Where have all the vampires gone?

Found this on Futurismic. She makes a good point.

on vampires and stochastic processes
Posted by Laura on March 26, 2009


Welcome vampire enthusiasts! See the response posted on March 31.
The movie Twilight came out on DVD came out earlier in the week. This movie about teenage vampires made a lot of money at the box office, and I have to admit that I’m a little curious to see what all the fuss is about. But I can’t get into the whole vampire thing. I have a great deal of skepticism about vampires.

Here’s my problem with vampires. I have a hard time believing that there would be just a few vampires out there and that the existence of vampires would be such a well-kept secret. After all, they reproduce rather easily (a single vampire could create thousands of offspring, whereas there are limits to human reproduction) and vampires don’t die easily. If there were vampires, they would almost certainly outnumber humans (but then vampires would run out of food).

This argument becomes even more overwhelming if you model a vampire population as a branching process or birth-death process and assume that each vampire in the population has probability Pj of producing j offspring (with j=0,1,2,… ). The vampire population would either explode or die out, depending on the expected number of offspring per vampire. But if you take into account the fact that vampires live many, many generations (they’re virtually immortal) and may create thousands of offspring, the population explodes (if you assume that each vampire creates at least one vampire, on average, before it dies). With those numbers, vampires would not be living under the radar–they would be everywhere!

I have yet to see a vampire movie that implicitly assumes that there is a reasonable model for vampire population dynamics (using a stochastic process framework or something else). And frankly, I’m pretty disappointed. Until I am offered a reasonable explanation for why there aren’t more vampires, I won’t be able to jump on the vampire bandwagon. If I had free time, maybe I would write a mathematically consistent vampire novel.

Worked to death

I worry about this sometimes. Not that I will work myself to death or anything like that, but I worry that I will die and no one will notice. I can see if your a crazy cat lady and you live alone and don't have any family and you drop dead and are only found because it was 90 degrees in your apartment and the smell of cat urine and rotting death is too much for your neighbours to stomach. But how does that happen in a crowded office? Have we become so self absorbed that we don't notice a dead collegue sitting at their desk for 5 days? Apparently so.

Cashing in on the recession

Today on the radio I heard a commercial for Webber BBQ's. The ad said that in this recession money is tight and you can save money by eating at home while enjoying gourmet food by grilling it on a Webber BBQ. A Webber BBQ starts at $500 and they range into the thousands. Does anybody really need a $500 BBQ? Especially in a recession.

Having said that I have a $500 BBQ and it is an amazing grilling machine of goodness and I highly recomend one...well after the recession anyway.

Shame shame double shame I know your girlfriend's name.

Just in case you ever wanted a list of former presidents girlfriends Annie Kevans not only compiled a list she has painted a lovely series of oil portraits of the girlfriends of U.S. Presidents.

Troubled Media Dinosaur

Newspapers have fallen on hard times of late. They are cutting back and laying off people at an alarming rate. So what do you do when your a you're a troubled media dinosaur struggling to find your way on the Web?

Well if you're the New York times you send Apartment Therapy a DMCA take-down notice demanding removal of a long list of blog posts containing images from the Times (in posts about relevant Times articles). This is such a foolish move, why would you want to discourage traffic to your site? Especially given the fact that newspapers, even the Times sales are down. Part of the reason newspapers have fallen on hard times is beacuase they have been so slow to embrace the Web as a viable tool. Shame on you Times, however I do love your Freakonomics blog.

Days of yesteryear

Ever notice how the golden era of things is never this era? Check out some cool pictures of vintage grocery stores. Look how wholesome things looked back then.

Digging a hole to China

Remember when you were a kid and you thought that if you dug a hole deep enough that you would end up in China? Well now you can find out exactly what is on the other side of the world.

Breaking up is hard to do

I hate it when a couple in your group breaks up. It bothers me in a completely selfish way. It throws the balance of the group off. It makes dinner plans much more complicated, especially if both people remain affiliated with the group. And it forces people to take sides, which sucks. I don't care if you stay together for the kids, but do it for the group. It's a basic utilitarian courtesy.

I'm sick of...

I'm sick of being sick, even though its only been two and a half days. I am sick of the cold weather. Complaining about these things are two of the most annoying things a person can complain about. Perhaps reading them on a blog wwill be less annoying then hearing me complain about them. On second thought it will probably be more annoying, especially because there is a strong possibility you will hear me complain about them as well.

I guess we know Brit isn't lip synching after all

Watch Britney Spears Privates Are Hanging Out on CollegeHumor

Sadly I will still bitch about delayed flights

CK Louis has a point. We have become greedy entilted little shits.

U2=MC Overated

U2's new album dropped today and I wonder does anyone really care? It got me thinking do I even know a true U2 fan? The answer: nope. U2 has to be one of the most overrated bands in the history of recorded music.

I'm not saying that they are horrible, just that they are overrated. Bono's caterwauling and drawn out pronunciation of every word sounds like a slightly more melodic autistic child. Edge isn't nearly talented enough to be referred to as Edge. Their music is so pretentious. Every album bring about a new cause. I am all up for forgiving third world debt just as much as the next guy, but having someone with more money than God telling me the evils of capitalism is hard to swallow. Criticizing countries even your own for not contributing more to humanitarian aid is a noble cause. Moving your tax holdings to the Netherlands to avoid higher taxes at home is financially smart, but if everyone does this there will be no money for Ireland to give to anyone, even their schools and hospitals. That is neither here nor there my point is U2 is overrated.

There music is run of the mill rock with a few songs with decent lyrics. I am a pretty big music fan but I would be hard pressed to name more than 5 U2 songs. Most of their songs are boring and kind of depressing. If you want to rock out there are a hundred bands you would listen to before U2, and if you wanted to listen to music that matters there are a hundred bands you'd listen to before U2. To sum it up, who and why do people listen to U2? I don't know.

Oh, and enough with the colored glasses already. Bono looks like a cross between Ali G and McCartney.

Back that ass up

Remember highschool dances? I do. They were lame, even if you were high. I remember a bunch of the stoners were always tyring to mosh to Nirvana, and then they banned moshing at any school dance. I am pretty sure you need more than five stoners for a mosh pit. Anyway it was banned, as was the song Me So Horney by Two Live Crew.

Now schools are banning grinding at dances. The more things change the more they stay the same. If they want to ban grinding just show them this video. WTF?