If physics professor Costas Efthimiou thinks he's so damned clever, why isn't he working on applied fusion, as opposed to pulling this cynical nonsense to get his name in some third-rate science website's well-buried Halloween feature article? Publish or perish, indeed. (What's also odd is a dead link from his homepage to Transylvania University, and vacation pictures of the Greek islands -- an alleged hotbed of vrykolakas activity! Is he really a disinformant?)
Math relies on unproved postulates to complete its geometries, and resorts to imaginary numbers to solve its problems, while even Euclid's unreal linear thinking unravels and frays when distances inevitably curve. If some number zealot needs to go comfort himself under spreadsheets of theory so he can feel safer at night, then let him fool himself. Anyway, Efthimiou's based his formula on a zombie mechanism, not a vampiric one. Single vampire bites do not necessarily spread the blessing.
Stoker's Van Helsing, yet another self-proclaimed "Mr Know-It-All", was partly deceived the by this same misconception: "... they cannot die, but must go on multiplying the evils of the world; for all that die from the preying of the Un-Dead becomes themselves Un-Dead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water." (pp. 263-264, McNally & Florescu, eds.), which is likely where the mathmonkey drew his flawed timestables from. Plus, the idea of vampirism's been around for far more than 400 years, as paintings on ancient Assyrian pottery suggest. And by the time numerous official military and medical accounts of vampirism crashed upon the intellectual shores of the Ages of Reason & Enlightenment, it was none other than philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788) who had the illumination to conclude: "If ever there was in the world a warranted and proven history it is that of vampires."
Maybe Count Vladislaus Dracula in 2004's "Van Helsing" encapsulates it best: "Why can't they just leave us alone? We never kill more than our fill. And less than our share. Can they say the same?" Only stupid hunters shoot all the game, while the smart ones care to leave enough for next season, and vampires aren't required to kill their prey like humans, monthly or otherwise.
Leave the vampires to the vampirologists, and go say your faithless rosaries on the abacus you litanical mathematicians, because undeath defies not only math, but the limitations of life itself.
[From a long-ago blog, re-posted/re-contexted here in honour of the recently deceased Jerry Nelson, the voice of Sesame Street's Count Von Count. His character lived the folklore that vampires are possessed by a compulsion to count grains or thistles, a facet that could be used to stymie pursuing undead or delay their entry into homes. But for The Count it was not only a teaching technique but a joy that seemed to celebrate his infinite nighttime existence, a creature beyond the rational using the rational to sum up the world around him, and arguably the happiest of characters on the Street. Thanks for all the love of countless things in life & unlife, Mr Nelson.]
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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.
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