Janet D. Stemwedel (whose nom de blog is Dr. Free-Ride) is an associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Before becoming a philosopher, she earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. Email her at dr.freeride@gmail.com.
Ben at The World's Fair asks what kind of scientist Batman is. (Of course, he does this after producing something like reliable testimony that Batman is a scientist to begin with.)
Sandra Porter makes the case that he's a geneticist, but I'm not buying it. There'd be more fruit flies in the Bat Cave. I have a different hunch.
The crime fighting isn't really Batman's raison d'etre. If the villians were really villians, they wouldn't be so darned chatty and inefficient in their "attempts" to "kill" the caped crusader. Batman would have been food for the fish in the Gotham City harbor years ago. (Don't go blaming the faulty villainy on our schools, either -- even in the post-Sputnik era with its boosting of U.S. math and science instruction, those villains did not have the stuff.)
The villians were actually Batman's assistants. Their goons who took all the Biff! Pow! Splat! punches were Batman's graduate students.
Batman's area of research: Child and Adolescent Development.
The subject of his research: Dick Grayson.
That's right -- Batman was studying Robin.
I leave it to the reader to assess the ethics of this endeavor.
Comments
Holy LOL, Freeride! I think you're onto something here!
Posted by: katherine | June 22, 2006 4:32 PM