Seeds Of Doubt

In the comic pictured above, Flash's sidekick, Kid Flash, runs so quickly that he travels millions of years into the past and saves mankind by stopping a catastrophe that would have altered history and prevented humans from evolving; meanwhile, The Flash runs into the future and saves humanity from itself.

There's something fishy about this story.

Until very recently, I used to accept comic-book superheroes as fact- how could so many comic fans be wrong?- but this Bad Science causes me to suspect that comic books aren't true. I mean, how could Kid Flash travel millions of years into the past when everyone knows that the world is only 6,000 years old? I think the writers might have made up the prehistoric element of this comic book story.

It makes me wonder if the futuristic element isn't bullshit as well. The Flash might be able to run fast enough to intercept 10,000 falling missiles, but he isn't strong enough stop them from landing. For that you'd need Superman. The men who wrote this story are trying to make us believe impossible, ridiculous things about the past and the future.

Writers spreading falsehoods? That's a disturbing thought. It makes me wonder if there really is such a person as The Flash at all. There are a nigh-infinite amount of comic books, toys, TV shows, posters, graphic novels and other ephemera depicting various aspects and incarnations of The Flash, but there has never been any conclusive documentation of the Flash's actual existence or his super-powers. I just figured he ran so fast that he was invisible, but maybe I was wrong.

What if there is no Superman either? Talk about scary thoughts.

Maybe superheroes are sorta like Santa Claus and his elves; they don't really exist but it makes us feel better to pretend that they do.

Perhaps Superman doesn't really exist and his images and associated ideals of Truth, Justice and The American Way are really just symbolic guidelines to aid us in our own decision making. A 'positive role-model', if you will.

This next cover (below) is more realistic. This is how the last week has felt for me. Obviously, the "radiation" shown below is a metaphor for natural tea and Firefly DVDs, but the writers of this story responsibly used high doses of radiation as a "stand-in" for the aforementioned vices...I mean, 'tea' makes you lazy and Sci-Fi makes you weird, so it's better to keep kids away from them.

There is also an element of Real Science involved here: if you pump enough radiation through living things, they will eventually stop moving. There is a famous experiment known as "Schrodinger's Microwave" that proves this.

The New Job has been a treadmill, but I'm keeping up, in fact, I just learned that my promotion goes into effect in ten days- exactly one month after my start date! I also like being directly involved in developing the workflow. As a career-long office temp, I'm accustomed to encountering workflow systems that appear to be collaboratively designed by Dr. Doom, Rube Goldberg and Dante. Our system will be designed by a blogger who believes in Superman and thinks that the Artificial Intelligence from the video game CIV IV would be a better leader than most humans.

Our system is gonna ROCK.