User talk:Memestream

Welcome!

Hello, Memestream, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page. Again, welcome! -- JHunterJ 13:19, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Origin of Species

Hi, thanks for your edits to The Origin of Species. One thing to note is that to comply with WP:NOR facts, analysis and interpretations have to be attributed to reliable sources, using secondary sources as much as possible. Your paragraph including the statement "Darwin's theory, in it's currently accepted neo-Darwinian form, based on the Modern evolutionary synthesis, makes natural selection the only mechanism determining evolutionary change." needs a source, and this sentence seems to contradict the linked article which describes the modern synthesis as saying that "Evolution consists primarily of changes in the frequencies of alleles between one generation and another as a result of genetic drift, gene flow, and natural selection." It will be good if you can find a source to clarify this point, and something I'm trying to find time to add is that Richard Leakey comments that Darwin himself favoured the idea of "use-and-disuse heredity", and Lamarck's view differed in postulating a besoin or desire for change causing the heritable change. Will try to get onto this, thanks again, .. dave souza, talk 17:37, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments. Your comment that my claim regarding neo-Darwinism seems inconsistent with the linked page on the Modern Synthesis is not surprising given that I find that page problematic in that it fails to distinguish between the Modern synthesis as a historic milestone, and what I prefer to call neo-Darwinism, meaning currently accepted theory based on Darwins ideas. Putting this problem aside though, there is not necessarily a contradiction inherent in what I said, because the statement "Evolution consists primarily of changes in the frequencies of alleles between one generation and another as a result of genetic drift, gene flow, and natural selection" seems to me only to describe the nature of evolution as observed in modern terms, not the determining mechanism. Darwin would not have recognised that sentence as describing his ideas on evolution, and I think it fair to say that he emphasised natural selection. I think his writings show some confusion in that he went to some lengths to describe his hypothesis of pangenesis based on use-disuse, and yet never recognised that pangenesis, or some such Lamarckian scheme, might be perfectly capable of producing adaptive evolution without the operation of natural selection. That's not to say that natural selection does not operate of course, it just shifts the emphasis, and I read somewhere that selection might just operate as the final 'executioner', though I can't remember where at the moment. I'll try to find it. Your comments about use-disuse versus desire for change are very interesting. I've tried to make the distinction clear on the August Weissman page, because Weissman's barrier is really at the heart of the Modern synthesis, and yet it was really only an idea without proof, and he clearly misunderstood Larmarck as he failed to distinguish mutilation from desire for change let alone use-misuse, and cut off the tails of 1500 mice in a completely pointless experiment! --Memestream 18:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again, I'll continue the discussion here and delete what you've added to my page as it's best to keep a conversation in one place. You're on my watchlist, though you can always give me a heads-up if there's something you want to discuss urgently. Thanks for working on The Origin and Lamarckism. It's a good idea to follow what's been done before on a page when adding citations. Wikipedia:Citation templates gives some guidance, and it works better to use the Template:Citation in lists of references when using Harvard citation, with inline "harvnb" templates in the text, as Template:Harvard citation. If citing the web or books where Harvard referencing isn't used, Wikipedia template filling is pretty usful (donationware, not done by me!) Hope that helps, WP:CITE gives more general guidance. .. dave souza, talk 20:43, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'll bear this in mind, though when editing pages like these I am often so concentrated on trying to get to the exact truth, sitting with piles of books cross-referencing things, that I am happy to just get a good citation in the right place without thinking too hard about how to do it. I'm not sure what the template method adds either, the real problem with online citations being that all too often they come up with 'not found' after a while. I felt that Darwin had not referred to blood in his Pangenesis hypothesis, and was delighted when I eventually found that online article in nature saying so in his own words. While Wikipedia (rightly)isn't supposed to be for original research, I find that it is excellent for this sort of research, bringing together in one place stuff that gets to the truth of events and statements. I've worked on August Weismann recently, where I was keen to make clear the distinction between, use-disuse and mutilation. It's surprising how many textbooks get this wrong, glibly stating that 'Weismann's experiments disproved Lamarckism'. It was interesting to follow up your reference to 'besoin' too, which led me to the Lyell translation and many other comments on this matter. I don't feel I've got to the bottom of what Lamarck actually meant, as despite the translation problem I think he may have had desire in mind as well as use. --Memestream 09:47, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking more about the subject of citations, I find that there is a real problem when citing a book or article in that the reader has to find the relevent sentence which can be buried deep in text. Using the 'find' facility and entering a key word helps, but some editors cite whole books in support of a point of view, which I don't think is good enough. One alternative I sometimes prefer is therefore to state in the article for example 'Darwin said, in Origin (p21), etc ...' which is clear, but has to be done sparingly. I suppose another alternative might be to create a separate article for citations, where the relevant text is quoted. Why do you like the template method? Is it because you like to see a list of citations? I'm not sure the list is useful, it's being able to go straight to the relevant text and find what the editor is refering to that matters to me. --Memestream 09:58, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Owning the term

I don't have strong feelings about the term "Neo-Darwinism", but I definitely believe that avoiding it just because creationists/IDers use it pejoratively is a bad idea. Just as homosexuals have "owned" the term queer, and atheists "own" the term atheist (which was also pejorative at one point, and still can be, of course), I think that we should not let others dictate our usage of terms. Anyways, rant aside, I'll probably start making minor contributions to the article when I feel that there is some stability to it. I try to be a "peace-maker", but sometimes it turns out that I get people from "both sides" of an issue mad at me. Ben Hocking ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:50, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that's great. I've been quite badly upset by the ridiculous accusations that I am a creationist, which I am powerless to refute, and I take the same view as you, that the 'ownership' of terms is becoming a big obstacle to proper explanation. I gave the example a while back of 'abortion', which is probably to be found on thousands of anti-abortions sites, and so might be considered by some as "obnoxious" but I like to think that it still remains a respectable terms with a defined medical meaning! It must also be remembered that an encyclopedia is about historical meanings, not just current street-talk. I tried to tell the story of the Tavistock clinic and Tavistock Institute some time back, and did an enormous amount of research to get my facts right (nor OR, but the sort of research Wikipedia encourages). I'm very dissapointed to see that those pages have reverted to being more or less adverts for the current 'NHS clinic' etc, with all mention of their controversial wartime role and spin-offs deleted. I like to think that truth wins in the end, and on many pages I've worked on I've been able to achieve a lot. See you later. --Memestream 21:13, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad your troubles have subsided and you have returned as Memestream. I hate you had all the difficulties, but I'm glad the editors did the "right" thing. See you in the trenches. Regards GetAgrippa 15:38, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I won through, and that 'obnoxious' article on neo-Darwinism was kept too, in a form that I can just about live with for now! Thanks for your support, hope things are going well for you. --Memestream 10:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Notability of Marcus Seymour Pembrey

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Marcus Seymour Pembrey, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Marcus Seymour Pembrey seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Marcus Seymour Pembrey, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click here CSDWarnBot (talk) 00:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I stopped the speedy deletion, since he is in ODNB. But you absolutely must write something real about it, or the article will almost certainly be deleted. Go back to the source, and find at least the basics. DGG (talk) 03:34, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks DGG. I actually don't care about this page, since, as I did note in the history record, I actually created it by mistake. Keen to use a full name where possible I Googled Marcus Pembrey and found the full name, as I thought, but was mistaken since the man I wanted to write about is actually just Marcus Pemprey. It then occurred to me that since the source I had Googled listed the man as notable I should leave the page as a stub for others to work on. I did not realise that any rule existed requiring significant content at the first attempt, by the originator. However, I like finding out about people, so I'll research some more now! --Memestream (talk) 12:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Full page now written with biography. --Memestream (talk) 13:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

John Cripps Pembrey Snr

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of John Cripps Pembrey Snr, and it appears to include a substantial copy of http://www.pembreyfamily.net/john_cripps_pembrey_snr.htm. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 19:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion of John Cripps Pembrey Snr

A tag has been placed on John Cripps Pembrey Snr requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person or group of people, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, as well as our subject-specific notability guideline for biographies.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the article (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Avruch ^Talk 19:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unspecified source for Image:Cross_Country.JPG

Thanks for uploading Image:Cross_Country.JPG. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, then you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, then their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 22:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Jusjih 22:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand how this got omitted as I uploaded the file as I have done others, using the option 'I created the image myself...free use'. Hopefully I've now fixed things with a copyright tag. --Memestream (talk) 01:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sigmund Freud

Please do not add unsourced or original content, as you did to Sigmund Freud. Doing so violates Wikipedia's verifiability policy. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. Ward3001 (talk) 16:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How condescending! This contribution was perfectly valid and hardly 'experiment'. verifiability policy refers to material that is 'likely to be challenged'. Freud's time under Charcot, and the latter's influence on him is so well understood and documented as to be very unlikely to be challenged. The correct response, I suggest, if you feel this needs verification, would be for you to add a citation, or mark it for citation. Reverting is not a proper response. --Memestream (talk) 17:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, verifiability policy applies to all edits. It is a cornerstone of Wikipedia. "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiablity, not truth". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not your personal website. If you look at any other legitimate encyclopedia, you will see that all information is properly attributed to a reliable source. The editors don't wait for information to be "challenged". And look at any article on Wikipedia that is classified as a good article. You will see that virtually all of the information is cited.

There is no need for a challenge; you still have to include a citation to an appropriate source. But to cut to the chase here, I challenge your edit. So put a citation after the edit if you restore the information. And please thoroughly read Wikipedia policies before accusing someone of being "condescending". My challenge of uncited information is not condescending; that's the way it's done on Wikipedia. Thank you. Ward3001 (talk) 17:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One more point: You appear to have copied much of the information in your edit from this source instead of the one you just cited. I believe you may have cited the wrong source (whether intentional or not). I also ask that you place direct quotes within quotation marks, per Wikipedia policy. Thank you. Ward3001 (talk) 18:09, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, I wrote my own words, after reading many sources. There is no requirement to quote, and I don't like 'cut and paste editing'. Inevitably, certain phrases will always repeat in sources. I cited a source which I think supported what I said. If you think there is a better one, by all means use it. --Memestream (talk) 18:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"I wrote my own words": If you are quoting from your own webpage, that is original research unless you attribute the webpage with a citation, with quotation marks.

"There is no requirement to quote": From WP:CITE: "You should always add a citation when quoting published material, and the citation should be placed directly after (or just before) the quotation, which should be enclosed within double quotation marks" (emphasis added).

"If you think there is a better one, by all means use it.": It is the responsibility of the editor who makes an edit to properly cite it.

"Do you realise that if you attempt to cut and paste a section from a web article, you are likely to get an immediate challenge from a 'bot' which appears to search for every edit made on Google and will remove your edit on grounds of plaguarism!": As you should if you don't put it in quotation marks and properly cite the source.

Please properly cite the appropriate source (and place quoted material in quotation marks). Otherwise your edit will be deleted. I don't intend to argue back and forth over fundamental Wikipedia policy, so this is my last comment on the matter. Thank you. Ward3001 (talk) 18:55, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do not revert good faith edits. In other words, try to consider the editor "on the other end." If what one is attempting is a positive contribution to Wikipedia, a revert of those contributions is inappropriate unless, and only unless, you as an editor possess firm, substantive, and objective proof to the contrary. Mere disagreement is not such proof. - quoted from WP:Revert

Do not revert changes simply because someone makes an edit you consider problematic, biased, or inaccurate. Improve the edit, rather than reverting it. - quoted from WP:Revert --Memestream (talk) 18:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

UV

Wow, those comments from Ward3001 above are amazingly heavy in tone. 90% of the content here is poorly sourced, if sourced at all. Wikipedia is struggling to get 1% of the articles to good article status. The standards of a good article can hardly be used to set the bar for a contribution in good faith. Everything here that is neither quoted nor plagiarized is written in the "own words" of the editor who contributes. I doubt it's a good thing in the long run if the culture here swings toward the view that if an edit doesn't arrive as a perfect gem, with every single word gleaming in compliance to Wikipedia policy, the edit isn't welcome.

That said, I came here to challenge the uncited edit you supplied here: http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Ultraviolet_index&diff=next&oldid=152505077

To illustrate the weighting principle, the incident power density in mid-day sun is typically 0.6 mW/(nm m²) at 295 nm, 74 mW/(nm m²) at 305 nm and 478 mW/(nm m²) at 325 nm.

The units you originally supplied have been since edited to mw/(nm m²) as shown in the text quoted, which strikes me as bizarrely non-physical. I can't find a good physics source underneath the dermal layer of skin protection advice, but the casual references I did find all quote incident power density in units of mW/cm². If you can recall your source for the whole of your edit, please provide it. MaxEnt (talk) 22:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the support regarding those comments on my talk page. I've done quite a lot of editing, and most of what I ever wrote remains, which pleases me, so although I have changed as I've gone along and become more inclined to find cites I'm not about to start what I call 'cut and paste' editing. I believe in writing what I believe to be true and then of course supporting it wherever possible with citations. Sometimes I edit quickly in this way, keen to improve the article, knowing that while I like from my own knowledge there are others who like to spend their time validating and criticising. Together we do a good job in the end. Material that cannot be immediately supported but is true is better than cited material that is untrue in my view, and as you say Wikipedia is work in progress.

Regarding UV I remember being pleased when I found sources that enabled me to get to the truth of the matter and I thought I was careful to get the units right. I'll take a detailed look again later. Regards --Memestream (talk) 17:29, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The new units are the same. But to me, they make no physical sense, either way you write them. What sources I found cited in units of power/area. Which in your terms, would be mW/m^2. The extra nm makes no sense. If it was supposed to be a capital N, it would stand for Newton, a unit of force. That doesn't parse, either. nm is correctly read as nanometer. mW/m^2 nm would be power/volume, which is not a unit of radiance. That would be a measure of delivered energy to a target region, but such a unit would typically be accompanied by a footnote to explain what region was selected and how (e.g. a particular sub-dermal strata, taking into account occlusion by surface layers). For general discussion, it is far simpler to speak of exposure in radiance terms: power/area. I was hoping you would provide the original reference so I could see for myself what the scientists were up to. MaxEnt (talk) 18:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see your problem now. The units do make perfect sense in that they refer to milliwatts (power or flow of energy), per square meter, per nanometre of wavelength (a way of defining an equivalent frequency band) across the frequency spectrum. These units are used when plotting the power spectrum, not when stating absolute power. It is perfectly possible to measure incident power, in mW/square meter, as you say, but only if you define the bandwidth of the electromagnetic spectrum within which the power is measured. The wider the bandwidth of the measurement the more power there is. While it is possible to quote mW/sq metre of 'ultraviolet', this leaves uncertainty as to what 'ultraviolet' is, ie whether we include what is commonly called UVA, B, C, and what exactly the frequencly limits for these are. Such a measure of incident total power is useless as a measure of sun damage though, because, for example, exposure to 1mW/m^2 taken in a location under the ozone hole could be a hundred times as damaging as the same 1mW/m^2 in a cloudy location, because in the former location we would be exposed mostly to UVC, while in the latter to UVA, since the shorter wavelengths are more readily filtered out by cloud and ozone, and it is the shorter wavelengths (UVC) that cause most damage. To get a measure of irradiance that corelates with damage we need to first know the spectral content of the UV, and then to weight each bit of spectrum according to its ability to damage. There is no such thing as the power content at one frequency - it's zero, since the power of any radiation that has a noise-like spectrum reduces to zero as you reduce the bandwidth to zero. Hence we arbitrarily choose the bandwidth corresponding to 1nm of wavelenght as the bandwidth of our measurement. Engineers face a similar problem when measuring noise in electronic circuits, and an op-amp is specified in terms of nV/sq.root Hz, based on the fact that for white noise the power in a given bandwidth is proportional to bandwidth in Hz, and power is proportional to the square of voltage. mW/Hz would be a suitable alternative unit to use for UV (though it's an awfully fine resolution at UV frequencies), but it doesn't matter what units you use so long as you are consistent when devising the weighting curve. Spectrum analysers involve the same consideration. They usually have selectable measurement bandwidth, and so the readings obtained are higher if the bandwidth is set larger. This makes the concept of 'spectral content' of, for example, music, meaningless, since the content at any given frequency on a random signal is zero. The concept of 'spectral content' only has meaning for a specified measurement bandwidth. The above is explained in the reference I cited inline [1] though this does not explain the rationale for the units used as I have tried to. --Memestream (talk) 15:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image source problem with Image:JCPembrey3.jpg

Image Copyright problem

Thanks for uploading Image:JCPembrey3.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Non-free content, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 17:31, 2 August 2008 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:31, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pangenesis and ref to Bulmer

You added a partial reference to a work by Bulmer to Pangenesis, but you didn't give the book details. Can you provide the details? Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 01:34, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done, --Memestream (talk) 17:16, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]