Do Vampires Exist?

Different cultures from different parts of the world have their own version of vampire; Dracula in Eastern Europe, Jiang Shi in China, Pontianak in the Malay Archipelagos, and the most recent one, Al Chupacabra from South America.

Pontianak

Jiang Shi i.e zombie in China

Al Chupacabra

Blood is a taboo for all people - well, most people, there is no accounting for taste. Some people faint at the sight of blood. But we need blood to live.  Preferably naturally made in our own veins.  But we can willingly give some to others via the Red Cross.

Blood throughout history has had many mysteries associated with it.  Early people didn't understand it.  They knew if we lost it we died, and if they drank it from their vanquished foes they may gain their strength.  Perhaps this gives rise to some early foundations for vampire lore.

Blood also has some connotations with evil. Blood stains were considered evil by ancient Chinese and they despised the menstrual output of a woman. The Malays think that menstrual blood will attract evil spirits and thus the toilet is not an appropriate place to stay for long.

So who would want to consume blood at all?

Fictional vampires
The famous Count Dracula of Romania is widely considered to be the most popular vampires of all. He was a Count, a nobleman in Romania during the dark ages, and he sold his spirit to the Devil so that he could achieve immortality. But he needed constant input of blood for sustenance.


Alexander Corvinus was a Hungarian warlord from the dark ages. He had two sons, Marcus and William Corvinus, Marcus was bitten by a bat and became the first vampire, and William got bitten by a wolf, survived and became the first werewolf. It was said that the bubonic plague that wiped out one-third of the population of Europe at that time came into his place and killed everyone except Alexander himself. He was baffled by his own ability to survive the plague, not knowing that he was achieving immortality. And this immortality got passed down to both of his sons.


Historical "vampires"
Vlad the Impaler, nicknamed Vlad Dracula.


He was a Prince of Wallachia, and his favourite punishment was impalement. It was said that minor offences were also treated with impalement. There was a lady who had an affair got her breasts cut off and later skinned alive (Chinese also skinned people alive during the Qing Dynasty), and then was impaled at the centre of the square, with her skin on a table next to her pole.

Vlad's involvement in war also meant that he impaled a lot of soldiers. The mighty Ottoman army that wanted to have war with him withdrew their soldiers when they arrived at the bank of Wallachia because the soldiers were so terrified by thousands of corpses of their dead comrades on poles on the river bank.


The Blood Countess, Elizabeth Bathory was also from Hungary. After the death of her husband she involved in the torture and killing of young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims.



Nobody knew why she was acting this way, though there were later writings claiming that she bathed in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth.

We also cannot forget the vampires of modern literature.  Where would teenage vampire lovers be without Edward Cullen and Bella Swan to read about?

In a few hundred years, the mythos of vampires through lore and fiction has gone from scary story to mythical hero.  As science explained away some of the dark shadows of the universe, the need for fantastical explanations waned.  While Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyers may pen tales about lurid romance with the undead, our need to justify life have decreased.

True vampires
Non-fictional vampires aren't human and they aren't immortal. Blood is not a good source of food so it's a pity they have chosen blood as their sustenance. The primary function of blood is to transport oxygen and carbon dioxide in our body. Apart from that, it also transports toxin into our kidneys to be filtered, and transports nutrients to various part of the body. An average human have about 5 liters of blood.

And since blood is of such low quality, why would anyone make it as their primary source of food? The vampire bat for example, has to drink a lot of blood to survive.

For smaller animals, their relatively small metabolism enables them to thrive on blood. Besides, blood is an easy food source, every living being has blood.  And if we are to live on blood, we have to drink a bathtub full of blood everyday in order to survive.

Evolution does not allow human to thrive on blood alone. Enough said.  As much as we can dream of being immortal, having crystal facet skin that shimmers and extra-human powers, we are, well, just human.

Apple and its possible biggest quarter ever

Apple will be releasing its first quarter 2013 financial results in just 21 days. The company will hold its quarterly earnings conference call on January 23 at 2 p.m. PST.

Investors are likely to scrutinize the company like never before to see if CEO Tim Cook will be able to steer the company forward like Steve Jobs.  Apple has recently had a rather abrupt slide in stock price.  That said Apple’s first quarter is always its biggest quarter, since it starts before the Christmas shopping season, and this quarter promises to be no different. The past three months saw the full wide spread availability of iPhone 5 and the updated iPad 4, fifth-generation iPod Touch, seventh-generation iPod Nano, and iPad mini. Both are viewed as critical because  the iOS product family accounted for more than half of Apple’s 2012 revenue. Also included in this report will be the latest Mac sales including the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, newly-updated Mac Mini, redesigned iMac, and first-generation iPad Mini.

Apple’s guidance for quarterly earnings is at $52 billion in revenue, with earnings per share of $11.75. According to the Motley Fool, Wall Street is estimating $54.5 billion, with $13.30 in earnings per share. If Apple meets its own expectations, it will easily best its strongest quarter in history.That would compare with $46.33 billion in Apple’s Q1 2012 numbers, which included $13.06 billion in net income. Last year, it only took the release of the iPhone 4S, the iPad 2 and the iBooks 2 platform to achieve the most successful quarter in history. 

Apple had its most successful quarter ever this same time last year; one year later, most analysts expect the company to break all of its previous earnings records.

According to the consensus on the social stock-predicting platform Estimize, which is often a little high, Apple’s numbers will be $14.66 per share, with revenue predictions from the high $40 billions to outrageously high estimates in the mid $70 billion range.

The big question is: How many iPhones and iPads will Apple sell?We know from recent reports Apple has increased share as both a platform and mobile subscribers.  Source.   

Apple has had some spectacular hiccups in recent months as well.  The Apple Maps fiasco, in which the CEO had to issue a corporate apology and recommend competitors mapping solutuons as a more functional solution.  Also some of the most recent software launches have had some minor issues and the final products are delayed, or laden with bugs.  The newest iOS 6 recently had a bug discovered that impacted the touted "Do NOt Disturb" functionality.  Some cracks have been showing in the Apple armor.  Whether to address those problems or to clean house or to show investors something was happening, Tim Cook reorganized his executive team showing Scott Forstall and John Browett the door and retaining Bob Mansfield with the company.  On paper these moves seem sound and may allow Apple to right its wobbly course. The present team takes many of the leaders proven under Jobs and allows them to run their divisions.



We have just a few short weeks to wait in anticipation of what Apple's financials are and how Wall street reacts.  Historically, the stock takes a bit of a dip but after the slightly disappointing results last quarter the stock has been slowly heading downward.

It is the dawn of an exciting new age at Apple and I think this will be the first telling sign of how the new leadership team is managing.

Open Minded

'Tis the season for us to pronounce our objectivity, open-mindedness, and general all around acceptance of all ideas.  One has to love an election year. First off, I do not wish to make this a political stump for any particular candidate.  First of all, I do not wish to alienate half of my audience, even though 99% of them are bots who probably want SkyNet for President. Second, the intent is not to convince anyone who to vote for.  Seriously, who ARE all of these undecided voters who can be swayed by ads and debate speeches.  I suspect 95% of us made up our minds whom to vote for months ago and these undecided folks - well, perhaps we don't care too much for their opinion given how fickle it can seem.  At least I don't care.

I have heard, seen, and read more posts about objectivity, and open-mindedness on venues like FaceBook and Twitter than I care to think about.  OK, not entirely true, I am thinking about them to write this post.  Back to the topic - we as humans like to think we are being objective and unbiased.  As I write this I like to delude myself I will insert no political agenda into the text and be completely unbiased.  Alas, I will fail as will nearly everyone else.  We may not realize it, but we will fail.  Our brains are wired to seek affirmation of our beliefs and views and have our opinions and beliefs validated.

Take the typical FaceBook post I read this morning about the debate.  In general, regardless of which 'side' you are on, your friends supported your rant.  In most cases they even elaborated on your rant in their own spiral of self affirmation.  Sure, its great to get validation that you are right and your opinion is in the majority, we all love it.  But if you surround yourself with friends and followers who share similar viewpoints, you will rarely get a dissenting view. It is easy to fall prey to this fallacy, especially if your digital social circle reinforces your beliefs.  To a similar extent, I believe religion works this way as well, but that is a topic for another day.

Since most people want others to consider their view point as valid and cognizant of available facts many will claim their are open minded or open to alternative view points.  At some level, they may be, but sometimes you may hear something that shocks you to the core. Belief altering news is just biologically hard to swallow.  Some people will go into full blown denial, others will have a period of adjustment and go through stages akin to those of grief.  Yet others will readily acknowledge their own fallacy and accept the new information and move on. Personally, I find myself embarrassed when this happens to me, as the new information often seems obvious to me and that I should have known better.

With political debates on the news, are we truly open minded enough to have an intellectual discussion of the positions?  And can these discussions change our behavior?  I posit that we cannot.  I'd like to think of myself as open-minded, but in reality when it comes to the election my mind was made up months ago.  Personal beliefs and bias are so prevalent that nothing short of a nuclear style implosion could change my viewpoint and alter my vote - in addition that would be two nuclear implosions as the first would have to destroy my faith in my chosen candidate and the second would have to enhance my opinion of the other. In my limited circle of friends and family - all of which are well educated and represent a variety of professions, geographic regions and backgrounds are all firmly rooted for their 'side'.

The web is full of recaps about the debate and each candidate their their tax plan, energy plan, job plan etc.  I will state that no President can make policy in a vacuum.  No President can push through legislation without some support from both parties.  No President is solely responsible for any committee made legislation passed through the House and Senate. Yes, the Buck Stops Here is valid, and the POTUS is the CIC and the buck does stop with him, but we all know how Bills travel through our government and have additions, subtractions and alterations to appease special interest and the like. So I stand by my statement that no POTUS past, present or future can single handedly influence policy to the extent the candidate blame or claim.

Back to open minded bias.  The dictionary defines open minded as :

o·pen-mind·ed 
1. having or showing a mind receptive to new ideas or arguments.
2. unprejudiced; unbigoted; impartial.

Are we truly open to new ideas and arguments, especially those that do not support our beliefs? Do we truly carry, in this micro case about Presidential candidates, no bias, and impartial prejudices?  Without revealing a political agenda, two common prejudices for each candidate are race, religion, ethic origin, and social status.  These 4 topics do not make the POTUS but these four topics do have a significant basis in our beliefs, bias and prejudices about the candidates.  For some, they can't get passed the name Barak Obama, as it sounds too foreign.  Others can't get passed the name Mitt Romney as it sounds too elitist.  Was Obama born in the US or not? A Mormon for President?  A black man?  These thoughts, while not overtly said (OK, a brief viewing of FOXNews did view some of these last night) are on the minds of many.

If you come to the dance (so to speak) with one of these bias, and attempt to watch the debates with "open-minded" attention, can your brain overcome these prejudices- both conscious and subconscious to truly allow you to be open-minded? I think not.  For myself I cannot, or at least did not change my mind or opinion based on the debates or rhetoric.  My own personal opinion was validated by about have of my friends and followers, and contrasted by the other half.  I saw no conversions in my cyber universe among my social networks.

Twitter had over 7 million tweets during the debate.  From the ones I saw, they were skewed for or against each of the candidates.  Not too much open-mindedness there.  Some news outlets tried their best with fact checks and limited overt bias reporting, but even these are subject to personal bias.  Data in the raw is unbiased IF and only IF it was collected in an unbiased way.  Both sides of the political debate on jobs can spin the job creation and loss numbers completely in their favor, and be factual.  But not forthcoming. So even these facts have lies buried within them.

To quote a fictional character from TV, "Everybody lies", and its true we do.