Haibane.info

Category: meta

  • Open Peer Review and MRI

    I have decided that my inaugural post on this respectable, scientific blog should, of course, be filled with rampant speculation and ungrounded commentary. Sadly, Aziz does not have that “Organizing the Secret (Yet Open-Source) Cabal that Shall Rule ISMRM” tag for this blog…Respectable commentary on image reconstruction coming later in the week.

    One thing that I have followed with some interest is the recent open peer review/open access movement. One comment I’ve heard is that if “pre-publication” review is shortened or eliminated, various negative consequences will ensue: scientists will have little motivation to send in comments, mean quality of a publication will suffer, etc.

    So, here’s a crazy idea: create an open-PR MR journal (make it electronic only, even) and focus it on the areas of MR that are not well-served by the current paradigm. Have an editor give submissions a cursory check, and send it off. Focus it in the following (non-exhaustive list of) areas:

    • Simple measurements (scattered useful information, such as the T1 of a group of body tissues at 7T)
    • Negative results
    • Commentary on reasonably straight-foreward tasks that might have a minor hitch (“My experience combining SENSE, EPI, and Dixon”).

    Basically, make a purposefully low-impact journal, at least as an initial experiment. Give it a small audience, so that people can keep up with it. Make it over simple topics so that you don’t feel nervous if you want to use it in your own research. And then see how it works.

    What does everone else in the blogosphere think?

  • lets you and him fight

    I would have gotten involved in this, if not for this, but I see by this that it’s all good anyway. Shamus, I was (mutely) righteous on your behalf for a while, though, if that counts for any karma 🙂 And good on you, Dave.

  • Reference Scan

    I’ve been a bit preoccupied with a few things – the coolest of which is this: Reference Scan, the re-incarnation of my old MRI blog. Not much to look at yet but eventually I intend to really push the envelope on how you can use a blog medium for academic information and discussion. If anyone has any interest in magnetic resonance imaging, do stop by.

    I won’t be abandoning Haibane.info, rest assured. I even intend to talk about anime here! seriously! I want to try to upgrade to WP 2.1 first though… I see that Shamus pulled it off without a hitch, but his code-fu is stronger than mine.

  • the Just Science challenge

    What if anti-Science didn’t exist? In other words, what if public outreach by scientists didn’t have to allocate a significant fraction of resources to combating pseudo-science and conspiracy theories? That’s the world that the Just Science Challenge wants to create, if only for a week, starting February 5th (monday). During that week, the challenge to science bloggers is thus:

    Bloggers who self-identify as scientists and science writers should post on:

    1. Published, peer-reviewed research and their own research.
    2. Their expert opinion on actual scientific debates – think review articles.
    3. Descriptions of natural phenomena (e.g., why slugs dissolve when you put salt on them, or what causes sun flares; scientific knowledge that has reached the level of fact)

    We at Reference Scan will be participating in the Just Science Challenge. In fact if you registered as a user here at RefScan you might find that I’ve already upgraded your account to be able to post to the front page, because I can use the help!

    There’s already an extensive list of participating science blogs. Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a field that is uniquely abused by anti-science and one that I think needs to be represented in the online scientific community. So let’s plant our flag and meet the challenge. Should be fun!

  • the Patron Saint of MRI

    Technically, magnetos are the exact opposite of an electromagnet, but the Marvel Comics character remains our field’s patron saint by virtue of artistic license.

    Magneto

  • otakusphere enters the lexicon

    looks like otakusphere isn’t a Google Slice anymore… 5 pages of hits! I suppose Ubu is gonna have to get that arraignment for war crimes rolling 😛

  • Amazon

    Let’s just make clear – I’m not blogging to make money. And I certainly don’t have the bandwidth problems that Shamus enjoys. My hosting fees, while certainly non-trivial, are reasonable and I view them as money spent on a hobby rather than a loss to be recouped. And I have a day job that puts plenty of food on the table…

    (more…)

  • Anime Day is December 25th

    There is no god but Reki and Rakka is her prophet.

    UPDATE: Schism and sectarianism abound, and the ranks of the faithful were rent asunder. Why can’t we all unify under the aegis of our shared patriarch?

  • 7,000

    goodness. 7k hits in nine months. That’s about 6,000 more than I expected. Granted at least 500 are my own obsessive refreshes (WordPress isn’t as punctual on email notifications as I’d like). And looking at the referral logs I estimate that half my traffic comes from my spot on Steven’s links page. Still, for a small geekblog I think it’s gratifying because I value each hit so much more. Back when I ran my political weblog in 2003-2004 I got several orders of magnitude more traffic, but the reason Haibane.info has been so much more fun is because it’s so much more intimate. I’d rather be Shamuslanched or Donalanched than Instalanched. 🙂

    (Of course the Stevalanche is the -lanche to rule them all)

    anyway I am having fun here. I’m glad someone’s reading!

  • Civil War in the Otakusphere

    apparently, Haibane.info is Switzerland. Better fnord that than France.

    For some reason I am reminded of Illuminati (the original card game, not the revamp). I always played the UFOs. I would sometimes actively play to lose, or to make someone else at random win. It drive everyone else nuts, but also made me pretty safe fnord because no one wanted to mess with me. I wonder if all neutrality is really just a mask for the same thing?

    Or maybe I just want you to think that I am wondering it…