The Government Starts “Batman” and “Robin” Defense Projects

?

?Excuse me. Let me rephrase that.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE FUCKING PENTAGON IS STARTING DEFENSE PROJECTS CALL BATMAN AND ROBIN HOLY FUCKWAFFLES.

The projects are studies in how to make soldiers more effective through… shit I don’t understand, mostly. Here’s the description from Darpa for each, helpfully edited down by io9:

Biochronicity and Temporal Mechanisms Arising in Nature (BaTMAN)
could develop an understanding of the relationship between biological
systems and the spatial-temporal universe through the application of
advanced principles from the physical sciences. […] Topic areas that
may be of interest include, but are not limited to: quantum biology and
molecular clocks; resetting and synchronization of biological clocks and
rhythms; microscale recapitulation in macroscale; evolutionary pressure
and time; physiological signal processing and clocks; timing and
cognition; and robustness of clocks in development.

Robustness of Biologically-Inspired Networks (RoBIN), seeks to apply
the critical control features of biological networks to build unique
models for adaptable networks, and create a dynamic
biologically-inspired network of scientists and other experts for crisis
response and complex decision support. Topic areas that may be of
interest include, but are not limited to: exploring collective behavior
and recruitment, counter deception, modularity in networks and biology,
models of robustness, recruitment of expertise, synthetic immune
surveillance, model and design of robust biological networks,
self-organized complexity across scales, and robust adaptive response
systems.

My brain glazes over when I start to read these things, but that doesn’t change the fact that our government is starting BaTMAN and RoBIN-named programs. While I think we’d all be more comfortable if the Pentagon would stay publisher-appropriate and named any kind of super-soldier program after Captain America, this is still significant evidence that we’re living in the nerdiest of all possible worlds… and thus, for us, the best.