That is to say, research done thereon. Not thereby:
http://moelane.com/2009/05/10/i-wish-that-the-physicists-would-stay-out-of-vampirism-studies/
--J
* * *
I wish that the physicists would stay out of vampirism
studies.<
http://moelane.com/2009/05/10/i-wish-that-the-physicists-would-stay-out-of-vampirism-studies/>
*After all, do I try to give them advice on quantum mechanics?*
(Via Fark <
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4379796>) There are some
people<
http://io9.com/5241252/physicists-prove-that-vampires-could-not-exist?skyline=true&s=x>
trying
to be ‘helpful’ on understanding the ongoing bloodsucking menace - and, in
the time-honored tradition of scientists opining outside their field,
they’re being less useful than if they had just been quiet about the whole
thing.
If vampires are indeed living (unliving?) among us, then shouldn’t we have
seen an undead population explosion by now?
Fortunately, our best minds are on the case. Physicists Costas Efthimiou and
Sohang Gandhi’s paper “Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality” offers a full
explanation.
Efthimiou and Gandhi conduct a thought experiment: Assume that the first
vampire appeared on January 1, 1600. At that time, according to data
available at the U.S. Census website, the global population was 536,870,911.
Efthimiou and Gandhi calculate that, once the Nosferatu feeding frenzy
began, the entire human race would have been wiped out by June 1602 (thus
forever changing the course of history by preventing the invention of the
slide rule eighteen years later).
Having tracked down the paper in
question<
http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-04/efthimou.html>,
I am thoroughly unsurprised to see that the typical “assume the cow is a
sphere<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465002188?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465002188>”
thinking predominates. As I suspected, the authors fairly obviously based
their assumptions on research that was originally gathered to track zombies:
this is a common problem, as the basic
reference<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1891153315?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1891153315>
andengineering<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400049628?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1400049628>
texts
for that field of research benefits from a general consensus in the academic
community. The conclusion that said research is applicable to other aspects
of Undead Studies is not unique to Efthimiou and Gandhi.
Unfortunately, the field of ‘Undead Studies’ is a social construct, not a
physical one: it is really a cross-disciplinary field that encompasses not
only a plethora of various supernatural types, but also individual
sub-species within those types. As even a cursory look at the literature
will reveal, there is precisely zero consensus over what even
constitutes<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155634113X?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=155634113X>
a vampire<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038072345X?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=038072345X>,
let alone its feeding
habits<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1588462471?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1588462471>
, lifespan<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TGJ80S?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000TGJ80S>,
and/orreproductive
cycle<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002KQNJU?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0002KQNJU>.
I am also forced to wonder where there is a sort ofBalkanocentric
bias<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001CNRLG?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0001CNRLG>
being
displayed by Efthimiou and Gandhi; contrary to flashy researchers, there is
no reason why we should use the nosferatu over, say, the penanggalen for
basic research data. There’s not even an agreement in the community that
vampires<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671578391?ie=UTF8&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0671578391>
are
a single-prey species<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26rs%3D1000%26ref%255F%3Dsr%255Fnr%255Fn%255F11%26bbn%3D1000%26qid%3D1242007182%26rnid%3D1000%26rh%3Dn%253A%25211000%252Ci%253Astripbooks%252Cp%255F27%253AChelsea%2520Quinn%2520Yarbro%252Cn%253A25&tag=webloglicenti-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957>!
All in all, I find their base assumptions laughable.
And as for their *critics*! I grant that the mathematicians did raise
interesting points on birth rates and food supply, but to discuss this topic
without actually looking at real biological predator/prey life cycles (or,
as my engineer wife suggests, viral infection cycles) is practically
criminal. Moving from them to the *economists*… honestly, dragging in the
social sciences to answer a problem that is clearly primarily the province
of biology is inane at best and unholy meddling in God’s domain at worst.
In other words, the Smithsonian has the right idea:
*Time to consult the zoology journals.*
Indeed. At least, the cryptozoology journals.
Moe Lane
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Received on 2009-05-10 22:11:43