Peter Watts’ Vampire Lecture
Posted on December 17, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 10 Comments
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.
That was hilarious!!
I could imagine myself as an audience member at the conference where this case was presented.
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.
Holy Crap! That’s funny stuff, especially those little notes in the bottom right corner: “Pizerfarm, flexible ethics for a complex world.”
Watched the PowerPoint. Wow!
Homo sapiens whedonum
Heh.
Wow. I wish I had that much time on my hands.
That’s a great presentation. Full of cool real-science knowledge and good snarky humor.
MWT, it’s also a useful promotional item for his book, so it’s not just a matter of having free time.
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.”
So, is that presentation factual, or just supposed to be humorous?