Although this has probably been described elsewhere, I was unable to find a reference...which I'm sure someone will softlink for me in derision. :-) This is the term I use to describe the first few minutes of a node's existence; in the vast majority of cases, it appears, half of any XP you get for the node will accrue in the minutes it takes your node to vanish off the bottom of the 'New Writeups' nodelet. If your node is Ching!-ed, the half-life becomes a bit longer; usually enough to vanish off the bottom of the Cool Archive or Page of Cool.