whitey on the moon

did you know everything that you wanted to say, but afraid to utter or more importantly you thought it was futile, has already been said by the artists of 68 generation.

i want to start with an artist who crossed paths with the 68 movement but more importantly he was a part of the black nationalist art. i am talking about the grandfather of hip hop, Gil Scott Heron.



i learned just yesterday he was the one who announced that the revolution will not be televised. a sentence often used in popular culture but seldom understood. maybe critics were right, revolution will be televised or even podcasted, but this did not stop the greek young activist to occupy a television channel to ask people to stop watching tv and go out.

intoduction to tolga yarman

kind of a sad weekend. the graduation of the dear friend Claudia reminds us that our phd years are transitory once again. considerations about the future and day dreams on exotic post graduation possibilities are mandatory, in these situations.

nevertheless it was a good week, and since through graduation, comes the disillusionment with the academia i am here to talk about our new past time activity Tolga Yarman. he is probably the biggest contemporary physics anomaly in the contemporary academia. Yarman is a professor in reactor engineering, but this doesn't stop his students to refer to him as a "physicist" (imagine! it has a symbolic value, a positive connotation!). not only due to the fact that he is supposedly a great lecturer but also he recently debunked general relativity -hold on- twice!

through publishing papers in non-peer reviewed conference proceedings and arXiv, he debunked general relativity and "showed" geometrical representation of gravity is unnecessary in explaining observables (like Mercur's precession, and gravitational redshift). these kinds of provocative science stunts are not unknown, especially if you are working on gravity, as my fellow phd student Peter noted, you get to learn about them through spam mails.

but the thing that was peculiar about Yarman is that he is notorious in publicity. right out of a feyerabendian distopia, Yarman uses every aspect possible to publicize his non-peer reviewed work. basically he had a press conference on december 2008 (call in turkish), and funnily enough a similar kind of press call happened one and a half year before in april 2007 (news in turkish). it turns out he didn't get enough attention hence the second conference.

he is currently self publicizing in wikipedia (by himself or through students) , so right now it is a great source to know what he and his "followers" think of himself.

"They have informed the public that the experiments achieved in November 2008 by Kholmetskii et al., in Minsk, clearly back up the approach architectured by Prof. Tolga Yarman, Prof. Metin Arik, Prof. Vladislav B. Rozanov, Prof. Alexander Kholmetskii, Prof. Garret Sobczyk, and Prof. Oleg Missevitch, thus disfavoring the General Relativity Theory, also allowing the quantization of the gravitational field, just like that of the electric field."

un-fucking-believably his reference to this paragraph is the press conference call of his current press conference. and the wiki article is a compilation of his recent "publications" and one turkish newspaper article.

if you are wondering why somebody would go in such an extreme for publicity, part of the answer lies on the fact that last year he tried to become the leader of the main opposition party in turkey the republican people's party (cumhuriyet halk partisi; chp) but failed. we can only assume that his ambition is still there, from his turkish homepage.

here are my critisms in sourtimes, in turkish unfortunately. but since he is continuing his notorious campaign i intend to give a through analysis in english here.

ersatz yuppie academia

a physicist is never devoid of reasons for procrastination (hail to phd comics!). sometimes it is even issues of academia itself. here is my new favorite buzz word

the ersatz yuppie academic

it is a social type named by the M.E.T.U. (middle east technical university and no they don't train suicide bombers) sociology professor Hasan Ünal Nalbantoğlu, as an analysis tool for ethics or more correctly "ethos" of academia.

he uses this social type as a signifier for some hilarious psychologism of the middle aged academics of today, whom got their phds in late 70s and early 80s, and now continuing their "industry of academic production" in the "knowledge market," let's say. running from one deadline to the other, from one conference to conference. and most importantly nalbantoğlu asks, "is this the 'the thing to do' (das Tunliche)?"

hence the term ersatz translates as substitute (sugar substitute, milk substitute, "i cannot believe it is butter" substitute etc., i like the term "çakma" for the turkish translation), and the yuppie comes from the industrious and pretentious nature of their practice. you can reach the turkish article from his page, here.

the discourse makes use of many discussions in the literature that i wasn't aware of before. here are preliminary list of them for myself and for my buddy Herr Viola.

most interesting and fundamental one seems to be Weber's 1919 work of Wissenschaft als Beruf. well reading from the original german is always fun but for the challenge-impaired there is also the Science as a Vocation version of it.

Lukacs is widely referred to also:
* Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen
* Prolegomena zur Ontologie des gesellschaftlichen Seins

and last but not the least, of course Adorno:

* Das Schema der Massenkultur: Kulturindustrie (Forsetzung) [1942]
* Dialektik der Aufklärung
* Probleme der Moralphilosophie (1963)

"Ethik ist das schlechte Gewissen, das Gewissen über sich selber."

top quality cubism

a new street trend is out in turkey. not so much a graffiti but a scribble with the same hand writing on the numerous walls of istanbul reads:

"10 numara kübistim bacım..."



this roughly translates in american slang as, "i am helluva cubist, sister..."

you might guess "10 numara" means number 10 (out of 10). and bacı (nothing to do with baci for all the italians out there) means sister in a paternalistic/african-american slang sense. a turkish guy would call any female which he reveres, bacı. this ranges from female family members to a woman on the street to indicate there is no intent of courtship. basically it is a though guys term for a female.

the term cubism signifies anything high brow that do represent any kind of interest or understanding from the common public.

thus we have the motto of a post-modern plebian though guy, "i am helluva cubist, sister..."

boring life/ibrahim kaypakkaya

pulling off 15-16 hour working days again. but don't worry, i am lazy that's why i need to take my time.

preparations of the paper continues, i am still conflicted about staying whether anonymous or not, but anyhow.

the discussion of the week in sourtimes is ibrahim kaypakkaya, the young 68 student leader, who was killed brutally (guess by whom) when he was 24. he was the first marxist to suppose that the kemalist government is a fascist bourgeois state.



the supporters of the core state values in turkey and most importantly in sourtimes are shocked to find out there was marxist which made this scientific analysis long before the islamist propaganda they are so afraid of, and feel threatened by right now.

ibrahim kaypakkaya's death anniversary was 18th of may.

space elevator for the masses

I found this from Space Elevator Guy's photostream.



As some of you know Space Elevator is conceived as a project to transport material into outerspace with even its own Ansari-X-like NASA prize existent for incentive. A concept that was seriously considered since 1960s, is pending for tether material technology strong enough for orbital heights around 10000 km.


All the bet is on carbon nanotubes. The stress needed for the tethers to build terran space elevators, for a graphite like density is around 150 GPa (that's giga pascal for us, geeky scientists), whereas carbon nanotube tests show that their stress limit is around 60 GPa.

While the aspiration for orbital transport technologies continues, my initial hatred towards the space elevator comes from the hero cult of Serkan Anılır in Turkey. He is a research associate in the University of Tokyo, an architect from Turkey who worked both in industry and space agencies, both in U.S. and Japan. He worked especially on the publicity of the Space Elevator.

I am sure he is very successful but there is a noise of information in the web about him, which is the result of the hero cult in Turkey nevertheless. I will come back to this issue, while you wait you can check his blog or webpage in University of Tokyo.

Any how, i am touched by the poster, since it wants space not only for the proletariat but the proletarian, which means the supporters of the cause are very much welcome.

copycat, i am not

It seems i am not the only one with futuristic sensibilities towards the proletariat.

http://marxistsinspace.tumblr.com/

Of course i only found out about it, after i chose a new name for here, and posted.

It has nice commentaries about labor issues with a taste of zizek, david harvey and comics.

Call to the Proletariat of the Space

Rocket take off is not a spectator sport but still not only thousands watched it live[0] on 14th of May but also it was broadcasted as such. With such informative intermissions, state of the art visual effects and split screens with qualitatively instructive graphs. The dream of any real geek, it was the perfect combination of decade second long attention span with the deliverance of such specialized information that can only be accumulated from years of introversion. The arianespace live feed programme delivered the entertainment, the message and most importantly built the tension up till the climax, in which two old white males hug. Yes you guessed incorrectly these two white men were hyper managers of space/science/industry; ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and Arianespace Chairman/CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall[1].

What is the problem, and what is the message that was conveyed. Our scientific discovery and exploration goals and aspiration of our society is in the hands of the industrial type managers, which end up in their position just because an ambiguous system of meritocracy dictated so. But what happened to the workers who put their labor into the construction of the scientific probe and the rocket, whatever happened to the software developers who designed and coded painstakingly the data acquisition, telemetry and even preliminary data analysis software. Even the Star Trek movies start with Enterprise being built in the Space dock, with the friendly worker in space waving hands.

Of course this question begs another one, why should the objectification of labor be any more apparent in space related labor than in any other industrial production? First of all, even with the highly specialized mode of production the commodity is not mass produced. Years of labor is spent on designing, testing and perfecting one specific part of the final product, be it the detector, impulse nozzle or trajectory correction software. This kind of collective labor towards the individual commodity, especially with the input not only from the producers but the "consumers" i.e. the scientists, most closely resembles the pre fordist mode of production. This reality is evidence for the dichotomy inside the space industry. This interplay of industrial hierarchical structure with knowledge/research development is very much apparent through the very special alienation that happens in this industry but nevertheless these issues are outshined by an even bigger problem that is the fact that research related production is motivated by exploitation.

Only when the laborers take control of the production, the science itself can be the main goal rather than natural resource exploitation to fuel conspicuous consumption in the world of economy of scales. "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere[2]." And now the natural course of events dictates the expansion of this chase out of the globe and unleash it to the outer space. This shameless ideology of exploitation is embedded into the discourse of space flight guru and mogul Burt Rutan[3], and even in the hype behind the exo planet research. The public debate on space exploration circles around the resources (e.g. water) on Moon and Mars hidden as the discourse on logistics, but not scientific incentive.



A closer view on a capitalist distopia in the near future about space production and exploitation is surely the widely acclaimed Planetes manga and later anime series[3], which tells the story of the crew of the DS-12 "Toy Box." The crew works on the Space Debris Section of a corporation, to clean the orbit of earth and moon to prevent possible damage or destruction of satellites, space stations and spacecraft. The plot progresses towards the latest flight to Jupiter for future possibilities of Helium extraction for energy. The series describe a society which is very much alike ourselves, with socially stratified, multiple tiered structure and corporate driven.

For most of us(you?) capital driven science is a good thing. Science should bring prosperity and profit. But as most of us(this time us) know, the surplus generated by the "efficient" production goes nowhere else than the pockets of the bourgeoisie. Even if we put this fact aside, science is not a commodity and is not a property. It is a human activity that by self definition is an important aspect of "humanization[4]" as Paulo Freire would put it. If I could obscenely simplify Freire's concept of humanization as to have the ability of and the freedom for critical thinking, we could say science is the most concrete form of this activity. To criticize the contemporary view of nature and reality is the core of scientific discourse. The attempts of privatizing and corporatizing the science and the institutions of science (which are unchallenged hence successful[5]) is destroying this critical core of it. Science is moving from being the base of change to maintaining and supporting the dominating exploitative market oriented ideology.

This regression is rationalized by pseudo scientific lingo such as information society[6], and knowledge management. Which these concepts help further the myth that orthodox definition classes did cease to exist. This commodification of knowledge as information, and application of industrial/corporate hierarchical system inside university is the attack on the last bastion of critical thought and education.

But as the cliche goes, the best defence is offense. The space and research industry is as i have discussed, where the usual labor/capital/commodity relations do not apply and human activity of exploration and science dominate over these relations. It also constitutes a great danger for the future of our society as it aims to expand the boundaries of resource exploitation obscenely. Both of these facts and prospects, call for only one action that is the organization of the workers in the space and science related research industry, the space laborers. Only through controlling the means of production, the workers can implement the environment of critical thought of science into the space industry and stop the exploitation inside the workplace and start producing and creating for pursuit of knowledge rather than profit and conspicuous consumption.

This, more importantly, includes the scientists with flexible labor contract, devoid of any kind of organization and class consciousness. They live with the hope of one day becoming a bourgeoisie of the science (i.e. directors)themselves, while their labor constitute the main source of scientific production.

Hence welcome to my popular culture infested world of science and politics, to the perspective of a near Ph.D. astrophysicist. But more importantly:

Proletariat of the space, unite!

[0] My ass, 2009, Springer, Heidelberg
[1] 3:33 of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGCylzbZRHM&feature=related
[2] Marx Karl, Engels Friedrich, The Communist Manifesto.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
[4] Freire Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
[5] Of course i mean the Bologna Process.
[6] The concept knowledge society, ironically, goes back to a Czech Marxist Radovan Richta, and Richta report of 1971.