Re: X-Ray vision

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, David Bowman wrote:

> How does Superman see anything with his X-ray vision considering that
> under normal circumstances the X-ray flux (both ambient illumination and
> emission from objects looked at) is negligible under everyday terrestrial
> conditions?  Does Superman have his own built-in X-ray source he uses to
> illuminate what he is looking at or what?  Or is 'X-ray vision' a
> metaphor for some other perceptual mechanism?  Inquiring minds want to
> know.

There's an hilarious science fiction short story by, Larry Niven I think,
MAN OF STEEL, WOMAN OF KLEENEX.  I.E. superman giving cancer to everyone
downrange when he looks through an object.  I particularly enjoyed the
part which notes that sperm cells have minds of their own, and as a boy in
Smalltown, Superman's neighbors must have been coping with random unwanted
pregnancies, and also those distracting little lines of purple Cerenkov
light in the night as super-sperm particles exceed the speed of light in
the atmosphere.

:)


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