It sucks to be a vampire

While I'm on vacation, please help yourself to some old slices of Lemon Harangue Pie.

It sucks to be a vampire
(originally posted 10/30/2006)

I hate to be the one to say this to any vampire readers of this blog, but you don't exist. LiveScience.com reports that you are a mathematical impossibility:

University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou's work debunks pseudoscientific ideas, such as vampires and zombies, in an attempt to enhance public literacy. Not only does the public believe in such topics, but the percentages are at dangerously high level, Efthimiou told LiveScience.

Legend has it that vampires feed on human blood and once bitten a person turns into a vampire and starts feasting on the blood of others.

Efthimiou's debunking logic: On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by Feb. 1, 1600. A month later there would have been four, and so on. In just two-and-a-half years the original human population would all have become vampires with nobody left to feed on.

And here I always thought that math wouldn't have any practical application in life.

Of course, this could all be part of a conspiracy to get us to let our guard down. After all, one of the most popular mathematicians in the world is himself a vampire...