Radion

So I guess I have to add "Learn to Fire a Gun" to my list of Batman-skills.


PS Is it just me or is it twisted that this week's Smallville dealt with this theme?

Figure Eight

Remember, according to Dr. Marston, she is only bound until she wants to break free.

Figure Eight
This knot sucks. I haven't figured out anything to do with it. I must have to work on my detective skills soon. I hear that the figure eight is the basis of many other knots but I don't really see any use for it by itself. I guess it could stop a rope from going through a hole or something.


In an case, this is how you tie a figure eight
1) Make a loop.
2) Bring the working end around the standing end.
3) Feed the working end through the loop.
4) Pull to tighten.

Reef Knot

I think "DEATH" must be the safety word they are using.

On to knots.
You and your sidekick are chasing a sexy villain across the roof tops. The cat-burglar is able to dash to the edge and gracefully jumps 20 stories to the distant ground. You boys are stuck and the vileness is taunting you with her stolen goods and gorgeous, criminal body. Sucks to be you, Batman. UNLESS you remember today's knot! The reef knot is used to tie two ends of line together. This is how it goes.

REEF KNOT
1) Pass the working end once around the other line.
2) Bring the ends up with the working end underthe other line.
3) Pass the working end over the other line.
4) Tighten by pulling both ropes on both sides simultaneously.

You now have a reef knot. If you tied this one with me, you can maybe see why it's often called a square knot. You can now use it to go down the side of a Gotham skyscraper. One note of warning: This knot is secure when the knot is pressed against something (like the side of a building). If, say, Catwoman had gotten to a distant building and Batman needed a longer rope to swing across on, he would not use this knot. He would use a different bend. We'll learn many more in the days to come.

I Digress, Cut Me Some Slack

You may have noticed that there was a Wonder Woman cover above yesterday's post. In the picture WW is bound to a buoy with a huge torpedo, rocketing toward her.

In order to encourage us while we learn some knots I thought it would be fun to have pictures of tied-up damsels-in-distress, you know to remind us why we are learning knots in such painful detail. Since finding the right kind of pictures for this blog wasn't working so well, I started searching for tied up superheroes, like drawn version of Batman and Robin captured and placed in some ingenious but evil trap.


As I looked, I started to notice a trend - Wonder Woman! She was the damsel-in-distress. She was tied up at everywhere I looked. And I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous! The hero who was designed to as an tool for empowering women, is constantly shown helplessly bound and absurdly sexualized." This from the creator of WW, a guy who said: "Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power... The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." And I thought, "What a dick! He talked about empowering women but really just had bondage fantasies that he couldn't express."

Boy was I wrong!

Dr. Marston
I did some digging into WW's past in order to understand this paradox. Everything that you need to know about Wonder Woman can be found in a study of her creator, Dr. William Moulton Marston. He's often called alot of things: a feminist theorist, inventor of the lie-detector, a comic book author who created the character Wonder Woman. But you have to understand a few things: he was a psychologist but to call him a feminist is a little misleading since he pre-dates modern feminist thought. He was instrumental in creating Wonder Woman but much credit should go to his two wives, Olive Byrne but especially Elizabeth Marston. He didn't invent the lie-detector(which is a misnomer, by the way). He invented the systolic blood-pressure test which is one component of a polygraph. According to a review of a book written by Marston in his FBI record, he seems to have gone out of his way to convince people that he created the lie-detector and that his method was infallible.


A Woman's World
That being said, he actually seemed to trust his test to a fault. After he and Olive took the lie-detector on the road, he became convinced that it proved women were more honest, more reliable and could work better than men. He was quoted as saying, "Women have more emotional power than men, they have greater endurance and more resistance to disease they live longer, and they can endure pain far better." So what was his conclusion? The problem with the world is that it is ruled by men! If women were in charge the world world would become perfect. In this new world, "loving submission" would replace war and passion would replace violence.

Suprema
Wonder Woman was the embodiment of this belief. She was designed as propaganda to convince the world. How to convince girls? Give them "... a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." How to convince the boys? "Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves!"


So what does this have to do with bondage on comic book covers? In Marston's view, women already seemed to hold the secret of "loving submission" and needed to seduce men into accepting it. Once women did that, men would realize that they preferred such a world over the current, violent one. Marston minimized violence in Wonder Woman books. Instead of focusing on violent enforcement thrashing criminals into line, Wonder Woman books showed binding by loving submission. There was definitely sexual context. He envisioned women ruling by feminine charm. It's no coincidence that the Amazon's famous rule "that they must never surrender to a man for any reason" is Aphrodite's Rule. Marston said, "The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound ... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society. ... Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element."

And that's the story of why Wonder Woman spends so much time tied-up by her rogue gallery. And to help herald in the new era, let's learn some knots.




If you want to read more check out

• Adventures of a Comic Book Girl whose posted school essay got me thinking
• AntiPolygraph.org who discuss and have copies of Marston's FBI files
• The Wonder Woman Pages who print Olive's interview with Marston from Family Circle
  
• League of Substitute Superheroes who have a great essay arguing why Marston was not a feminist
• DC Message Boards: WILLIAM MOULTON MARSTON especially the posts by jameslm which finally made me get my head around the idea of "loving submission". Expect some of the normal bickering that accompanies reading forums.
  

What Are Knots Good For?

Why don't we start with a knot that everybody knows? And I know what you're thinking: "I don't know any knots! I'm not a sailor, batboy." But trust me, you know this one. It's called a thumb knot. It's the basis of a lot of other knots. For example, it's the first part of tying you shoes.


THUMB KNOT
1) Begin by making a crossing term (Begin with a loop).
2) By going under the loop, pull the working end through the loop (the working end is the end you are working with while the standing end is the end attached to something or just not being used).
3) Cinch it (tighten it).
4) Voila! A thumb knot.

You can make this more interesting by making the knot slipped. Slip knots are knots that can be untied in a hurry. The slipped thumb knot is tied exactly like the thumb knot except it uses a bight.


SLIPPED THUMB KNOT
1) Make a crossed loop.
2) Pull a bight through the loop. A bight is a "loop" formed by folding the rope back on itself.
3) Cinch it.

Obviously, the loop that's formed in the slip knot is not very solid. If you want to make are really simple loop out of the thumb knot, try:


THUMB KNOT LOOP
1) Make a bight out of the loop.
2) Make a regular thumb knot using the bend as the working end and the two parallel pieces of rope as the rope.

One last thing you can do with a thumb knot: you can make a very simple noose. A noose is any sliding loop.

THUMB KNOT NOOSE
1) Make a very loose thumb knot with a short working end.
2) Feed the line (the standing part, not the working end) through the hole left by the thumb knot.
3) Cinch the thumb knot around the line. You can tighten it so much because the thumb knot really sucks and so it won't catch unless you are using string, thread or fishing line or something.

Ya I know. Those are really weak knots but look at all the terms we've learned:

Crossing term - make a loop
Working end - the end of the rope being used to tie the knot
Standing end - the part of the rope fixed or not being used
Cinch - to tighten
Slip - easily undone
Bight - formed by folding the standing end back on itself
Noose - a sliding loop

Becoming Batman

I had planned to introduce our first knot today but thought instead maybe I would reintroduce the Building Batman blog.

The question is this: To what extent can an everyday person develop the skills obtained by the dark detective, Batman? That is the underlying motif of the Batman, isn't it? Given enough determination any person, not inheriantly an hero or a superpowered knight, can conquer the greatest monsters in the dark scary world we live in.

With the release of the second Nolan film, I noticed a lot of talk on forums about the kind of workout that might be required by Batman (not to mention the kind of workout routine used by Christian Bale in preparing for the film) and more general discussions (online and in print) about the possibility of an actual person achieving the kind of skills held by Bruce Wayne.

Last October, I began this blog and started learning skills. Though it's self-evident that I will never be as good as Bruce Wayne at anything, I will introduce myself to a wide variety of activities. Each of these activities will undoubtably profit me in the future and many will be just plain fun to learn. My goal is to become a better, more competent person (rather than say become a valiant vigilante with a valid vendette to vanquish villainy [take that V]).

So far I have begun training my left hand to do everyday activities. Although, I may never become truly ambidextrous, I am far more comfortable writing, drinking, using keys and really just getting by without my strong hand. I still practice this quite often.

I also learned to throw a boomerang. Where developing ambidextrity is a frustrating exercise in perserverance, throwing a boomerang came surprisingly easily. They are a fun hobby and I expect I will enjoy it forever. I'd recommend them as a great (and easy) way to have fun.

Next I removed substances in my diet which are addictive and potentially harmful to my body. After a month of abstaining from caffeine, alcohol and nicitine, I have now loosened my fast. The important thing for me was to demonstrate to myself that I was not so thuroughly addicted that withdrawl symptoms would hamper me. Furthermore, I found that coffee(in moderation) can have many positive results as can red wine.

I have started a small exercise routine to develope my upper body strength. When I began doing push-ups, I did 100 every day. A month later, I have quadroupled that to 400 push-ups daily.

I have memorized a small set of knots which continues to grow. I'll post my drafts and loose instructions starting tomorrow.

I've also begun learning to pick-locks. This one is slow going and it will most likely be a while until I can tell you much about that. All the while I have been dropping Batman news and other odds-and-ends as I find them interesting.

So that's the idea. Along the right hand column you can see a proposed list of skills which I will get to. If anyone has ideas I have not included or suggestions or can offer help of any sort, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me or leave a comment.

I hope that you will enjoy reading this blog as I enjoy making it.

Batman: Black and White

I read about a fan-film called Batman: Black and White today on a really great Batman blog, BAT-BLOG. Then I took the time to watch it.

This is a good fan-film, especially for how long it is. These things aren't usually over an hour long and that's impressive. It takes itself pretty seriously but doesn't come off as ridiculous for doing so - it's pretty easy to look stupid for treating your project too serious in any fan-film, let alone one based on a comic book. Shooting in black and white was an inspired choice since it probably hid much of the unavoidable visual problems that go along with having no budget.

The only problem I had with the film was the extremely weak characters. Every single time, each and every character took the easy solution to his conflict. No strong characters. And by the way, I don't mean the acting. For a fan-film, the acting was bang-up fantastic.

Batman was passive (even worse in Bruce form), Catwoman a victim, Tim was straightup helpless. Let's just talk about Batman. I recently read Batman Unauthorized and in the essay by Lou Anders there is what could be called a check list for properly representing Batman:

1. Batman's force of will must be staggering. "The Batman of the comics, as he is portrayed today, is a "normal" human being who can enter a room full of super-powered beings and command their attention and send a chill down every spine there -- despite having no powers of his own -- by his mere presence and force of personality."
2. Batman always has something to prove.
3. Batman's refusal to kill is paramount.
4. Batman's secret identity is not his core persona.

Batman: Black and White misses all of these.

1. Nobody in the film feels Batman's presence. Not the criminal's who run from him, not Robin, not the Tallyman, not even Selina (and if that's not what's attractive about Batman for Catwoman, you've missed something).
2. Batman is portrayed as confident. He walks like Tim Burton's Batman which isn't so much of a problem for me. But it's the wrong kind of confidence. It's an old man's confidence. It says, "I've been doing this forever and I'll beat you" rather than "I'm the goddamn Batman and I WILL beat you." It felt like Batman was just going through the motions.
3. Batman always walks the line when it comes to killing. It's the one thing that separates him from those he hunts, therefore it works well as his great temptation. However, other characters were dealing with this, not Batman (which is fine) but if you're not going to have Batman tempted by it he must be thoroughly against it. In this fan film he's pretty apathetic to the deaths happening three feat away.
4. This one implies he has a personality. Superman doesn't have to have a personality! Batman does. (That was a joke - I love Superman. I just mean he's more of a Christ-figure, a morally untouchable god)
   

I probably felt this all the more because I was reading Batman: Ego and Catwoman: Selina's Big Score both by Darwyn Cooke who's characters are all so strong. He captures the staggering heroic proportions of their mettle and then contrasts that so well by refusing to give herculean form to the art of his heroes. Great stuff but I might have just digressed.

While re-reading this post for errors I realized it may seem like I really rag on this film. But that's misleading. I really liked it. If it had been bad, I wouldn't have mentioned it at all. The fact that I took the time to think about it and critique it means it had an effect on me. Well done 27th Letter Productions.

50 More

After posting earlier this morning, I read Elroy's comment on the Dec. 20th post. I still had a few minutes before my hour was up so dropped down and was able to do 50 more. That means I'll be doing 200 not 150 each day. Anyway, I hope that each of you that celebrates Christmas has merry day tomorrow.

Push Batman Push

A big set back yesterday. Having done my ten days of alternating A days (100 push-ups over spread over an hour) and B days (100 push-ups throughout the day) and then taken two days rest, I tried to do as many as I could in a single set. My big number: 55. Ouch. I've got to raise this. I have a whole set of excuses but the Batman doesn't get excuses and so neither do I. Next week I must have a significant improvement. So I'll up my number from 100 push-ups to 150 and try to do fewer sets of larger numbers. I don't think that I can jump right up to 200.

Also I have been learning knots (I've memorized my fourth one and have completed a couple more) but I don't have access to Gimp or a steady stream of internet right now so I'll hold off until after Christmas to post about them.

Batman and Ropin'

Today is day ten of the push-up regiment. That means it's the last day of Round 1. I still feel good about it although I have to admit, I'm a little bit stiff. After a two day break I'll see how many push-ups I can do consecutively. Before I started I could do about 45ish. I hope to double that on Tuesday.

I received two books that I ordered for this Building Batman project in the mail today.

Book 1: The Knot Book by Budworth and Compton. Batman knows knots. Trust me. Climbing up and down building... oh ya he knows knots. Tying up baddies for Gordon to pick up. Some fun with Catwoman. Mooring the Batboat.

Book 2: Visual Guide to Lock Picking by McCloud. That's right, not only am I learning from a friend but also on my own. It will probably take me quite some time to understand lock-picking well enough to explain anything but sooner or later we'll cover this stuff.

So here's the plan. Over the next few weeks I'll introduce you to a knot or so a day as I learn and practice them. As that happens I'll learn as much as I can about lock picking. Learning these couple of skills will be big step in becoming Batman.

Home Made Equipment

My lock picking friend came in this morning with an old lock, a homemade Torque Wrench, a make shift Slim Jim and a WR3 bump key.

Of course, I'll explain what all those things are in blog posts as I learn to use them.

Batman: Lock-pick Extraordinaire

I haven't mentioned it yet but I've been looking into lock-picking a bit. It's not quite next on the list of Batman's Skills for me to learn but it's pretty high up there. So you have something to look forward to for after Christmas now.

I was talking to a friend of mine about being interested in lock-picking and it turns out he has some experience from his days in a hardware shop. It turns out that this shop acted as a minor locksmith's and part of his job was to pick the locks that came in without keys.

Anyway, he offered to teach me how to make a pick set. If all goes according to plan not only will he teach me how to pick locks but also how to create makeshift picks and fashion more sturdy long term picks. Great coincidence that I plan to take full advantage of.

Welcome to Wayne Manor

This is the funniest thing I have seen since... I really don't know... I'm speechless. The art is amazingly fun and the stories are hilarious.

The webcomic (if I can call it that) is called Welcome to Wayne Manor and it's amazing (did I already mention that?). The guy who does it also posts his stuff on deviantART but it's nothing different than the blog site.

Please!!! You must go leave this artist a comment or two encouraging him to keep going. The blog hasn't been happening for that long but I laugh and smile so much every time something new is posted.

Who Has The Time To Fight Crime?

You know the worst thing about push-ups? The ups.

It's actually finding time to spread the sets out evenly throughout the day. It's tough to find the little bits of seconds here and there.

Push-Ups

Four days ago I started doing push-ups following the Blog Comics, Films, Kung Fu, and Whatever the Hell Else. I'm starting easy since I've never been a particularly athletic guy but I'll try to improve fast.

The routine consists of picking a number of push-ups to do (I'm doing Elroy's gentle 100). On day one you do 100 over the course of an hour. The next day, you do 100 hundred sometime throughout the whole day. Then you repeat. You do this for ten days and then rest for two days. After the two days of rest, you try to do as many as you can in one go. Then start all over again with a larger number of push-ups.

I don't know what Batman would think about two days of rest but I think in the real world there's wisdom in giving yourself a break of some sort.

Drink Up, Batman

I made a mistake yesterday.

I drank an espresso and an americano. They were decaf so it was ok, right?
Wrong!

Getting off of caffeine wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I had a couple of restless nights and a few days with minor headaches but really it wasn't so bad. Since quitting I had drank a few decafe coffees here and there when others went for coffee and I wanted a break.

If I had just checked Wikipedia first I would have known that the international standard of decaffeination is only 97%. That means that my espresso and americano gave me about 45mg worth of caffeine (calculated from this website) which is equivalent to about a can of diet coke.

This is terrible! I was up until early this morning (I read some of a book called Varieties of Religious Experience by William James which I would recommend highly as a must read to anyone who just loves lecture series from over a hundred years ago on the psychology related to religious experiences. Oh and I also reread Justice) and had to sleep in this morning all because of the equivalent of a pop?

So what do I do? Drink no coffee so that when I do finally drink it (as is bound to happen since its the most consumed drug in the world) I'm messed or need it every single day so that if I don't get a cup I have withdrawl?

It depends on the other side-effects of coffee. Are there long term problems? Long term benefits? Is there a way to be immune to caffeine? That last idea would be best but try as I might, I could not find a believable method of becoming immune (which is different than normalizing and being able to sleep again or drink more without getting jittery which is called caffeine intoxication).

It seems one major side-effect is that caffeine makes it harder for your body to retain calcium which means weak bones. But it sounds like this is not really serious if you drink milk. Despite your kidneys doing all the processing of caffeine, coffee doesn't seem to pose any health concerns for your kidneys.

Children and pregnant women might not want to drink tonnes of coffee since caffeine is a drug that primarily effects the nervous system and children's nervous systems are still developing. That being said there are no documented longer term effects due to drinking coffee while pregnant.

So what about benefits? Caffeine seems to have poorly understood but positive effects on athletes
and metabolisms. I suppose that this would appeal to a crimefighter without superpowers.

To the obvious benefit: caffeine is a stimulant. People use it to increase energy, decrease fatigue and make them more focused. Fine. But there is something else here. Studies seem to say that caffeine boosts short term memory retention.
That's amazing. Even better, not only does it improve short term memory, caffeine may also reduce memory decline in the elderly (especially women) and prevent memory loss.

Conclusions: There's enough benefits to caffeine not to stop. From this little experimental diet of mine, it seems that I can stop anytime I'd like given three or four days. But the moral of all this seems to be "All things in moderation." Governments seem to take a pretty conservative stance of saying that you shouldn't ingest over 400mg a day if you are a healthy adult (that's a venti at you local Starbucks). So here is my revised plan. I'll finish the month-of-no-caffeine but after that I won't be so strict. However, I won't drink coffee daily, making sure it isn't a habit. In this way, I'll cash in on the benefits by being able to chose when I wish to drink it instead of "needing my coffee to get through the day" while avoiding worrying about caffeine intoxication in everyday situations.

Aerodynamics of Boomerangs

I promised this a long time ago but I was too busy to write up the details and there were a couple of things that I needed to figure out how to explain better. I think I can explain how a boomerang works to absolutely anyone. That being said I may be wrong so if there is something that you don't understand in my explanation just ask.

We'll end up talking about a lot of stuff that doesn't have to do with boomerangs just so that we have all the details we need. In fact, we'll start by talking about syringes.

So you go to a doctor and they give you a needle. The fluid in the main barrel is flowing with some speed because the nurse is pushing on the end but when it gets to the needle part what happens? Because the area of the pipe has changed the fluid must move faster to get the same amount out in the same amount of time. Maybe the diagram helps a bit.

OK. Now let's talk about something seemingly completely different (and still with nothing to do with boomerangs). You're driving really fast on a highway in your Batmobile. Then you pass a semi-truck (driven by the Joker, maybe?) that is going the other way. What happens? You get sucked TOWARDS the truck not blown away from it. How come?

This has to do with Bernoulli's equation (I swear this is the only equation that we will need in order to understand boomerangs so don't get scared away, dear reader) which says that pressure plus velocity (squared) must stay constant. That means that if velocity is increased the pressure must go down and if velocity is decreased the pressure must increase to compensate and make sure that when you add them together they stay constant.

So what happened with the semi-truck? The truck and you form a short channel and just like the medicine in the syringe speeds up in the needle, as air passes between you and the truck it must speed-up too. BUT if the air speeds up that means that the pressure must go down between you and the truck (Bernoulli's equation) but the pressure on the other side of your car stays the same. That means that there is a stronger force on the other side pushing you towards the truck.

Good. Now lets talk about airplanes. Airplanes are like boomerangs, right? Forget about everything except the wing. The wing of an airplane is an aerofoil. The air that passes on the top of the wing is pushed up and has a longer path than the air below. So the air above goes faster than the air below. That means (by Bernoulli's equation) that the pressure below the wing is bigger - there is a force pushing up on the wing! This is the lift force and it's what makes airplanes fly.





Now it's time to use our imaginations. Imagine turning a wing complete sideways . Now what happens? Well for one thing there is no force counteracting gravity and it will fall but there is a force pushing it sideways. The side ways force will make the wing go forwards and sideways. It will curve but it won't quite go turn and travel in a circular path just like a boomerang.

BUT this has a bigger problem. What? Well think of a pencil that you balance on it's tip - and you laugh at me and say, "how could I balance a pencil on it's tip. The smallest bump imaginable would cause it to fall over." Right! As it tips gravity can enact more and more torque on it since as it tips the centre of gravity moves further and further away from straight over the fulcrum (like where the pencil is touching the table).

Our imaginary turning wing is even worse. If it started to tip (as it definitely will) then not only would gravity make it tip faster and faster but also soon the lift would be pointing down more and more. Our sideways wing will flip over really fast and as soon as that happens it's not going to move in a circle anymore. It will just crash downwards. Maybe the series of diagrams illustrates it.

Here's an idea. A pencil will tip because it's unstable but what if you spin the pencil really fast? Now it's like a top. As long as a top is spinning fast enough it will be stable which has to do with angular momentum. Even though gravity pulls down on the centre of mass as it starts to tip, it doesn't fall because the angular momentum which points up from the tops principle axis changes the direction of motion and causes it to have processional motion rather than falling.

So let's spin our wing. The spinning will cause the wing to be staple and it will move in a strafing path rather than tipping.

Good try but there is another problem! The wing is travelling one way at the top of the circle and the other way at the bottom! That means at the bottom the aerofoil is facing the wrong way. How do we fix this? Cut it in half and turn one arm around and glue it back together. That way the aerofoil is pointing the right way at both the top and the bottom. This is a boomerang! The wing on the top and the wing on the bottom both have a lift force pointing in the same direction causing the boomerang to turn to the left (that's why boomerangs can only be left or right handed - they have to be built differently for different hands). The two diagram shows how the aerofoil shape has the leading edge on opposite sides of each each arm of the boomerang.

The wing on top is traveling through the air faster than the bottom one because the boomerang is spinning and moving forward and the top wing moves with it while the bottom wing moves against the direction of motion. So the forward moving top wing has more sideways force than the retreating bottom wing. This unequal force is what turns the boomerang so that it goes in a circular path and not just side ways. The turning force comes from the unequal air speed of the spinning wings while the spinning is able to keep it steady.

The bend in a boomerang isn't needed at all although I've read that it makes it easier to throw. That's what I know about boomerangs.

If this was too long an explanation then you should check out

avkids
Boomerang Shop

If this was too short and you were saying to yourself, "It doesn't mean anything if it's not expressed mathematically" then the websites for you would be

Unspinning the Boomerang
Boomerangs.com

And if you still aren't satisfied check out this really in depth look at

Research Support Technologies

Batarang Found

I went out one last time to try to find the boomerang that I lost. The wind had blown all weekend and most of the leaves are off the trees now. I'd gone looking 3 or 4 times during lunch hours and on my way home from work and I was starting to feel like I would never find it again.

But I did! There it was hanging from a branch in this little tree in someones back yard. I could just see it over the fence.

It's a little beat up (I think the rain warped it a touch) but it flies just fine. Now I just have to hope that it doesn't snow tomorrow.

All One Big Batdream

My sleep the last couple of days has been fitful and littered with dreams. Now, I know that vivid dreams and restless nights are common if you've recently quit smoking cigarettes or pot but both of those have sedative properties. Caffeine is an upper and so if this isn't just a coincidence then I'm surprised. Perhaps vivid dreaming is associated with any change in chemicals that effects the way you think.

Every Day Poisons

I've mentioned that it's turning into a pretty busy time of the year which makes Bat-training that much more difficult. So in order to make the best use of my time, I tried to think of something I could try that wouldn't require practice (unlike boomerangs or ambidexterity) or really any time investment at all.

So I decided to get rid of any addictions in my life. It's pretty canonical that as Bruce Wayne, the Batman fakes drinking at parties so that he can keep up his playboy persona while being in peek physical condition.

What other drugs would Batman refuse? It depends a lot on who's writing the Batman character. Does he do drugs just to see what it's like to be the Joker? Maybe? Or does he take performance enhancing drugs? No? Then no drugs at all maybe? Not even coffee?

So here are my thoughts. Batman would never let allow himself to be addicted. The entire point of Bruce Wayne dressing up as a Bat and beating-up criminals is to feel like he has some measure of control over a world that he really feels he has no control over at all.

So this leads me to think that he would use whatever drugs necessary to make himself more effective but would never allow himself to become addicted to any of them. If he ever felt that any drug had gained power over him in any way, he would use some of that iron determination to break the addiction.

So here's what I've begun doing. I've thought about all the drugs that I take (mostly caffeine but also small amounts of nicotine and alcohol) and I stopped taking them. I stopped on the 1st of December and I will try to go for a whole month. Then at the end of that month I will binge on all the drugs that I had quit on and try to operate normally while intoxicated with these everyday drugs.

This personal experiment marks the start of gaining the toxicology knowledge that Batman must have.

Poison Ivy Ate My Batarang

I still haven't found my boomerang. I went out a couple of times over the weekend but I can't find it anywhere. I check the ground I've been looking up in the trees but I just don't see it. There are a couple of big evergreens in the area so if it's stuck up in one of those, I don't know if I'll ever get it back.

In the mean time, I've ordered two new boomerangs. I feel confident enough with how well things had been going (before a tree ate my boomerang) that I bought two intermediate level ones: the Rainier and the Adirondack Standard. I got them both from the Boomerang Man again.

Hopefully, I they arrive before it starts to snow.

Poor Batman

When my day was done, I took my boomerang to a football field to practice throwing some more. I had a rough time at first. In fact, my first couple of throws duffed right into the ground - which by the way is pretty impressive because the boomerang hits hard and bounces up but then since its really a flying gyroscope it stabilizes itself and flies really far. Those seem like especially dangerous throws since the boomerang stays so very low to the ground and its definitely definitely out of control.

Anyway, eventually things got better and I made some pretty good throws despite the wind. I was even throwing it around the goal posts so that it went past the posts, circled around them and came back to me. But as it got darker it also got gustier. One throw which started out looking pretty good the ended up being my last.

The boomerang started to climb really fast all of a sudden and the stadium lights which had been great up until then made me lose sight of its flight. Since the boomerang started climbing, it wasn't turning as sharp anymore. I had been getting a feel for the way boomerangs fly so I knew the boomerang would be WAY to my left.

I couldn't see it, but I could definitely hear it when it crashed into the tree tops. It had flown right out of the football field. I peered though the field's netting but couldn't see it any where so I climbed the fence and searched the grove of trees for a long time. I never found it.