Hi,

I picked this 168 name naively thinking that, when I registered, the Wiki site would recognize me as the once-unregistered person who wrote and edited a lot of articles from an IP address beginning "168." It didn't. I concluded I'd reinvented myself with a silly name for nothing. Since then people more mathematically savvy than me have encouraged me to be proud of the name, because says one: "It's the order of PSL(2,7), also called Klein's group. That's the second smallest nonabelian simple group, and it's very important and has a long history in physics and mathematics." It's also 2³×3×7.

I'm a former molecular neuroscientist, and I began here by working on articles that allowed me to draw on that background, enabling me to avoid cracking a book. That's still my general modus operandi, but I've since then branched out, and sometimes even do open a book or Google around before I post. You might notice that in adding new content I don't work things to a polish before I post--at least I hope that's what you infer, instead of "this person writes like crap." Anyway, what you'll more likely notice is that often I post umpteen incremental edits in succession before I disappear for a while. I got into this habit before I realized with embarrassment that I was being logged. To my knowledge, though, this isn't annoying the pants off anyone, so I haven't thought much about stopping.

Often my initial iterations are to add or improve scientific content where I saw it lacking. On the other hand, I also think very well of myself as a writer and explainer--and I have some professional experience in these areas. Perhaps to a fault, I have strong opinions about wording, particularly when it comes to vagueness, redundancy, precision, accuracy and writing so that every reader can understand. Relatedly, I am a strong advocate of news style, and as a result I find myself writing and editing beginnings more often than I do middles and ends. With regard to compromises, I suppose I'll stew in resentment forever about some, but I can be happy to concede a point when someone takes the time and can make the case to me.

168...

Have a message for me? Please visit my talk page.

Brilliant prose of mine:[1]

Notes to self: [2]