User talk:Jclerman

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Contents 1 Dendrochronology 2 Linkspam 3 Carbon 4 Pharmaceutical firms & future improvements 5 About that vandal 6 Source 7 Julian of Norwich 8 Project 9 Siesta 10 Hans Suess 11 laQuna. 12 Vandalism 13 Taragui 14 Linnaeus 15 Hag 16 Julian 17 wrong namespce 18 Isotope box 19 Narclopesy & Codeine 20 Ronald Richter 21 Semi-automated template substitution 22 Hello! 23 Kalanchoe 24 Category:Environmental isotopes 25 For your attention 26 Emilio 27 Date links 28 Ronald Richter 29 Huemul Project 30 Yet another date links proposal 31 CNEA 32 Radiocarbon dating 33 guarana, guaranine, banned and sockpuppets 34 Calibration 35 Isotope boxes 36 Guide 37 Carbon-12 38 Caña Brava 39 Carbon-12 40 License tagging for Image:Alstroem221.jpg 41 Exponential decay 42 Radiometric Dating 43 major revisions complete 44 Talk:Radiometric_dating#Straw_poll vandalism 45 License tagging for Image:C14dendro.jpg 46 Julian of Norwich link spam 47 Evita 48 Sleep deprivation 49 Dimensions 50 Caffeine 51 Userfied one of your pages 52 Ondine 53 Thanks! 54 Thanks 55 Selegiline 56 Commons image 57 Pi calculations wording 58 "Radioactive decay" article: Definition of activity 59 Evita article 60 Holocene calendar

[edit] Dendrochronology

Moved to [1] where the experts are and/or are referenced.

Please forgive me. I am sorry if I bothered you by asking the question. Dan Watts 15:45, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Linkspam

Mainly, in this case - I don't recall the name, but I assume you mean the pages this morning - that the same anon had been adding a screed of links to two sites to pages. On all the pages where I felt competent about the usefulness of the link it didn't add much to the content, and seemed to be done for the benefit of the linkee; it seemed reasonably safe to assume the others were equally so.

If you feel I was overly hasty with any, please feel free to revert them, but a lot were certainly only vaguely related at best. Shimgray | talk | 17:17, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

In the case of Adolfo Bioy Casares and a link to his Morel work the link was to a review/plot page. I've reverted and added one more because it's an important work. I'm not concerned at all with the other article links (which were massively referring to a blog).

[edit] Carbon

I just ran into your discussion with Eequor about the Carbon discussion and viral propagation. A skim of the article finds that the Vienna Pee Dee Belemnite section was introduced at this edit by a user who is still current, Maveric149 (talk • contribs). He cites the USGS as source for the isotope data: and a Google on some of the keywords finds it here, where there's further backward citation. 04:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pharmaceutical firms & future improvements

I just read your suggestions in terms of suggestive drugs pertaining to NPOV on the sleep talk page, and to comment I can only really say that is the top of the proverbial barrel. The chief problem with drugs and private industry is that upon discovering any "holy grail" effect within a given chemical (Ie. in the case of Modafinil its benefit to the sleep-deprived) while utterly disregarding any potential side-effects, some of which can be deadly - hence swathes of lawsuits when certain drugs have resulted in negative effects to the populace. The general actions of such firms is in my view, deplorable in the view of the needs they cater for, namely peoples' mental and physical health - longer and more rigorous legislation, especially in the States, is needed before any drug enters the market.

My beef is with Eli Libby , your quintessential pharmaceutical giant who's headquarters happen to be in Speke, a suburb of Liverpool, UK. They recently entered into an agreement with local authority in Lancashire, where I reside. The agreement specified that they could tour colleges and sixth forms around the area giving "talks" as part of a private enterprise "day". It just so happened my college was one of the selected venues for one of Libby's speeches - while some of the speech was sound and informative, there was also a lot of propaganda regarding Libby's status in the community, their products and so on. Personally, having known a person on Libby products and hearing of their consequences (in this instance Prozac, an SSRI, and the sufferer from anxiety regarding withdrawal) it was somewhat questionable even allowing them to make such speechs in the first place. What disgusted me however was the fact the aforementioned agreement specified allocated funds to basically subsidize these speechs, this thinly veiled marketing - taxpayer funds direct from the council via an education program.

To be quite frank, they can plug their drugs to whomever they wish with as many backhanders as they want to the likes of the NHS or FDA - thats natural for such firms - but as soon as they begin requesting public funding for their PR, thats where government ought to draw the line. Whats sad is this wasn't a one-off event, I found it was infact something that had been going on for years both in the UK and abroad and with many firms, not simply pharmaceuticals. I posted a protest letter to local politicians, only to receive jargon filled responses about "proper education for the youth" from some, and weak, unenthused ones from others. Not to espouse cynicism, but it was, and is, laughable.

But, its unwise to let views like these reach anywhere beyond talk pages as far as Wikipedia is concerned. I always try to forget misgivings when it comes to any subject. I'll attempt to investigate other drugs in future once time permits, I think - if only for the sake of NPOV - I'll use the stats on that conference report and some PubMed info for modifying the sleep and bipolar depression articles. Its good we seem to share a likeminded wariness of these products, I hope Wikipedians at large share our view. Hopefully someday these companys will learn from past mistakes, and cease producing flawed products. -- D-Katana 20:00, 04 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] About that vandal

Hi! Yes, I've seen him. He can be 'blocked' for a certain amount of time, and when he acts again in the near future, he probably will be. At the moment, I can't do that myself, since I'm not one of the admins, but I'll keep an eye on him and warn an admin if he needs to be blocked. In the future, you can also report a vandal like this on WP:AIV, a page that admins watch closely to see who needs to be blocked. However, please before doing so, warn the user first. There's more information on how to do that on Wikipedia:Vandalism. Thanks for reporting this one! Regards, --JoanneB 19:50, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Source

Unfortunately the New Straits Times doesn't publish many of its articles online, and those that do get published are archived after one week (and to read the archives, you need to pay). So I'm sorry, I can't point you to the source. I can tell you, however, that the article concerns Nestor Kirchner's wife, Cristina, and compares her to other Argentine First Ladies such as Evita and Isabela Peron. Johnleemk | Talk 15:36, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Julian of Norwich

Apologies; I had no idea there was an issue there, and if you wish to change it back I'll have no objection. I simply corrected what I assumed was a spelling error.

I'd suggest, though, that if both spellings can be considered correct then it might be preferable to use the one that seems to make sense ... and is the one that is most usually quoted. If not, then perhaps adding a [sic] note might be worthwhile. MacSpon 01:29, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Project

You're welcome to join the Wiki Project Argentina

Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 20:41, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Siesta

Yes, you're right. I also feel sleppy at that hour, especially when I'm working and in the summer. And the people from that region are seen in the rest of the country as Lazzy. There are many jokes about it. It is also the hottest area in Portugal, their fame is probably due to that. --Pedro 12:47, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hans Suess

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as Hans Suess, but we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from either web sites or printed material. Perhaps you would like to rewrite the article in your own words. For more information, take a look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Happy editing! NatusRoma 04:19, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

My reference for Hans Suess is "Brighter than a Thousand Suns" by Robert Jungk (Pelican), page110: "A year later Jomar Brun, a former technical manager of the heavy water works at Rjukan in Norway, who had fled to Sweden after the occupation by German troops in 1940, stated that he had been told by Hans Suess, theGerman atomic expert employed there, that production at Rjukan could not attain the dimensions important for war production in uch less than five years" JMcC 00:31, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I was unclear on Talk:Hans Suess. I meant that I, NatusRoma, am not an administrator, but that User:Petaholmes is, and will likely be willing to move the temp page if you ask. NatusRoma 04:49, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] laQuna.

I took care of it. :) Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 17:45, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Hello. I'd just like to remind you (or notify you, depending on whether or not you've heard this) that the message you sent to the IP on vandalism was sent to the entire school network here at Bucks County Community College. Because all computers on this network use the same router IP we can't be absolutely sure who is vandalizing Wikipedia. User:Demosthenes

[edit] Taragui

Kinda. There's basically a single Taragui, without an umlaut, who prefers to sign using one on his w:es account and to refrain from it on w:en. I believe you can safely presume a Correntinian origin for both specimens :) See you over there (I come here very, very, very seldom nowadays). Best, Taragüí @ 21:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Linnaeus

Hi Jclerman - can you confirm that the local Lutheran Archbishop had accused him of "impietyfullstop", and not just "impiety"? - MPF 19:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

"reflects the printers style of inserting most punctuation marks within the quotation marks" - it doesn't; punctuation marks should only go inside quotation marks if they are part of the quotation. The Manual of Style makes that quite clear - MPF 20:56, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! There was some reason why Wikipedia came down in favour of the UK/Australian typography, but I can't remember what. It'll probably be in the MoS talk archives if one looks back far enough - MPF 22:34, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hag

See my comment on the talk page. But that would be like linking the car model Mercury to category greek mythology because the product name derived from a greek deity. It just doesn't make sense. Semiconscious (talk · home) 08:51, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Julian

It was quite proper to delete Revelations of Divine Love since it was an empty stub. It is also perfectly proper to have a red link in the Julian of Norwich article since Revelations of Divine Love is worthy of a wiki article. It is better to have a red link than a stub or redirect back to the Julian article - a red link highlights the fact that this is a needed article. The Julian article already contains a link to one external copy of the text. So all manner of things are well.

Incidentally, if the text is uploaded it will go to wikisource not the commons. -- RHaworth 07:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, I'm not familiar with the policies and internals of Wikipedia. The user that put double brackets *1* should have noticed that there was a link to an external text. And so the 3 or 4 other red links to the same work which are in different articles *2*. What I find annoying is that many users put the brackets on almost any word *3*, without consideration to context and/or links already in the references or externals. They should start stubs on the red links they create *4*, IMHO Jclerman 09:53, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

*1* if you mean the double brackets round Revelations of Divine Love in the Julian of Norwich, this was an absolutely correct edit - there is scope for the text (in Wikisource) and a critique of the work here in Wikipedia. See, for example Tam o' Shanter to which I contributed recently.

*2* again these links are valid - Wikipedia always prefers internal links to external (a bit too much in my view but I play along to avoid edit wars)

*3* I agree but it is sometimes a reaction to an unwikified article - an editor comes along and rubs the original author's nose in it

*4* see my comment above - a red link can be better than a very stubby stub - I have sometimes avoided creating articles for this reason.

But anyway, why don't you stop making suggestions and go and start the Revelations of Divine Love article? Also, think of any other existing articles which could link to it and create links. You may be surprised how quickly other people start contributing. -- RHaworth 10:14, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wrong namespce

I have moved Guigue/sandbox to User:Guigue/sandbox. -- RHaworth 08:58, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Isotope box

That was the first template I ever made, just to see how they worked really. Someone else had started making all these little HTML tables that contained exactly the same info but were unmaintainable.

That said, I really can't understand your complaints. The link to Decay chain is perfectly relevant. Stable isotopes say "Decays to: Stable" which makes more sense than anything else I can think of. Say exactly how you think it should be improved, or better, be bold and fix it yourself. —Keenan Pepper 13:04, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Narclopesy & Codeine

I don't think that objective sleep tests are controversial. It is might understanding that they can quite accurately determine weather one is asleep or not. I also think that drugs such as Codeine can adversely affect the perception of ones napping habits as well as the ability to accurately document them. As for the patients you knew who were taking Codeine, were they part of a research study? Were they prescribed Codeine for long term treatment? User:Exit 0

I'm going to put this on the Narcolepsy discussion page, because I think it belongs there.User:Exit 0

[edit] Ronald Richter

Hello,

Thank you for your stub submission. You may wish to note that it is preferable to use a stub template from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types instead of using simply {{stub}}, if you can.

Thanks! --Malthusian (talk) 23:17, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-automated template substitution

• This page was modified to semi-automatically substitute templates using Pathoschild's template list. // Rory096 03:42, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hello!

Hello! Seeing your edits, I guess that you are Argentinean, if you are, c'mon join us at WikiProject Argentina. You may like to know that Wikipedia has a small but constantly growing Argentinean community, if you want to include yourself in our noble ranks =D add this in your user page: [[Category:Wikipedians of Argentina|Jclerman]] . Goodbye! --OneEuropeanHeart 18:34, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Great! =) --OneEuropeanHeart 04:15, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kalanchoe

Looks like I pulled the vandalism trigger too quickly, thanks for the catch. A lot of anons have taken to subtle vandalism these days, see recent history of Nile for an insidious example. In any case, I reverted my revert. Stan 19:21, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Environmental isotopes

Hi, I came across your environmental isotopes category and as it was yet empty, I replaced it with Category:Environmental isotopes (lower case i in isotopes) per MOS style guidelines. Added a brief description (modify as needed) and populated it with a few articles.
Also followed up on your e-mail note. Vsmith 04:08, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] For your attention

Hi, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversy on Radiometric dating. Since you have edited a bit on it I didn't want you to miss it. Cheers, Vsmith 03:03, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Emilio

Hi JC! I strongly recommend you to remove, or obscure, your email address that you placed at your User page. It's only because of SPAM. (robots search for text of the format "user@doman" in the internet to create e-mail databases) Usual formats are jclerman.at.gmail.com, jclerman 'at' gmail.com, and jclerman#gmail.com. Take care, and good wiking. Mariano(t/c) 14:25, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date links

You have discussed date links before. I do not know if you have seen the discussion and votes at: new bot application. Voting may have ended, but I thought that you would be interested to see what other editors are saying on the same topic. bobblewik 11:34, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

The MOS is a guideline, not policy, and that particular clause is severely disputed, which means that it's incredibly rude to run around making thousands of automated edits when you're receiving about 50% criticism for them. Furthermore, Bobblewik is not checking to see if there is any reason for doing so - he's just killing each and every one en masse. Bobblewik chooses to run around and enforce his personal viewpoint en masse while thumbing his nose at anyone who complains. Faced with little other option, I choose to revert his every unlinking en masse. Ambi 12:12, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ronald Richter

The vandalism in the history of that article does not rise to the level of needing protection at present. As WP:SEMI says, it is only for dealing with a serious vandalism problem that cannot be handled by other means i.e. reverts and blocks. I think for now that that article will be ok with those tools. Unprotecting doesn't make it any harder for registered users to edit it, and it's a m:Foundation issue that IP-only users can and will continue to be able to edit. While there is not a reigning vandal problem, it's better for things to be unprotected so that if someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia wanders by from elsewhere and has something useful to contribute they can help you out by contributing it. If the vandalism actually becomes a problem, either acutely or chronically, it can be easily reprotected by making the case at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. -Splash^talk 21:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Huemul Project

I answered your questions on my talk page. Also, I think it is time to move User:Guigue/sandbox to Huemul Project. Petri Krohn 00:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yet another date links proposal

You may wish to see the proposal at: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#linking_of_dates. Thanks. bobblewik 11:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CNEA

Marianocecowski told you that: Balseiro's work has absolutelly nothing to do here. Insisting in such edits can only be considered vandalism, please stop it. You have been reverting it 3 or more times. Remember the rule. After you register we can chat about what Balseiro told me about his research. It would be in your own discussion page, not within an article where such information is as relevant as whether he wore spectacles or as the list of your own scientific innovations. Jclerman 00:46, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Denied. I'll not openly challenge you unless you insist, in which case I'll have no mercy with you. Regards.--200.45.6.171 14:33, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Radiocarbon dating

i will continue to remove the following line of text because it adds no necessary information to the article, other than the promotion of those opposing religious groups. the links in that section contain material that compare radiocarbon dating methods of archaelogical sites and artifacts with other dating methods used in anthropology and historical research. those comparisons should not include the implications it causes for the dates written in the bible.

I do not understand the adherence to 'curves' in the context of calibration. The discussion (which you wrote) clearly states the statistical nature of the transfer function. The wording currently in the article seems too simplistic. What am I missing? Dan Watts 18:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I read your discussion. That is why I am puzzled by your adherence to the wording 'curves' when you stated:

"In practice, things are complicated by the statistical uncertainties (a) of the curve itself, which is really a band, (b) the uncertainty distribution of the sample's activity, and (c) the non-monotonic character of the calibration band."

Why is the use of 'curves' preferred? Dan Watts 19:18, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the latest modifications to Radiocarbon Dating. The calibration issue seems better-described now. Dan Watts 21:47, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] guarana, guaranine, banned and sockpuppets

Hi, Users TheCat'sMeow, لæmäļ al diη, Buster Hawthorn, and probably others, are all sockpuppets of a banned user. Any of their edits can be reverted by anyone. Be on the lookout for a new user whose first edit is a revert. For example, Starways Common above seems a bit suspicious (see Special:Contributions/Starways_Common). It's probably the same guy. --JW1805 (Talk) 03:19, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Calibration

In case you weren't watching, I opened the discussion you requested in the radiocarbon dating article.Dave 12:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Your recent edit to The Nightmare was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to recognize and repair vandalism to Wikipedia articles. If the bot reverted a legitimate edit, please accept our apologies – if you bring it to the attention of the bot's owner, we may be able to improve its behavior. Click here for frequently asked questions about the bot and this warning. // Tawkerbot2 15:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Isotope boxes

I'm not sure which parts of the box you think need explanations. Perhaps you could be more specific? In any case, this is no reason to hide the information. Ardric47 02:01, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

• I asked the box designer or similar for info on how to generate such a template for a given isotope and the meaning of each one of the boxes.
  • As far as I know, the templates are not generated: they are filled in manually. That is, whoever first put them in presumably typed everything that you see in the wikitext. The meanings of the boxes can be found by clicking the article links that appear in the table: Isotopes, (the link to the element name), and Decay chain.

I have a feeling that there are more issues, but I'm glad that we are working through this. Ardric47 02:37, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guide

I have created a guide for the Isotope template at Template talk:Isotope. Ardric47 02:56, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean by "environmental isotopes"? Ardric47 03:07, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

In order to fill in the tables for those isotopes, you would have to know what the possible parent and daughter nuclides are. They can be found from a variety of sources, but one that consolidates a lot of information is [2]. By the way, I'm quite willing to continue discussing this, but could we make the tables visible again for the benefit of readers? Ardric47 03:18, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "how to read" the boxes. Ardric47 03:30, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm the guy who made the isotope template, a long time ago when I was figuring out how templates worked. I was about to say I don't really have much experience with this stuff, but then I realized I am technically a "professional" nuclear physicist (I just got a summer job at FSU's accelerator looking at gamma ray spectra), so I guess that makes me more qualified than most. =P I'd be happy to explain anything to you, and I'm sorry if it seemed like I was ignoring you. —Keenan Pepper 04:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

You didn't ignore me. Three months ago you told me to be bold and fix the problem myself. I tried. I posted my questions in several isotope talk pages. Lacking reaction of users during a month or so, I commented out the tables including a comment about expecting clarification or they would be deleted. Again no reaction for longer than a month. Until, suddenly, without any prior consensus, or feedback, or comments, they were all reverted. Not even opinion statements preceded by the so much needed wikiquettte humbling IMHO. At least now we got to a template guide with its own discussion page.

Um, that's really not what be bold means. Did you read the page that links to? Being bold doesn't mean trying to get other people to fix it, and then removing it from many articles, without improving it at all. Being bold means actually improving it yourself, of which I see you did none.

I will post there (Template talk:Isotope) later my critiques to the isotope boxes. They might appear harsh. And they are. Since you and your colleague are qualifying as practicing physicists, I have followed the style you will have to face when you submit research manuscripts for publication in peer reviewed journals. Consider my critiques as part of your learning curve. I went through a similar process 50M3 years ago (NUMB3RS-like pun intended). Then, as Tukey and Feynman said, it's not worthwhile to do well something that's not useful.

Jclerman 13:05, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Great, now what are you going to do about it? Even though I created it, I don't own the template. It's not like I'm the author and you're the publisher who can approve or disapprove of it. We're both equal contributors (well, I'm an administrator, but that just means I'm an equal who has access to some special tools). You have exactly as much obligation to fix all those problems you pointed out as I do. —Keenan Pepper 15:44, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Carbon-12

It needs an image.--Daniel bg 16:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caña Brava

Hi Jclerman,

Regarding your request, I'm sending you the Scientific Name of this Peruvian plant: GYNERIUN SAGITTATUM and its Family name is POACEAE. I hope this might help you. If you have any further questions, let me know. Regards --Evelyn Zuñiga 22:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Carbon-12

OK, I'll try to delete it--Daniel bg 13:16, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] License tagging for Image:Alstroem221.jpg

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[edit] Exponential decay

I am not sure how to cite this. From what I can tell, mean lifetime really is replacing the notion of half-life. Sure, this is a bit of a general impression. But I doubt I can find any single source that can verify it. My impression comes from all of the textbooks I have read and all of the professors who have taught me. As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure that I have read something directly declaring, "A few older authors on this subject may refer to half-life instead of mean lifetime. Half-life is an outdated term related to the mean lifetime by [formula]." I will try to look for the source. Please help me if you have any better ideas. Teply 05:55, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

• I just looked in the introductory physics textbooks that I had around, namely Tipler & Mosca Physics for Scientists and Engineers and Tipler & Llewellyn Modern Physics. Tipler & Mosca uses the mean lifetime for damped harmonic oscillators and RC circuits. Tipler & Llewellyn introduces mean lifetime in the very first chapter without any mention of half-life whatsoever in its discussion of muon decay as an example experiment for special relativity. In both books, the section on nuclear decay mentions both mean lifetime and half-life, but the mean lifetime is introduced first with the half-life written in terms of mean lifetime. Although the Wikipedia article for damped harmonic oscillators is rather messy and does not really mention either one, the article on RC circuits strictly uses mean lifetime. I do admit, however, that I have more or less ignored biological applications. Acute toxicity, for example, is often gauged by measuring the amount of poison needed to kill half (on average) of a sample of lab rats. Unfortunately, that article is still a stub, but general systems of biological halflife (yes, the misspelling is there, and I am in the process of trying to have it moved back to biological half-life) certainly use the notion of half-life. I will try to make the distinction between the physics/engineering mean lifetime and the biology half-life tomorrow morning. Teply 06:55, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

• I just made a key discovery, the time constant article. It explains that it is the time it takes for 1-1/e=63.2% of the system's step response, and even discusses the time constant for the RC circuit and the RL circuit. This basically is the mean lifetime. This had been part of my rationale behind declaring the mean lifetime to be more common. Should we consider some kind of merger? The articles do not even mention each other as of this moment. And thank you for mentioning LD50. I was having one of those forgetful moments where I could not think of the term I wanted to use. LD50 is the dosage needed to reach the half-life of lab animals. "Ideally" - though the model rarely acts like a simple exponential decay - doubling the dosage would leave only 25% of the original animals alive, tripling it would only leave 12.5%, etc. Teply 14:13, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks so far for your help and suggestions. Here is the scan of the Tipler & Llewellyn example on muon decay. Note that this is the first chapter. And this is a table from the appendix of a somewhat more advanced particle physics textbook, Martin & Shaw Particle Physics of the Manchester Physics Series. Some of the studies as far back as the 1960 used mean lifetime to analyze pion decay.[3][4]. Understandably, muons and pions are subatomic matters. Although the half-life is certainly traditional for atomic - in particular nuclear - matters, mean lifetime is now replacing it in the most recent publications. A Google Scholar search for half-life reveals that virtually its only remaining use is in biology. But I have also found evidence that mean liftime is wiggling its way into advanced biology. Examples include the case of mean lifetime fecundity and fertility, where tables are clearly in terms of mean lifetime, and the case of fluorescence in tissues, where one paper discusses the topic not only in terms of exponential decay but also in terms of double exponential decay. Teply 06:55, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

All references quoted and linked in the preceding discussion have been studied and are commented upon in the following text. I expect it to be clear in which context each one of the different terms is used, and why. In summary, the hypothesized time and/or discipline dependent trends are not validated by the references quoted in their support.

Jclerman 18:40, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

The discussion has been grouped, by 
similarity of usage and applications,
in sections numbered 1 to 7, below.

To facilitate their scrutiny by the 
readers, each item has brief identifier 
key-codes that will allow me to locate 
the corresponding file with the full 
article or other referenced item and 
send it to interested readers. Just 
quote the first line of each item you 
would like to receive. 
    User:jclerman

1 ==========

Ch40.rtf - From Tipler's file that didn't 
transfer properly in MHT format. 
It uses half-life and decay constant or 
decay rate correctly. It deals with the
decay of atoms in a sample or volume, hence
it uses half-life correctly. Moreover, it 
is the quantity exrimentally measured in
such cases.
-
11-2c.pdf - More:Tipler. Production...sequential.
Uses mainly half-life, mean life, and 
mean lifetime correctly, indicating the 
conversion factors when it is preferrably
mathematically or more "ergonomic", to 
give the numerical value or a feeling for
the mean lifetime or average life.
-
11-3c.pdf - Energetics of alpha decay.
Uses half-life, correctly. See comments
in both previous items above.
-
12-3c.pdf - More:Tipler. Radiation...dosage.
Uses only half-life, correctly. See all 
comments above.
-
Research.mht - Explosive nucleosynthesis.
Uses half-life, correctly. See all comments
above.
-
Errata.pdf - Physical Chemistry Corrections
Replaces incorrect use of lifetime for 
corrected half-life. See all comments
above.

2 ==========

Munich2001-stretched.pdf - Application of 
the streched ...to fluorescence
Uses lifetime, correctly. It refers to, in 
imaging, visual extinction of image elements.
Half-lives wouldn't make any sense for such
an application. The experimentally observed 
quantity is, precisely, the vanishing of the 
ligth.
-
GetPDFServlet.pdf - Threshold states ...the CNO...
Uses lifetime, correctly. It refers to states,
not to the decay of a large number of atoms in 
a sample or volume. Half-life has no meaning
in such a context.
-
Resonances...States.pdf - More:Tipler Resonances
Uses lifetime and mean lives, correctly. See 
previous comment.

3 ==========

p384_1.pdf - Estimate ... meson. Blackie et al.
Uses lifetime, correctly. It refers to 
independent particles, not to atoms in a given 
volume. Half-life has no meaning in such a 
context. One can see its full life (and
measure the lifetime), e.g., in an emulsion 
plate or a particle chamber. 
-
p1014_1.pdf - Phys.Rev.123, 1014(1961) Glasser et al.
Mean Lifetime of the Neutral Pion.
Uses mean lifetime, correctly. See previous 
comments.
-
TL-muon decay.jpg - Scan by T, Muon decay fig.
Uses lifetime and mean lifetime, correctly.
See previous comments.
-
MS-particles table.jpg - Scan by T. Table
Uses mean life, correctly. See previous 
comments.

4 ==========

1471-2148-3-20.pdf - BMC Evolutionary Biology
Evolutionary experimentation .... Drosophila
Uses lifetime and mean lifetime, correctly.
Not only half-life of a fly can't be defined,
but it would as senseless as "ours". We live
for a duration called lifetime and our 
species (under specified conditions) has a
mean lifetime, but no half-life. Same for 
fecundity and fertility lifetimes. 
-
PubMed Central, Table 6 - Mean life-history 
of...Drosophila.
Uses mean lifetime fecundity and fertility.
Same comment as in previous example.

5 ==========

kuby6ech04[1].pdf - Antigens and antibodies.
Uses half-life, correctly, as pertaining to
the elimination half-life. See: J Clin Immunol. 
1986 May;6(3):256-64: Alterations in the 
half-life and clearance of IgG during therapy 
with intravenous gamma-globulin in 16 patients 
with severe primary humoral immunodeficiency. 
Schiff RI, Rudd C. Published studies of the 
metabolism of human IgG using trace amounts of 
radiolabeled IgG demonstrated that the elimination 
of native IgG followed first-order kinetics but 
that the half-life of IgG was shortest in patients 
with the highest serum concentrations of IgG. 

6 ==========

[[LD50]]

Not only it is not a half-life, but it is not a
even a "time".

7 ==========

Results from the Google Scholar search. .

a. Are not be interpreted as showing a slant towards 
biology usage of half-life. Before reaching such a 
conclusion one needs to normalize for the total 
number of articles (i.e. not only those using 
half-life) published in physics, chemistry, geology, 
hydrogeology, environmental pesticides, etc.  

b. Are not to be interpreted as showing a replacement
of other terms without constructing a time series for
each term intended. A search for half-life is not
relevant vis-a-vis a hypothesized replacement.

Note: These are only two objections. Let the reader 
find a couple more that also invalidate the google 
based arguments.

[edit] Radiometric Dating

What are the odds that the T-Rex collagen-like material found recently will be tested? Dan Watts 20:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] major revisions complete

The Half-life computation article has undergone substantial revision which has hopefully addressed everyone's concerns. If you have any further comments after looking at the article again, please list the items you do not like, make whatever comment you have and please be specific and allow time for further revision. If there is any reason I can not comply with your wishes then I will let you know the reason why. ...IMHO (Talk) 12:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Radiometric_dating#Straw_poll vandalism

Please refrain from undoing other people's edits repeatedly. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia under the three-revert rule, which states that nobody may revert an article to a previous version more than three times in 24 hours. (Note: this also means editing the page to reinsert an old edit. If the effect of your actions is to revert back, it qualifies as a revert.) Thank you. ...IMHO (Talk) 00:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

My editing serves the purpose of identifying the originator of the section. Without a proper signature it might be interpreted that the poller attempts to mislead the polled. --Jclerman 00:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Such editing belongs below the straw poll not embedded within the text. You know better. ...IMHO (Talk) 00:36, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] License tagging for Image:C14dendro.jpg

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[edit] Julian of Norwich link spam

According to the spam1 template, which I did place on User:AJokinen's Talk page, "Please do not add commercial links or links to your own private websites to Wikipedia." and it's his/her own personal website. -- JHunterJ 19:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evita

Hi Jclerman,

I was wondering what you meant by the disambiguation page for Evita being "incorrect". The disambiguation page will not be accessed and has no purpose if there is no link to it on the Evita page.

Neelix 15:07, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I meant that Evita Peron wasn't how she was known. She was known either as Eva Peron, Evita, Eva Duarte, etc. In my judgement the entry Evita Peron should not be in the disambig page if you think such a page is needed at all. --Jclerman 15:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sleep deprivation

Why did you remove my photo from this article? I'm not a medical expert, but I thought that it was somewhat representative of the issue. Alphachimp ^talk 14:58, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Could you clarify what you meant by the comment you left on my user talk page. I suspect there is some translation or language difference at play here. Alphachimp ^talk 19:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Etology? Huh? Alphachimp ^talk 19:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dimensions

Hi Jcleman - well yes, square brackets mean "the dimension of ... is" - that is what I changed here and that was the only reason I edited the articles. According to SI, the mathematical variables for time is t, for the Temperature is T and for the length is l, my reason for the next edit. But these are not the variables but the dimension symbols. I did a mistake with this edit and accepted the correction. I took a look in one of my books - they write these dimensions bold and upright. It is not a bad one (Stöcker: Taschenbuch der Physik, 5th ed., ISBN 3-8171-1720-5). Maybe (!) I did a mistake again, so I wouldn't come to the idea to change this back again - I even asked in the edit summary to correct me if I'm wrong - but I consulted a good book. Any reason to be so harsh to forbid me editing the articles to correct the wrong use of square brackets? As I don't know the rule, I decided not to edit the typography anymore until I know more, without your silly comment. Now your comment is like a bitter smack.

In en-WP you have a whole lot of this wrong use of square brackets, even in fundamental arcticles, for example here, a lot of car-related articles use brackets the wrong way, like Formula One (but I must admit - now searching for this mistakes a can rarely even find one). By the way: you also have a lot of missing spaces between numbers and unit symbols (like <number><space>°C).

A question: As far as I can see, it is not clear, if the symbols like L for length are written upright (like in the "simple example" part in Dimensional analysis which seems to be correct to me) or in italics (like in Units of measurement) - I would be happy, if you can hint me to some place where this is clarified (also because I don't have a copy of the ISO 31, where this should be clarified).

-- 217.84.175.39 19:07, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

The only two references I have around here are:

1. from Univ. of Guelph current, which refers to the SI but not to ISO:

Most physical quantities can be expressed in terms of combinations of five basic dimensions. These are mass (M), length (L), time (T), electrical current (I), and temperature, represented by the Greek letter theta (Θ). A common notation, which means "the dimensions of a quantity", is simply the quantity written inside square brackets []; thus, [area] = L².

They show them with an upright font in their dimensional formulas.

2. Handbook of Physics, edited by Condon and Odishaw, McGraw Hill, 1968. In their Appendix A1 they use the same notation for the quantities as given in Ref.1, but written in italics in their dimensional formulas.

3. Related typographical matters might be clarified in one of these which I don't have around here but migth be available at the library: Chicago Manual of Style; and LaTex manual.

--Jclerman 23:19, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caffeine

Caffeine is a current featured article candidate. If you have a second, would you mind taking a look at its FAC page and either voting your support/opposition to it being promoted to featured article status or leaving some constructive comments? Cheers! – ClockworkSoul 02:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Userfied one of your pages

As a courtesy to you, I have moved Jclerman/sandbox to User:Jclerman/Sandbox 2, as I believe you intended this to be in your userspace, and not in the article namespace. I've also requested that the cross-namespace redirect that the move left behind be speedy deleted to complete the process.

Just thought I'd let you know. SchuminWeb (Talk) 00:41, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ondine

Wondering why you reverted my edits to the Ondine article's section on "Ondine's Curse." Patients afflicted with Ondine's curse typically do not die in their sleep. Death during sleep is a common misconception about the disorder. It is even stated as much in the dedicated Ondine's curse article. Dr Chatterjee 15:42, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks!

As you probably know, caffeine has at last been promoted to featured article status. Thank you for all of the time and effort that you put into raising my beloved article to its current level of quality. Cheers! – ClockworkSoul 15:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

The CD can be purchased on Amazon. The lyrics can be found on Lyrics on Demand... although they aren't 100% true to the CD as is usually the case with Lyrics on Demand. Personally, I am a fan of their (dredg)material as they are very creative music wise and their lyrics tend to have a positive spiritual vibe to them. I'm not sure what music you are in to but I would recommend them to anyone. Typhoid Orchid 19:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Hello. 

You mentioned that you are compiling information pertaining to sleep paralysis. I may be of some help. I have experienced SP twice with the occurrences being within three years of each other. I have also had what I believe to be and out of body experience when I was much younger. I have also had an experience that some would call astral projection. If you like I would be happy to tell you my stories.

[edit] Selegiline

Hi Jclerman,

Do you have any references for this: "...the stimulatory effect on locomotor activity and dopamine synthesis can be attributable to l-methamphetamine". I can find no definitive evidence to support this claim.

Also, please annotate your edits (for instance, when you reverted my edit it would be polite to give a reason why) and take care with the minor edit attribute.

Thanks --Bk0 (Talk) 00:43, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commons image

Hello, the image Commons:Image:Amancae.png is in deletion process on commons. You wrote on the description: Authorization to be used has been requested today from the copyright holder. Jclerman 69.9.29.78 18:16, 19 May 2006 (UTC).

To protect the image for deletion please forward a copy of the permission to permissions@wikimedia.org, which serves as the Wikimedia Foundation's Central archive for permissions. See also Commons:OTRS. --GeorgHH 18:48, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pi calculations wording

Hi, I can understand using "iterations" rather than "calculations," but you reverted all the changes rather than the one change. I thought the information you eliminated was useful. Was that inadvertent? -- Moondigger 18:45, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll re-include the info. -- Moondigger

[edit] "Radioactive decay" article: Definition of activity

I understand what you are saying, but the link you supplied does not really support neither position. The point is that N may be changed due to a number of effects, but the change of N in time due to _radioactivity_, is defined as λN. Do you understand my point?

Posted on 11:48, October 26, 2006 by User:Dynetrekk

No. I don't understand. Explain your statements and post references, please.

Jclerman 19:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay. I am having a bit of trouble finding a good reference in English. However, I have found a serious-looking web page for you here: http://glossary.dataenabled.com/sdvglossary_A.html . Note that there is no mention of the time derivative of N, just that activity is proportional to N, and the proportionality constant is lambda. A physics textbook which I believe will agree with me is: J. Lilley: Nuclear Physics, Wiley 2001, ISBN 0-471-97936-8. Will this do, or should I get more references?

Posted on 21:15, October 30, 2006 by User:Dynetrekk

I don't understand the problem, if any. You can send scans of texts in other languages, e.g., Spanish, Dutch, French, German, etc.

From the book you indicated, here are two quotations and links follow. Note that "rate" means time derivative, and that activities are thus measured in "disintegrations per minute".

• "The rate of decay is dN/dt = -lambda N", in:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0471979368/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-1590027-9184859#reader-link

• "The activity is the rate of decay of a radioactive sample", in:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0471979368/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-1590027-9184859#reader-link

Jclerman 23:25, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem is this: You claim that the activity is dN/dt. I claim that the activity is defined to be only the one term, namely − λN, that comes from radioactive decay. One could imagine other contributions to dN/dt, such as decay from another nucleid in the decay chain, or transport processes. If you read the very sentences you yourself wrote to me thoroughly (especially the last paragraph in Lilley page 18), it says that the activity is λN, nothing more, nothing less. The rate is a different concept. My point is: The equation in the wikipedia page is only correct if the activity is the only contribution to the rate dN/dt. Better now?

Posted on 20:00, October 31, 2006 by User:Dynetrekk

[edit] Evita article

I'm not sure if you read this at the article page, so I'm reposting it here:

About my most recent revision.... The first thing I should note is that I am assuming you speak English as a second language. I assume this because you continue to revert the sentence to read "Evita's time of death was...." To a native English speaker this sounds awkward. It seems to imply that she owned the time of 8:25pm. Because no one can really own a time period, this doesn't really make much sense. To the native English speaker it is much more polished to write, "The time of Evita's death was...." Please stop reverting this.

Thank you for including parenthesis around the quotes from the Time magazine article. However, I think that it would be better to incorporate that section into a larger context. For example, perhaps if you like you could create a paragraph or subsection about criticism about the extent of the mourning of her death, or pressure from the government to observe Evita's death, etc. But to just insert a block quote like that into the middle of the section without any real analysis of the block quote, and without juxtaposing it with other criticisms of the extent of the mourning, seems awkward.

For example, I recall reading a piece that Borges wrote about the mourning; he referred to the "crass mythology" of Peronism which was "played for the lower classes." It would be interesting to see these quotes put together with Borjes' thoughts, etc. Does this make any sense?

I won't revert this again tonight. But if you don't decide to put that quote into a broader context, I may be back in a few days to do just that. I am interested in working with this section, particularly because, in my opinion, her death and the mourning of her death is perhaps the most important piece of Evita mythology. (In fact, working on this section of her life is a bit overwhelming.) So, I appreciate that you have found this interesting article. I think it just needs to be inserted in a more polished way.

Thanks, Andrew Parodi 07:50, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Holocene calendar

Hi, Jclerman. You may be aware of "The CE/BCE system of notation is chronologically equivalent to dates in the AD/BC system, i.e. no change in numbering is used." On 12 February 12007(HE) you reverted my latest contribution claiming: do not mix AD and CE scales/units. No such mixing done, so could you elaborate further, please. :/ Kurtan 13:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Checking again, I find that you reverted it while interfering with Some thing's edits as well. Maybe your excuse was aimed at her/his edits.../ Kurtan 15:02, 28 February 2007 (UTC)