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December 17, 2006
Peter Watts' Vampire Lecture
Peter Watts, he of the Blindsight novel I gushed about earlier, has a very amusing and also terrifyingly plausible PowerPoint presentation on evolutionary and biological roots of vampirism, as detailed from the point of view of a scientific researcher whose company is aiming to resurrect (heh) vampires in the present day. If you've got about 40 minutes to kill, you might want to check it out (flash required). This iteration of vampirism, incidentally, is the one that is present in Watts' Blindsight. I found the explanation for the aversion to crosses particularly interesting.
Posted by john at December 17, 2006 01:40 PM
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Comments
Chang, who gets nothing done... | December 17, 2006 02:36 PM
Great. I'm not evem 100 pages in to Blindsight and I'm already having nightmares about Jukka Sarasti. Like I need a powerpoint presentation about him.
Jim Wright | December 17, 2006 03:49 PM
Holy Crap! That's funny stuff, especially those little notes in the bottom right corner: "Pizerfarm, flexible ethics for a complex world."
Chris Gerrib | December 17, 2006 04:11 PM
Watched the PowerPoint. Wow!
MWT | December 18, 2006 06:40 AM
Wow. I wish I had that much time on my hands.
John | December 18, 2006 08:16 AM
That's a great presentation. Full of cool real-science knowledge and good snarky humor.
John Scalzi | December 18, 2006 10:02 AM
MWT, it's also a useful promotional item for his book, so it's not just a matter of having free time.
MWT | December 18, 2006 04:50 PM
Maybe so, but I'm still very impressed with the lengths he went to getting the science right. At least for all the obscure technical parts where I actually knew something (as a biologist).
Does "Fizer" mean "funny" in any language? It occurred to me last night that FizerPharm might be "funny farm."
Dan | January 8, 2007 02:05 AM
So, is that presentation factual, or just supposed to be humorous?
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Patrick Vera | December 17, 2006 02:04 PM
That was hilarious!!
I could imagine myself as an audience member at the conference where this case was presented.