Slashdot Mirror
The Great Stanford Buffy Population Equilibrium Study
Suture writes "A PhD candidate in ecology at Stanford University has done an ecological analysis of humans and vampires in Sunnydale, the home of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
He took some initial assumptions on rates of population growth, vampire feeding, etc and plugged them into a differential equations model. What he got was an equilibrium human population of 36,346, and an vampire population of around 18, and furthermore the equilibrium is stable. His conclusion was that even though the show's designers are not ecologists, they managed to come up with ideas that actually made ecological sense.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to see a pretty cool spiral graph of human population vs vampire population."
I think I'll give mine back now...
and I thought I had too much time on my hands...
what people do in there free time. Kinda intresting but, can't they pick a more intresting topic
I got an Phd for making an essay about the fact that Star Wars could not be real... not in this galaxy nor any other!
are there enough vampires in sunnyvale to sustain the show for another season?
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
Sex - Find It
Obviously the author of this "paper" is high on all the citrus on campus.
Well, we can all make pretty charts too if we make a lot of assumptions. But a nice little analysis of some differential equations. Can we apply this to what's been going on in Smallville, Everwood, or other series? If we go back in time, and to different media, can we analyze Riverdale and what Archie and Betty and Veronica might have been up to?
that has got to be a bad photoshop, if that is real, I am scared, seriously scared, and scarred for that matter
And this guy got his PhD how? I mean come on a study of vampires and people in a town that a TV show takes place in. Hmm...
And I thought I was a bit off.
Because Buffy and Angel didn't have any children...
Now that I think about it, smart show-designers... They made the Vampires totally sterile!
Not that they didn't know the misteries of...
^_^
Spike: And I should do what with my spare time? Sit at home knitting cunning sweater sets? Ep: Out of My Mind
Just in case people think I have way too much time on my hands, I did a Google search and this was at the top of the list.
I must say the spiral curve the guy did looks a bit hallucinogenic... maybe he was on something?
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Did it factor in the govermental research at the univercity?
Sig
OK, while I can certainly go along with watching second-rate actors in bad make-up and cute actresses, throwing around a few equations that no one is likely to examine, and one confusing graph...and earning (possibly) a PhD in the process, what really got my attention was the line:
"And to be fair, I'll tell you that my first order guesses, while probably not too far off, were chosen at least partly to obtain a reasonable result on our first try."
Now THAT is my idea of effort!
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
for next year's Ignobel awards.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
...all the demons, witches, and number of times Angel has been resurrected?
How long would it take before the excessive number of corpses with holes in their necks scared everyone away?
The graph looks almost like a bad drawing of Dante's Inferno. Each twist is yet another level leading to hell.
Which, since Sunnyvale is where the hellmouth is - it sort of all works out. In a strange, sort of demented way.
(I think I'll go watch the Buffy musical again. It's got class. It's got style. And until you burn up - it sticks with you for a while.)
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
This paper isn't a thesis paper for pete's sake! It isn't a dissertation! It's OBVIOUSLY a lark. He's a fan of Buffy, and he decided to engage his brain and see what he could conclude about the Buffy-verse. It's a hoot, relax people.
-- L.
See, I was turned on.
Titties and a wang? Hell yes.
Oh well, good news is bad news..
keanmarine.com
For good Buffy information (they had this story linked a while back I believe), check out Buffista. Their links page (http://www.buffistas.org/links.php) is quite extensive... Not bad.
And, of course, you have to check out TV Tome's Buffy page, with good reviews, show guide and spoilers...
Any other good ones?
even though the show's designers are not ecologists, they managed to come up with ideas that actually made ecological sense
Maybe the writers did their research.
Successful shows usually have good writers who often do their homework.
Writers could even have first hand vampire experience!
You never know. Only a slayer can tell!
The college students perform quadrature to determine equilibrium human/vampire ecologies.
In SOVIET RUSSIA, the vampires integrate YOU!!!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I don't get the novelty of this. It's the classic "Rabbits and Foxes" problem that any mathematics or engineering student should have been exposed to in a differential equations course. Tuning the free parameters in the equations was probably "Sunnydale" specific, but otherwise, what's the big deal?
- Buffy's success at finding a mate versus others' successes (hers should be assumed to be higher, which would increase the incidence of vampire-killing traits in the population),
- the (Dubya) Bush administration's environmental policy, and whether increased pollution is more harmful to the living or undead, and
- If you introduce population genetics to "The WB Frog," will he suddenly change sex and have the potential to bear young (as do amphibians when populations are all female, i think)?
the plot thickens...
That's my purse! I don't know you! -- Bobby Hill
Mod up!!!!
This looks like a clever way to exercise one's professional tools to solve a trivial yet interesting problem. Why are all of you whiners jumping on him?
One factor that he left out was the attrition of vampires due to recovered conscience or suicide, which might be high considering their lifestyle. There must be a percentage of vampires that accidentally get caught in sunlight as well, although those dim bulbs might be the kinds that get slayed eventually anyway. Other than that the numbers look good.
I can't beleive this paper got published, are you kidding me? He fails to take into account trolls and werewolves, which would skew the numbers towards vampires, as they are natural allies. I too am scientist in the field of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and am preparing my own study, but unlike this quack I'm not throwing it out unfinished in the hopes of garnering awards and acclaim. I hesitate to think of the damage that will be done when people use these figures in their studies.
It seems the author is forgetting about Angel --- Buffy spinoffs could make m, the rate of vampire migration negative. And should the exodus of VC's from Silicon Valley count as ex-migration of humans or of vampires?
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
I mean, I didn't know here was a spirograph plugin for Photoshop. But "bad", I mean, you have to be really good to draw lines like that close together with a tablet, or even a mouse.
::clicks on link to bakla.net::
Oh wait, you're not replying to the article are you.
OMG!!!!
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
The scary bit of coincidence is that the graph looks like, well, the Hellmouth, kinda.
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
I just found out that even if Angel were still on the air, Doyle would not be coming back. On Tuesday Glenn Quinn, the actor who played Doyle, died of unrevealed causes. More on this here.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Since Gellar is saying that she wants to quit the show in the next year, it's important to see if Sunnydale survives without her.
Well, maybe Sunnydale, but not the show.
I mean, come on! That is as bad as being one of those guys that constantly goes to a website, telling himself that it's "intelligent and newsworthy", but really just wants to post a load of crap to the net so that others might find him cool.
Oh, shit, wait, I didn't mean.... damn.
INFLUENCE OF GENETIC POLYMORPHISM ON SUBJECTS ABILITY TO INTERPRET POKEY THE PENGUIN
Yes, everybody loves Pokey The Penguin!!!
I had to include these lines because of slashdot's stupid lameness filter, which let through ascii pictures of the goatse guy but won't let me paste the title of a paper.
actually, vampires can have kids with humands. Angel did it in his TV series, causing quite a plot element.
Of course, it might be that vamps require a soul to be fertile...
I'm venturing on to a gray area of on-topicness, but...
For those of you who don't know, Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also has another genre show called Firefly.
I just watched the latest episode (War Stories) tonight, and believe me when I tell you that if it hasn't aired in your timezone yet, you do not want to miss it. This one episode has got more character development, action (and I mean combat) and humor (and none of that slapstick stuff) than the entire season of Enterprise so far.
Again, if you like Buffy (and even if you don't), don't miss tonight's Firefly. This one deserves high ratings, but that can only happen if people know it's being aired. So now you know.
Did you think, at all, before you wrote that? What do you think "equilibrium" means?
Pancakes is the better part of valor.
What he got was an equilibrium human population of 36,346, and an vampire population of around 18, and furthermore the equilibrium is stable.
The Camarilla Princes are going to be really pissed when they find out they've been running at ( 1 / 10^5 ) / ( 18 / 36346 ) of their optimal capacity.
We Sabbat knew better, of course.
Cousin Ellen
mods metamodded as "Unfair"
They're ignoring the Infinite Alternate Universes theory as posited by Dr. Qrlang in New Superman #35.
Two observations ... Buffy spends a lot of time in the graveyard staking vampires as soon as they emerge from the ground, and there seems to be a mature population of vampires that have been around for a long time, so not every vampire has an equal chance of being staked.
Does this significantly affect the model?
I am glad our tax dollars that support education are being put to such good use. This is much better than working on a more efficient energy source!
He's still a Candidate.
Connor is a bit of a "miracle kid." But, hey, maybe Spike can knock Buffy up.
is that it's remarkable how (after making basic assumptions) the very ideas of a stable vampire/human equilibrium are sound, and they are consistent with the "normal" Buffy universe. Many television shows and movies are mathematically improbable in even the most basic sense (like the ecosystem in the Matrix, for example). More importantly, we can assume that this was not intentional on the writer's part, I'm sure they wouldn't even grasp the "classic problem"; they probably didn't study engineering or mathematics in school. What the author of the study doesn't state, but I will, is the implication of his exercise in intellectual masturbation taken with the previous assumption.
Why would it work out, what made these writers different than other writers? I think it's a plot driven element, and a reflection of the real causes of social attitudes. I'm willing to venture a guess that they (the writers) kept the number of vampires and incidents in the series low so that it would seem more likely people wouldn't realize that there were real vampires around in the fictional Buffy scenario. From this, we determine vampires could exist in stable equilibrium if this was the case. If the prey on the show knew about the predators in a larger sense, the equations wouldn't be so simple any longer, and the stable equilibrium would be lost. What we consider "under the radar" and thus unnoticed is a perfect niche for small, select groups of predators to operate within, in REAL life. So in conclusion, the writers are clearly not buffoons, and your neighboor IS a vampire.
QED.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Right. Because Ph.D. students never have free time. They spend all their time on serious, groundbreaking research, only. And Ph.D. students never have their own webspace. If it's on the Internet, it must be a serious, peer-reviewed, critically analyzed piece of high academic merit.
;)
And in that supposed "free time" that Ph.D. students don't have, they'd never think about writing a mock paper using some differential equations that any second-year science student would understand because it amuses them.
For Christ's sake, the guy watches Buffy (Yes, Ph.D. students at Universities do other things besides do research and contribute to "political, social, and scientific development;" sometimes they even watch television!) and ran some variables through a model, wrote up a silly paper, and published it on his web page.
It's funny. Laugh.
More importantly, we can assume that this was not intentional on the writer's part, I'm sure they wouldn't even grasp the "classic problem
I'm not sure that's fair to the writers and directors. The predator-prey/vampire-human problem is fairly fundamental to the internal realism of the show, and IMO the writers of Buffy took care to try and keep the internal realism of the show fairly high.
What I used to consider larval stage trolls, I am realizing, are really just inept geeks.
..he's right. It goes for authors of novels, writers of screenplays, and people doing shows. Hell, even those crazy Japanese people behind anime.
The most successful things are those which are backed up with research, presented in a way as to not bore the viewer with that research.
Lord of the Rings is backed up with centuries of history. Dune is backed up with science and centuries of politics. Star Trek and Babylon 5 are backed up with the odd bit of "real" science. The producers of Gundam found a psuedo-possible way of having big shiny energy swords.
Sure, it's all fantasy, but to appreciate fantasy, one must be first grounded in reality.
Or maybe I'm wrong and only losers like me debate, at four in the morning, why a Gundam's joysticks would be weighted ala force feedback.
I'd like to say that his model is wrong. Speaking from experience, vampires can masterbate and live normal lives... wait... I was talking about geeks... crap, wrong useless news site!
I'm sorry, but I just had to reply to this.
This is stupid. I can't believe that Stanford might give a PhD for this. Oh, wait a minute. That's right. It's Stanford. That means that as long as your parents can afford the obscene tuition you will get whatever degree they pay for.
By the way, I live in Palo Alto right next to Stanford. I know these people. Did you know that the most upscale shopping center in Silicon Valley is almost on the Stanford campus? I went to UCSD and I didn't furnish my dorm from Crate & Barrel, and I didn't shop for clothes at Neiman Marcus or even Wilkes Bashford. I'm not bitter. I swear! :-)
-- Jessica
The mutant geek grrl from Hell.
The model has a few problems as is. dH/dt=rH(1-H/K)-aHV and dV/dt=baHV+m-sV would be better.
In SOVIET RUSSIA, the vampires are real, and they are integrating YOU!!!
(They are truely math wizards)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
One problem, however, is that Buffy & friends typically kill 3-10 vampires per week! To me, this implies a vampire population significantly higher than just 18.
Be more afraid of dirty GNU hippies than vampires!
Dan--
:) The real problem is I'm not sure if you joking or not :)
Normally I'm a big fan, but really this seems unrealistically harsh. This entire thing couldn't have taken him more than a couple hours, and I'm sure as a sum total many many more hours are wasted by PhD students WATCHING buffy than presenting this. And probably orders of magnitude more than that are spent reading and posting to slashdot! (to say nothing of the work force
i didn't think it was possible, but apparently so.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Give me a break. The guy is flexing the intellectual muscles that he's gained during his population ecology studies. It's a little bit of fun and I'd rather he did this than many other things.
You think the internal realism of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is really high? By exactly what definition of reality? Buffy is a low budget vampire and hot chick based soap drama for godsake!
i just saw a commercial for the new season of Farscape on scifi, i thought that show was cancelled, wanst everyone all mad that it got cancelled? I've never seen it, but im wondering...Was it not cancelled? or is it cancelled after this season?
For humans natality and mortality functions depend on age (every student of mathematical demorgaphy knows that). I also doubt that the vampires prey with equal intensity on humans of different ages (maybe they prefer to prey on the young and unexperienced, etc). The author should have written a system of partial differential equations which would properly describe the age
structure of the population
It is without a doubt established that buffy is hot, how many male vampires will forsake their own kind to nail buffy??? This must be calculated into the equation.
Lest your consumate knowledge of vindictive desires wishes the sad truth... Goatse.cx redirects and now this, keep many in the /. community from following links beyond /.'s domain, and only fuels the abhorent acts from the neglected people the frequent this site.
May goodwill and peace guide your jorney to happiness.
He assumes that buffy and her gang slay 6 vamps per year. I've seen single fight-scenes with a higher score than that.
Assuming an average of 3 Vamps dusted per episode, and there are, what, about 24 episodes per season? That's 72 per year, or 4 times the total vamp population !
Mind you, you could change your assumptions for Vampire 'birth rate' to have each vamp sire a new one on average every 3 months, and the sums would probably work out ok.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
I'm sorry, but with 36,346 people... I'm afraid 18 buffies is not enough.
...Good thing I got mine on backorder...
Who the hell modded this as 'insightful'? That's frikkin funny!
Think of this as a lego story. Sure maybe its silly and pointless, but it was fun for the guy who did it. And for chrissakes he did it on he's free time FOR FUN. This isn't his dissertation, no tax dollars were harmed in the production of this paper. He just HAPPENS to be a PhD candidate, and student of ecology.
Why not fork?
It started with this comedian (Yakov Smirnov) who made jokes about the US vs. dead USSR right after the cold war. In particular the jokes would switch subject and object around the verb (which you can do by accident if you're Russian struggling with English). For example, "in South Cali, you can always find a party. In old Soviet Russia, the Party finds YOU!!!"
::coy smile::
In any case, this was picked up by Family Guy and The Simpsons recently, involving a russian language feature of one of those navigation computers in a car. I assume this is where the Slashbots picked it up. Trolls use it at the drop of a hat now, without thought.
I, on the other hand, am genuinely trying.
PS - The believe whole "insensitive clod" thing has an origin on British TV of yesteryear, and then later in crusty manpages and fortune files. It surfaces on slashdot because we're into that sort of crap. We spell demon with an æ (aelig) too!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The vampire population is VERY SMALL and the human population is not big, either. For such small numbers a stochastic description is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
The main biological implication of a stochastic model is the posibility of RANDOM EXTINCTION, which cannot be described by deterministic model. For this reason I thing that the conclusion about stability is flawed.
No cure for cancer.
I spent my time drinking some beer instead of reading a report on Buffy. I figure I'm going to loose brain cells either way, so I might as well enjoy the buzz after my beer.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
He is not getting a PhD for this, no one is considering or has ever considered getting a PhD for this. No one has even implied that this is the case.
So I guess your real problem is that Slashdot doesnt have "Fucking Moron" listed as a reason. [I do protest this, I sorely wish for a "Fucking Moron" option, as I have been forced to mod many non-trollic posts as 'troll' simply because it is the closest option availible]
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Thank you for correcting me. I'm very sorry for being so stupid. I'll go kill myself now. Will that make you happy? You couldn't say things nicely, or at least with a little humor could you?
-- Jessica
The mutant geek grrl from Hell.
Am I the only one who learned these differential equations in high school?:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Have you ever watched it?
And I mean really watched it, sat down and watched the two-hour roughly-in-order shots on FX at 7:00 EST?
It's quite possibly the best-written low-budget hot chick show ever. Every inconsistency is either explained away or simply believable, given a simple modicum of suspension_of_disbelief.
Contrast this with, oh, Star Trek or Andromeda or Farscape, or the other common "sci fi" series setups, and you'll see the "internal realism" he was talking about.
that has got to be a bad photoshop, if that is real, I am scared, seriously scared, and scarred for that matter
Sorry dude, on close inspection "that" looks real enough to me.
PS. try not to be so uptight!
I admit, I'm not the most knowledgeable on the shows and haven't watched much. I just occasionally caught brief glimpses of what appeared to be vampire based 90210 with only one hot chick.
Thank you for correcting me. I'm very sorry for being so stupid. I'll go kill myself now. Will that make you happy?
Yes.
You couldn't say things nicely, or at least with a little humor could you?
No.
Universities used to be hotbeds of politicial, social, and scientific development, thought, and research.
That stopped being true the moment College became a natural extention of ones learning and not for the professionals. Let's face it, so many people that have a degree would have been better off just entering the work force. Their degree does nothing for them, they're still low paid and they're 4 years behind practical experience.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
non-science-related graduate students are full of shit. I'm sure you could teach monkeys to write some bullshit about anything... oh wait we did.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Uh, yeah. Stanford is a private school, so rest assured, no one wasted any of your valuable tax money.
He used MATLAB (running on a Sun Solaris 2.7 workstation and commanded remotely through Telnet) to manipulate equations and run the model.
I'm mainly amazed that anyone still allows telnet access to anything, particularly on Solaris.
- Eat it.
but of course we should trust you since your name is PhysicsGenius.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
It doesn't take into account how the citizens feel. Having grown up in a town of 40,000, I can tell you that one murder was pretty big news. I can only recall hearing about murders two times during my ten or so years living there. Even assuming that I missed a few, that still wouldn't account for 18 vampires feeding once every three days (that's 2190 deaths per year--13 percent of the total murder rate for the ENTIRE UNITED STATES (~16000/yr)).
Anybody with half a brain would have moved out of that town long ago... and people ceratinly wouldn't be moving in.
In Sunnydale CA the college students perform quadrature to determine equilibrium human/vampire populations, only if the eigenvectors aren't imaginary.
In SOVIET RUSSIA, the eigenvampires are real and they successfully integrate YOU!!!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Never before has a comment been better named by subject. It certainly was a waste!
Actually, if you are looking for good buffy information, you need to go outside and get some fresh air.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
..but firefly is one of the best shows, ever.
The show has great characters, great writing, some of the best villians, great action sequences, surprise tweists and really cool effects.
But in tonight episode, that had all that AND a lesbian encounter.
in short...
Best...show...ever.
Smile, it was funny.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
them walking around doesn't bother you? you are a geek. Welcome, friend.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"...sometimes they even watch television!"
;)
yeah, but Buffy?
It's funny. Laugh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I do hope that the next research project taken on in the free time of someone with too much of it on their hands explains the social psychology behind the phenomenon that is Hulkamania. Calculating exact levels of Hulkamania as a function of steroid use, beard colour, ring attire, time since last retirement, crowd age and location, federation, current wrestling allies, manager, and orange tint of leathery outer Hulk shell would be most informative.
;)
However, I fear we may need someone from Cambridge or Harvard. The math promises to be very complex, and should not be attempted by Stanford students students unless carefully supervised.
~ m
No!, don't kill yourself, your winny shitty posts about the US's fucked Edu system are funny.
Troll away!
Bastard...you asked for it.
i seriously thought people with phds were supposed to be intelligent life forms. so why is this person watching buffy, of all things?
It takes a handful of episodes to 'get it'. It really is phenominally deeply well written. It also has self parodying fluff on top that is, at it's best, witty banter that rivals Oscar Wilde. Once you're in, you realize that these are really well written episodes. As you watch, you realize the season has a structure. As you watch seasons, you realize that the seasons have a pattern and the entire show, has a structure where things from season three play out in season six, and themes that are treated one way in season two (when they are in high school) are revisited and reexamined in season six (when she's trying to raise her little sister after her mother dies).
It does parody itself, but it's a tongue in cheek, knowing parody when it does. Buffy will acknowledge in side comments about her wardrobe. In season five and six, when things get much more 'real' and very gritty, they still have their Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (and Johnathan), who lighten things up, but wind up with a similar end.
Good writing, surprisingly good acting (even Sarah Michelle Gellar, who I thought was a ditzy figurehead of the show until Season 5's 'The Body')... it's a great show. There's a reason some people say it's the best thing on television.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
You can major in GameBoy if you know how to BS.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
He probably has an M.A. in Klingon too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I remember High School. I remember when someone died. One guy got drunk and jumped onto the highway.
One had a disease and died from that.
I think there were two others - people I didn't know. I went to a High School of about 2000 in Orlando, Fl.
If there was JUST ONE person at my high school whose neck was nearly ripped out and blood drained, it would have been a big deal - it would have seemed unreal.
I remember watching an episode of this show where the principal was eaten by a pack of werewolves, who themselves were students who were later killed.
And in the graduation episode, the mayor turned into a giant monster and destroyed the school.
Someone from the High School dies almost every episode. There is no way this is realistic . There is no way this accounts for a stable population - its B.S. Vampires aren't the only thing that kill in Sunnydale.
Of course, I must admire such a great work of BS.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
i nominate this for Ignobel
Yakov Smirnoff is a Russian-born comedian who acheived some degree of fame in America in the 1980s; his shtick consisted mostly of wry jokes about living conditions under Communist rule and awestruck observations of American life (often punctuated with his signature phrase, "What a country!"). One of his lines was "In America, you can always find a party; in Soviet Russia, Party always finds *you*." This was adapted for an episode of Family Guy in which the Griffin family purchases a new car with a computer navigation system ("car drives you", "road forks you") and an episode of The Simpsons in which the Simpsons travel to Branson, Missouri, where Smirnoff in fact still performs. After its appearance in one of these shows, it was adopted by the SomethingAwful forum goons, who have originated or helped popularize several other net.fads including the Zero Wing folderol and more recently "xobx is huge lol". Some time thereafter it appeared on Fark, and after that, Slashdot.
I don't think it would make anyone happy if you killed yourself. We are only dissing you because you have your facts wrong. This guy will not get a PhD for this, he just happens to be a candidate and to like doing calculus in his free time. Besides just because the tuition is obscenely high does not mean you don't have to work to get a degree. Look at MIT. that's $40000. Just ask any MIT graduate if they had to work to get their degree. Btw, people who know, is that $40000 total or per year? Doesn't seem to be a refernce anywhere and I'm in Finland so I can't just call and ask.
What, you've never seen a pre-op tranny before? You definitely need to get out more...
I always thought it was SunnyVale but then what would I know? Being an Aussie who often lunches at the Stanford Shopping center and who has friends in SunnyVale.... I could be mistaken.
I knew I was at a geeky college (Johns Hopkins) when the prof. proved during the first day of advanced inorganic chemistry thant dilitium crystals were chemically and energistically unstable and could not be created. Of course we didn't look into other things which might have made it feasible.
I thought "Wow, this is really funny", and then I was somewhat disapointed that the cyrstals couldn't work. Kinda like being told there was no Santa
..........FULL STOP.
It's never that simple, is it? You always have the extra unexpected/unpredictable element : Yah, even in case of vampires. Consider Blade ][; it wasn't just vampires and humans. You have the daywalker(aka blade) and you have the reapers. I guess the large number of vampires can be attributed to the larger size of the study area.
The equation between vampires and humans is interesting; but why ignore these other elements? (unless ofcourse this is a BUFFY fan analysis)
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
There must be someone out there prepared to sponsor a Chair of Imaginary Population Studies and give this guy a job.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Rabbits and foxes are not a good model since humans can and would leave the area as fast as they could. Even Willow wouldn't be enough to keep me around that bloodbath. Probably. Well...
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I can give no higher praise to any show on television than I give to Firefly.
It's original, wonderfully written and a sci-fi show. It could hardly be more perfect.
I have noticed a backlash against the show from (I suppose) star-trek piles. The usual complaint is that the characters don't talk right and use slang, that and it's a western. To them I say, continue watch your drek, uh Trek, I'll continue to love Firefly.
Firefly represents real people, not university graduated starship captains, just a small ship of working class shmoes.
It's the best show on TV and It simply works.
I have been conducting a study of pounds of fecal matter to spammer based on population of spammer's hometown.
Do I get a grant now?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
False.
Well, technically you're correct.
Private students regurarly get massive financial aid - more than public school students because of higher costs - which is either grant based or in the form of subsidized loans.
Get a grip, you speak as if they're just pissing it away on any schmuck. Nitpicking on subsidized loans is ridiculous. The taxpayer and shylock loses the percentage difference in interest, defaulting loans, and potential investment income from the taxed. As for grants, they're heavily skewed towards the poor, and they require some form of academic performance to maintain the grant. Or they are part of the payment for service in the Armed Forces. On the graduate level, there is much better rate of return from the grant.
They are in fact wasting valuable tax money with this crapola. Plus, these Unversities get tax breaks, research grants, etc.
Its a government investment in its intellectual talent. Bottom line is that we're better off investing in bright poor people to go to college, where we'll see payoff in higher salaries to tax and to fill critical knowlege positions in the future. Grants on the graduate level are quite competitive and they are not being doled out for basket weaving classes. Its surely a better use of tax dollars than bumbling NASA, or initiating an armed conflict in Iraq, or subsidizing agrocorporations.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
The truth is you have know idea how much financial aid this particular student is getting. All you've done is stated a generalization without backing evidence. Do you really know how regularly private students get massive financial aid? Or are you just making this up?
Right. Home mortgages get a tax break, too, so people who watch tv at night are wasting tax dollars. It's obvious that that this 'analysis' was not directly supported by a grant. Grants may have played a part in providing web space and computer time, but the incremental cost for 100k of web storage space and five minutes of Matlab time are pretty close to zero compared to the fixed cost of the infrastructure. Students do intellectual exercises all the time. That's what homework is all about. In fact, that's why computer accounts and Matlab are made available to the general student population in the first place... so they can use computer resources to solve more advanced homework problems. This 'analysis' was simply an instance where the student designed his own problem.
Both MIT and Stanford charge about $25000/year for tuition. Figuring in rent, food, utilities, and supplies, $40000 per year sounds about right.
<shatneresque> Get ... a ... life !!! </shatneresque>
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
in fact, it says so right AT THE TOP OF HIS WEB PAGE!!!
And now, for your amusement and stimulation,
Just affirms my (and other's) belief that NO ONE reads the articles before posting.
for ThinkGeek.com. Geek branding Irons! Get yours today. Spot a Geek, rope him and brand that sucker. Collect and trade.
[Sorry]
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
Could have put your brain to good use
on perhaps studing something more ecological or socially helpful.
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Just out of curiousity, have you realized yet that this was done in the author's spare time?
/. at work or done some other personal activity at work--does that mean your employer should fire you?
If so, do you believe that graduate students that sleep and eat should be expelled or have their financial aid rescinded for wasting their time on such trivial activities? I bet you've probably surfed
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I've been a part of this community for the past few months and this is my first time posting a message. On the subject of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I had a teacher who is a really devoted fan of this show. Anyhow, I'll quit my yelping for now. I will post more stuff in the future. Thank you to my friend Matt for telling me about this place.
und das ist alle fur jetz
I think PH.D candidates should be doing serious research. A lot of it. Some much that it is their primary purpose until its over.
And I think I shouldn't have to pay income tax. But welcome to the real world. You don't get what you want, and if this person spent even a dime of "your" tax money (an allegation for which you have provided no proof), then maybe you should just get over it. Every time I pay property tax that goes to educate the offspring of what I consider to be irresponsible pricks who further the increase of the human population, I am losing money due to other people's behavior. Do you still put your teeth under your pillow in hopes of getting a quarter?
- Eat it.
What a coincidence. Are you employed? Then what are hell you doing here reading and posting to slashdot? You should be focusing on your job, like those Ph.D candidates. (Do we have to spell it out to you, ITS NOT REAL DOCTORATE WORK!)
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
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Do you work for your employer 168 hours a week, 365 days a year? (I'll be a nice guy and let you take day February 29th off every four years, assuming you don't go crazy from sleep-deprivation or starve to death by then) Have you never used corporate resources for personal business (e.g. read Slashdot)? If you answered no to either of those questions, you are a hypocrite and have no right to bitch about graduate students doing things outside of their research.
Hal-9001
Electrical Engineering Graduate Student
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
By your logic, military personnel, whose wages are fully subsidized by taxpayers, should not be allowed to sleep or eat, and certainly should not be granted leave or R&R, because every minute of that time could be spent hunting from Osama Bin Laden or invading Iraq. That's just a small subset of government personnel, all of whom are on taxpayer's tab, and all of whom are given sleeping time and eating time and vacation time and sick leave, which is an immeasurable waste of taxpayers money.
Also, by your logic, if your company were to receive a government contract, your logic says that I, a taxplaying citizen, get to rescind all your free time because all that free time is pissing away my tax money.
This guy did this in his free time. The fact that he had some free time and a creative outlet might indirectly (or maybe even directly) inspire him to develop a cure for cancer, in which case that free time pays for itself. Depriving him of all free time and creative outlets almost certainly would result in him going insane, in which case your imagined tax dollars are wasted anyway. Give him (and grad students and researchers everywhere) a break--they deserve it.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Yes, but the Hellmouth has an effect of making people forget these things (or at least overlook them). This was explained repeatedly in the first season. Jeez, some people...
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Actually, humans and Vampires would NOT reach a stable equilibrium. Comparing them to rabbits and foxes is completely wrong. Why? Because as the population of rabbits declines, foxes have a harder time finding them and they starve (or get malnurished producing fewer young). On the other hand, humans are NOT harder to find until they're almost gone. The number "18 vampires" in Sunnydale would be a stable number (the human population would be stable). If there were 180 vampires, they would quickly collapse the human population until they were all hiding away (like rabbits). Only THEN would humans and vampires reach equilibrium. Hence it is impossible to have a "normal" human society like Sunnydale going on AND have humans and vampires reach a natural equilibrium.
Without showing you the really ugly math (after all, this is a family forum),
repeat after me all maths is fun and wonderful. Mathematically, we need a little bit of matrix algebra. We start by constructing a Jacobian matrix, ....
We could do all of that right here, but frankly I don't enjoy it. Besides which, I can just about guarantee that you are more interested in the ecology of vampire populations than in their theoretical mathematical peculiarities.
He's a very naughty boy, hes's insulted my mathematical sensibilities, so I'm not going to play with him any more, :-)#
seriously thats a fun article.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
I guess what amazes me the most is that slashdotters and folks working on a PhD are spending their time watching the telly. Other than South Park, there's nothing on the tube that I miss at all. Come on, folks! There really IS more to life than watching that box. Get a computer with a DSL connection and you'll have more entertainment than you can stand, without chemical assistance.
thank you. Just wondering as there didn't seem to be any reference. Really expensive though, disturbingly much. I was seriously considering it, I guess I'll be taking a huge loan
Even government employees (soldier, civil servants, etc.), who are directly compensated by taxpayer money, have free time--hours when they aren't working which they can spend sleeping or eating or shopping or watching TV or analyzing the population dynamics of Buffy or reading Slashdot. This graduate student is only indirectly compensated by taxpayer money, if at all--why can't he have free time and why can't he spend his free time doing whatever he wants (laws permitting)? You seem to think that by accepting governmental funding, graduate students should become academic slave labor. I find that notion offensive and hypocritical and, in protest, I will continue waste your tax money by sleeping and eating and doing whatever the hell I want (like reading and posting on Slashdot) on weekends. :-p
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Everybody knows that the "dead planet" was severely bombarded by the borg with melting meteorites during the astro date 201939102.123 because its citizens refused to comply with the Borg plan for terrorism, after inspectors found "mustard gas" in the craters of the planet. The beautiful craters and valleys of the "dead planet" which were its major tourist attraction, were badly damaged with the bombing then.
more on the "dead planet"
CyberBandalism : its a social problem.
If the future of the academic elite cannot crack a joke without the rest of society jumping all over him... I weep for the future.
Bullshit. You are almost certainly publically financed in some way. Do you have a mortgage? Then you are publically funded. Do you have a checking account? Then you are publically funded. Do you have kids? Then you are publically funded. Do you have police or fire protection at your home? Then you are publically funded. Do you have a private army to defend your land? Then you are publically funded. Do you use the federal highways? Then you are publically funded. Do you use the internet? Then you are publically funded.
YOU: Retarded, stupid, fat sexless unemployed subsidized by the public living at home supressed homosexual know nothing below average IDIOT.
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... Jesus cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth; the bug hath been
found and thy program runneth. And he that was dead came forth...
-- John 11:43-44 [version 2.0?]
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