apropos of nothing

We Are Totally Going to Score With MJ

Yeah, it’s that famous Spidey climber guy.Photo: AP


How we have longed for this day. How we have savored the thought of swinging from one skyscraper to the next, defending the good people of New York City, tongue-kissing Mary Jane. How we have turned the phrase “With great power comes great responsibility” over in our mind, reconciling ourselves with a life devoted to justice, bereft of common human connection, riven by strife, populated by ridiculous villains. How we have lovingly read and reread our copies of the tween comic series Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. And today, we are one step closer to our dream — and another, a recurring one in which we walk into a classroom wearing nothing but a form-fitting outfit we know to resemble underwear. That’s right: Scientists have come one step closer to creating a Spider-Man suit.

Here’s what we read on Wired’s Website:

Professor Nicola Pugno, an engineer and physicist at Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, has created a hierarchy of adhesive forces he claims are strong enough to suspend a person’s full body weight against a wall or on a ceiling. The adhesive is also easy to detach, according to the paper.

Nanotechnology, they go on to explain, holds the key to our achieving our greatest, ultimately selfless and heroic, and vaguely Oedipal kind of fantasy, in which we see the destruction of our Ben Parker–ish father figure, start shooting webs from our hands, and go on to make it with the ladies while suspended upside down in the rain. There’s just one catch: We “would suffer considerable muscle fatigue if we tried to stick to a wall for many hours.” Confidential to MJ: We’ve got a pair of five-pound dumbbells telling us that won’t be a problem. —Nick Catucci

Nanotech Discovery Could Lead to Spiderman Suit [Wired]

We Are Totally Going to Score With MJ