us have been talking about what it takes to be an expert. I had recently read that it takes three hours per day of training to become an expert.

Those three hours per day are actually an estimate on the number of hours per day to become an expert in approximately ten years. As mentioned by M.C. Elroy, it's actually based on the 10000-Hours-Rule. The 10000-Hours-Rule is a claim made popular in the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell (make sure to watch the three videos found on the side bar) that 10,000 hours of delibriate practice are required to become an elite expert at any given thing. The idea itself comes out of the work of Anders Ericsson who did studies of what he called elite performance or expertise.

Ericsson lists three very broad ingredients that are need to produce an expert:

1)Measure - Lord Kelvin once said, “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.”

2) Deliberate Practice - Practice does not make perfect. Repeating what you already know how to do does not help make you an expert. Focused effort to do something you don't do well or can't do at all (called deliberate practice) is the key. 10,000 hours of this and you're on your way.

3) Finding Coaches and Mentors – The best coaches know skills will need improvement at the next level not just your current level and so can help tremendously to ensure deliberate practice.

Batman is currently the 14th most powerful comic character according to ComicVine's Rank Game. He is ranks first in Unarmed Combat, Escape Artist, Tracking, Gadgets and Stealth. Plus he ranks 4th in Weapon Mastery and Marksmanship. According to the 10,000-Hours-Rule, to be an expert in all those requires 70,000 hours or 21 hours per day for 10 years straight of dedicated practice.

Only One Batman

`There is only one Batman in this world,'' said Batman mayor Huseyin Kalkan.

The mayor of the south eastern Turkish town of Batman says he going to take the producers of the Batman films to court according to Dogan, The Earth Times and Hurriyet (second Hurriyet article). Why? Why because they used the town's name without permission, of course!

To add to the hilarity Kalkan is going to sue Christopher Nolan, the DIRECTOR of Dark Knight, not DC comics or Warner Bros. Studios who of course would be the ones to actually own the rights to Batman, not the director of the movie franchise. Unlike, a character or an image, the name of a local region cannot legally be registered as a brand name.

Another thing to get straight: It's not just this mayor who is at fault for being crazy about rights. A former resident of Batman who now lives in Germany tells this story:

“I named my two restaurants Batman. But six months ago, a team of employees from the production company of the movie Batman made me change the title. Telling them that Batman was the name of my hometown did not change anything.”

"The royalty of the name 'Batman' belongs to us," Huseyin says and he is willing to go to the United States to file his court case if necessary. And I thought only Frank Miller was nuts.

Something about this story rang wrong with me so I dug a touch deeper and found an old article in the Guardian entitled "What's in a name? Too much in Turkey" . A previous mayor of Batman named Abdullah Akin had planned to change some of the city's street names but the provincial governor objected to some of his choices such as Mahatma Gandhi Street, Democracy Avenue and Human Rights Boulevard. A court ruled that 14 of the proposed names couldn't be used because of their association to revolt and resistance. The rational behind this court ruling becomes clear when you know that they also added that streets in Batman must not be given Kurdish names. They want to stifle Kurdish self-determination. If you aren't aware Turkey isn't exactly famous for its human rights record or its relationship with its Kurdish citizens. And Batman is a town with a large Kurdish population. For a quick intro to Kurdish people in Turkey see the Wikipedia article.

This doesn't mean that suing Christopher Nolan isn't stupid. It's just that all the blogs and news briefs I read didn't seem to look any deeper into the situation than just, "Man, those people are stupid."

Batarang

Batman needs his Batarang. If I had to name two tools that every incarnation of Batman has, I would pick his Batbelt and his batarang (this UGO article agrees, too).


So I've started shopping for a boomerang. I couldn't find a local shop which kept them in stock but there are plenty of good places on the web to buy them. As always I know nothing about this Batman skill so where's the best place to start looking? Wikipedia. From there, I happened to find Canboom which made me realize that most countries probably have a national association so of course Australia does, America does and many more.
I recommend looking at

boomerangs.com
Boomerang Association of Australia
and
boomerangs.org

But in all honesty how good of a weapon is a boomerang? They are really light and there's very little information about them being used as a weapons (perhaps even some dispute) but it sounds like you can throw them super fast and the edges could be sharp-ish so maybe... According to this site much heavier throwing sticks would have done most of the killing while boomerangs would have been either for communiction or distraction. For a really brief history of boomerangs checkout the REDI or Boomerang Association of Australia websites.

I'd be willing to bet that a real-live Batman would use BatShuriken not Batarangs. In fact, many comics show Batman throwing sharp objects that don't return and this is definitely what the modern family of movies shows. Shuriken are considered non-lethal weapons that are used mainly for distraction purposes. They would be perfect for Batman...
But the Batarang is definitely more canonical or mainstream or classic and so we'll learn to use it first.

Holy Articticulate Articles, Batman!

Here are a couple more old articles about what it would take to build yourself into the Batman:

This first one is a good one:
Why Batman Could Exist--But Not for Long

And
So You Wanna be Batman, Huh?

The reason to read that second one is because the last paragraph brings up an easily forgotten point:

The truly impossible piece is the notion that Batman could have such a small operation. The kind of vehicles and accutraments Batman favors are temper[a]mental creatures in real life, and even prototype level fabrication efforts that are highly automated require quite a large production crew. A back office of scores to a couple of hundred people would be necessary to keep the operation in working order, and at least a dozen o[r] two would have to have such a regular and working relationship that they would have to know exactly what they were doing for whom.

Being Batman Part II

Two more sites that talk about what we're going to talk about:
Being Batman
and
The Cost of Outfitting a Real Batman
I think both of these pages are ok but they ended to soon. And just brought up the ideas. We'll do more detail.

And don't worry we'll definitely compile a Batbelt - but we'll do it as I learn skills. A good detailed list of what could be in the belt is:
The Great Batman Equipment Archive

Being Batman

I saw this old Forbes article today
Forbes: Being Batman

And the thread that led me there:
How would one become Batman?