Marxists in Space

the 'islamic' time standardization institute

2010-04-25T06:14:00.000-07:00

For those of you who does not know the reknowned turkish novel writer ahmet hamdi tanpınar and his witty work the time regulation institute, the joke in the title of our yet again turkish plagiarism story, will be lost.

in his famous book tanpınar criticises the superficial hence ala turca attempts of modernization via the all too important 'time regulation institute' and the story of the individuals who use the time regulation concepts to further their personal agenda.

well it finally happened. and sometimes reality is stranger and funnier than fiction.

mustafa helvacı, an astronomer in ankara university starts working in the religion ministry in turkey as an astronomer, since prayer time regulation is very important and one of the main tasks of the ministry: 'the standardisation of prayer times and calendars.' later he used his internal knowledge and possible contracts to acquire a scholarship for research on 'the orbital motion of moon.'

but apparently he used the money to conduct his own research on circumstellar dust around asymptotic giant branch stars. 4 years later in 2001 he came back to turkey supposing he got his degree on the 'moon orbits,' and for some reason he later got another degree in astronomy from his department on dust around AGB stars in 2003.

funny part is he has been personal advisor to former minister current president abdullah gül, and he continued his work in various government institutions due to his connections with the rising islamist party.

it was published on an article today on the 'republican' (read opposition to the islamists in turkey) newspaper. it mentions, the majority of the work is in web and have been done by the astronomers. i could not find the actual reference but i will get to the bottom of it. i will not be surprised that it was an astronomer collective action.

anyhow here is helvacı's information in ankara university website, from his kentucky connection and research papers in ads.

neuroquantology - or - here comes a new challenger

2010-04-11T11:06:00.000-07:00

after our (as the people's physicists front) yarman triumph through wiki deletion and witnessing the unfolding of the anılır story it was time for a new target, a new challenge. and our wishes were fulfilled without further ado. behold:

NeuroQuantology

as my fellow physicist comrades point out the necessity of violent physical force against the bullshit users of the term "quantum" we are set out to find and ridicule relevant bullshit. like quantum leadership or quantum therapy. in between the penis size increase google ads, some kind of personal help book pops out of the white noise with some kind of scientific reference.

we of course know the fringes which relate consciousness with quantum processes which are even worse than the gravitation fringes which only are interested in the physics theories. the reason being, when the bullshit theories diffuse to the scientific area concerned with human issues, the applications of the relevant bullshit to real life situations become immense hence the possibility to infect and effect the society is considerable. but nothing would have prepared us for the horror of a journal in citation index.

first of all meet the person behind the scene, doctor sultan tarlacı. he is a medical doctor of neurology working in our lovely city of izmir, at a private hospital. he is a writer of many books and operator of a blog called quantum brain (kuantumbeyin) which is a "best of" assembly of bullshit buzzwords including but not only constrained to: quantum, psi, parapsychology, neurophilosophy. he also publicizes his books on brain, psychology and quantum physics and seems to have gathered some following due to his exotic assortment of topics.

there is nothing wrong up to this point. but when the jokes stop being a joke and the feyerabendian distopic scientific practice (=proliferation of the "truth value" of a topic through propaganda and public relations) starts to be applied for this pseudo scientific discourse then the line needs to be drawn. it turns out neuroquantology is not just a bullshit topic in a blog but a editor reviewed journal.

as good rationalist physicists we disseminated the bullshit and appropriately ridiculed it on friendfeed. but the funny thing is, apparently our dear doctor googles himself hence paid us a visit and even made us famous in his blog by answering our allegations and linking to our friendfeed topic!

the title is "the brain impaired are squeezing for fat in a fly," referring to a turkish proverb.

nevertheless he made us so happy that, rather than answering to him in friendfeed we decided to put our allegations here, also in english, to start up disillusioning the not only the current status of quantology but also the thompson-reuters which put the journal to the list.

anyhow; tarlacı's rebuttals of our allegations are irrelevant and amusing at best: ranging from his test scores as a medical student, to sadly not being able to make money from "his new paradigm." but the most disturbing ones are first, as formerly mentioned the isi indexing of neuroquantology which is a long topic that i will go into detail; and secondly the inclusion of nobel laureate brian david josephson in their editorial board. according to tarlaci's logic, josephson's existence in their journal should prove the scientific nature of it.

for the uninformed; josephson is won the nobel prize in physics (1973) for his work on condensed matter when he was 33 (24 according to tarlacı), and then later he moved onto more greener pastures, i.e. mind–matter unification project. this sudden shift to more speculative topics, led him to multiple ordeals like being banned from arXiv for a while to being the target of scientists for supporting pseudoscience in royal mail's nobel stamp series.

"Josephson believes that psychics and telepaths may be able to direct random energy at sub-atomic levels for their own purposes, and in the commemorative stamp booklet writes that developments in information and quantum theories 'may lead to an explanation of processes still not understood within conventional science, such as telepathy'. It is not a suggestion that has gone down well with fellow Nobel laureates, however."

in this piece i don't want to condone any scientist of any stature; but i just want to point out that one should evaluate the scientific value of a proposal on the basis of the argument, not on the basis of who said it, what is the former accomplishments of the person. from this respect, the arguments and interests of josephson is not currently accepted by the rest of the scientific community. call it orthodoxy or not, unfortunately this is peer review. a concept that neuroquantology journal does not have.

having said all this, actually josephson himself also voiced concerns about the publication quality of the journal neuroquantology for the case of a paper which explained poltergeist activity as a quantum effect. his response to the new scientist was "this looks distinctly flaky to me."

so we decide to evaluate neuroquantology (which tarlaci refers to as "my journal"), on the basis of its contents, not based on whether thomson-reuters listed it in citation index or on your editors (who find the papers inside "distincly flaky" by the way), but evaluate them on their contents. and the final resolution is they are an intellectual pollution to the scientific commons, just ingullible accumulation of bullshit buzzwords, written with the style and sophistication of a first year engineering student taking a class on philosophy.

we will continue our quest to find and ridicule the NQ papers, to exemplify how bad it is to leave the decision of what science is and is not at the hands of cooperations like thomson-reuters.

here are some of my current favorites.

* A Game-Theoretic Approach to Metaphysical Reconciliation of Quantum Superposition
* A Neuroquantologic Approach to How Human Thought Might Affect the Universe
* A Robotic Program that Acquires Concepts and Begins Introspection

serkan anılır, an update

2010-04-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

remember anılır? the astronaut candidate polymath, the man of many talent who lost his PhD? he also lost his job at the Tokyo University after it was discovered that he also falsified his CV.

meaning; he forged his documents concerning his graduation from istanbul technical university and illinois institute of technology. here is the google translated japanese news article and the university press release.

serkan anılır - portrait of a young scientist as a fraud -

2010-03-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

this entry comes from a draft from last year october:

as we sit in a busy cafe which is renowned by its cakes with the fellow heidelbergers and sip our coffee, our friend claudia, with a voice uncontrolled, tells us what she realized about publicity of science. everybody become suddenly silent and look at us. she cracks up in awkwardness.

another person who is not afraid to spit out bullshit (more precisely lies) in public and profit from it is serkan anılır. i have mentioned him in a former post and at that time in sourtimes. but things turned out to be worse than i thought.

let's back up a bit: anılır is an architect in tokyo university, which currently works in a project called infra-free, meaning infrastructure free buildings. but more importantly he regularly appears in the contemporary media, both in japan and turkey as the:

space elevator guru,
jaxa (japanese space agency) department leader,
astronaut candidate,
cosmologist,
scientist with awards,
writer, educator, entertainer, enterpreneur etc.

but he and his career came under questioning by a group of online people. of course i need to mention myself and my post in turkish sourtimes, but more importantly a group of japanese interested people realized the importance of the situation and started a blog only dedicated to our researcher anılır. i was contacted through my post here and my sourtimes entry, and i witnessed as the thing unveiled.

it seemed his lies about his past exceeded paid bullshit awards, fake papers nowhere to be found and talk materials full of plagiarized material but also included a photoshopped picture of himself in an astronauts suit in the children's book he wrote.

he retaliated in his blog that this picture was a joke that got out of hand and he was going to reply to the allegations.

that never happened.

funny thing is right now that post is currently deleted which can be found in sourtimes.

even worse the japanese bloggers sent a big package to tokyo university with their findings. the investigations started on december and they ended this month (march). and for the first time in the university history a phd was annuled (see google translated japanese press release, and an english news)

this is a great day for the university and science, it more so because it underlines the importance of the common people's (translated people outside university) participation in it. not the academia, not the media, not the public, not the government (which funded him) and not even the tokyo university itself discovered it, but rather a group of japanese bloggers, getting partly help from turkish volunteers made this happen.

we are at a time of transformation, a transformation of not only communication but a paradigma shifting, revolution pending, change of means of production. don't think that i am extrapolating too much. as the information was commodified starting from 60s and used as a means of profit; now it is time to free it for the people.

the classical institutions which control the information and the people who take advantage of them through the titles and the credibility that are given are bound to be replaced by a more equal and efficient way of information production: that is the effort of a web community that can access the information freely, and share and proliferate it collaboratively.

p.s.: by the way turkish news channels were pretty quick to pick up on the story. here is a nice recap from december.

corrupting germany through history of islamic astronomy

2010-02-20T07:58:00.000-08:00

turkey is a great experiment of and case study for modernism in early twentieth century. i think "the little prince" is a book that is translated to most languages, and it perfectly captures the zeitgeist, with a footnote on turkish modernism. the asteroid of the little prince is discovered by a turkish astronomer but western audiences do not believe him due to his clothing, till a turkish dictator makes a law for clothing and with the switch of clothing the turkish astronomers ideas suddenly become acceptable (check it out yourself).

This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909. On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.

Grown-ups are like that...

Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.

for me this is a perfect example about how the perception of science as empirical, rational and progressive is misplaced. the current problems of science of course is not effected by things like dress code but rather community connections due center periphery relations, which puts the scientists of peripherial countries into a disadvantageous positions.

a bold proposition coming from a well respected western scientist is more likely to be accepted in the scientific community, rather than it coming from an outsider.

this shows there is a certain aspect of habitus culture in the community of science, to form collaborations and apply for grants, we abide by unwritten rules of communication. although it creates hindrances for the outsiders, it is not by itself such a bad thing but rather a fact.

as a scientist who wants to change the sexist and racist practices of science, and destroy the market oriented transformation aspect of it, my solution is to show the cultural aspect of science and learning science.

ok, my rationalizations are sometimes an overkill i admit. here is what i am doing as a practice, i will be giving a talk in mannheim (which supposedly has the most fraction of inhabitants with turkish background) and a giving a talk in the planetarium about history of islamic science.

it is called islamic science, since back at those days there were no nations and the culture was dominated by islam, the language of science was arabic. science was conducted intercontinentally, and most importantly the switch from greek idealism to empiricism happened during middle age, in an islamic geography.

i believe, like the change of our clothes, the switch in language was made in hopes of a paradigmatic shift in the minds of the masses, in effect only caused us to be severed from our history. the history of science we learn is written by west, completely disregarding the middle age transition from ancient greek concepts to enlightenment. in our history islam is disdained as backward and dogmatic.

it might be, but only the institution of the religion; not the culture of it, which included all colors of heterodoxy, and richness of literature, science and logic; even literary analysis of kur'an.

in summary i will talk about vahdeti mevcut as a basis form empirical research, i will talk about geometry, spherical trigonometry, first analog computers and more importantly the attempts to topple ptolemaic universe.

racism in europe, sexual discrimination in university

2010-02-20T06:31:00.000-08:00

i met a turkish astronomer yesterday. she'll be here for a year for a research project. it was not so hard for her to find me, since my name is out there and here i am bothering people by sending group mails for organizations. through the foggy and snowy landscape around the observatory i found my way to her building and we sat down for a while.

i was happy to meet another astronomer, sometimes i am jealous of my italian colleagues who can discuss their problems in their own language. one of them says it does not matter because the terms are english. i believe learning and discussing science in mother tongue is a hindrance we learn and practice the language of the master, we are stripped off of our culture and ability to express ourselves. one language as the international language might be practical but in everyday life usage the cultural particularities which defines us as a person is lost in the translation and the language spoken between colleagues is an empty receptacle for information transfer not a profound communication tool. that's why we are speaking a language with english grammar with italian and german words.

anyhow the reason i go through this is to explain the fact that my positive response of meeting another turkish astronomer was something personal and practical not ideological.

as opposed to an unknown max planck institute worker, who said "you are the first turkish astronomer in max planck," during a visit.

i would have understood if he said, "you are the first turkish person working here," which she was not. i wonder do they tell our swedish colleague, you are the first swedish student coming here. will they care if they had a norwegian postdoc, pointing out the exoticity of it.

i don't think so and this is not just pointing out an objective fact. facts are things we notice, as they pass through our filter of prejudices.

let me sketch it out for you, a female turkish astronomer is a positive thing because it means "we" are raising ourselves up from our backward stance. this is coming from a male professor who works in a country with currently one (in number: 1) female professor in astronomy.

it is well known that the fractions of female scientist in engineering and natural sciences in western, scientific central countries are far below the levels of greece, turkey and india. researchers are puzzled. i read this fact before but here is the words of wendy williams concerning the book they edited "why aren't more women in science?" :

The single most surprising finding was how much better women in some countries perform on math tests as compared to men in the United States and Canada! For Steve Ceci, the most surprising finding was that countries not known for their egalitarian attitudes toward women (for example, Turkey) produce more women computer scientists than do countries thought to be more modern and egalitarian (for example, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom).

i know for a fact that only in ankara the total number of female professors of astronomy is higher than whole germany. this is not considering the departments in istanbul, izmir, çanakkale and antalya.

i am not suggesting that turkey is doing "good science," after all we are at the periphery of science. but it shows where science is the science as we know it creates less female scientist, due to the competitive male aggressive aspect of it. in the center of science, doing good science not only means personal prestige but also means power through big projects and funds.

luckily enough last week there was a nature article about a relevant research that points out that american female astronomy graduate students suffer from "impostor syndrome" more than male phds. meaning they doubt their potential and scientific prowess more than their male counterparts. just to briefly give a cause it is due to the aggressive way of male communication (here i just quote my socialist feminist friends) that dominates the scientific research in which we need to present our results sweeping over the problematic analysis details and "hide" the shortcomings of our approach. there is no flexibility or space for doubt during a presentation, we give a complete, consistent and contingent picture and everybody claps, curtain closes.

another aspect is the so called cultural issue. maybe culturally turkey is not egalitarian (if we consider the female parliament members and violence against women) but institutionally is far ahead of germany in terms of class and sex diversity in higher education (i will write about this extensively later), to explain the institutional discrimination one only need to look at the current discussions about the law which plans to give money to stay at home mothers as opposed to subsidizing the kindergartens which are running out of space for children. this law will condemn women of germany to their homes, rather than to pursue a career, if they ever want to have a family. even worse this is done in the name of in christian values and concept of family.

let's be real, the west still has a long way to go to achieve equality. even worse, some of the rights that have been gained are thinned out. if a male scientist wants to pursue his career, moving from one city to another every 2-3 years till he gets a permanent position, it is more likely that he will find a stay at home partner, or a partner who would sacrifice her future for her family. the situation is far from symmetric for female scientists.

in summary, hell yes we have female astronomers in turkey. if as a professor you are happy for "my people" that we have a visiting female astronomer, and you think you are concerned about the equality of sexes in science, do us a favor and fix your own environment. push your government for egalitarian laws, and change the way western science is done.

to finish, i want to quote roman; a fun, loud and exteremely colorful astronomer colleague, "at least he did not say, you will be last turkish astronomer in max planck!"

racism in europe, an introduction

2010-01-16T17:51:00.000-08:00

a very bold title after all this time that i was absent. apparently the people who are the closest to me do not recognize the daily banal racism that i face everyday.

let me back up a bit. i am a turk studying in germany. i talk german worse than a first generation of immigrant (as my other "auslander(foreigner)" peers here in university) yet i am a "white turk" not racially (because i don't believe in such a thing) but rather classwise. i dress up like an average westerner and i almost have an american accent when i speak.

when people hear my strange accent they ask me where i come from and when they hear turkey i get multiple responses which can be bundled up in just one simple sentence.

"you don't look turkish."

there are variations, sometimes they shut up not to say anything inappropriate and i appreciate it. but the other end of the spectrum is is when they ask me whether i have relatives in germany (because as you know turks move in flocks).

in the median of both they ask me about the race of my parents, or try to rationalize that the turks they observe come from anatolia (which from my perspective i do too). but you see the problem is not the looks but the social sense of what turkish is. rude, uneducated, dangerous, unemployed, backward/conservative/islamic/misogynist/non-western. don't think i haven't heard these things. when you talk to people about the racist possibility of turkish houses being burned in ludwigshafen, they say there is no such evidence and the fire was self inflicted due to the faulty illegal electricity tapping.

according to my friends i should be happy about this comments, because this derives from the empirical evidence they have; meaning they only have uneducated, unintegrated turks around them. and i am showing them that it is possible for a turk to have a phd. they pleasantly surprised, they mean well and it means they don't have ill feelings towards me anyway.

i say bullshit.

does looks, meaning phenotype defines the way you behave? this is -fucking- race centric view of life, and if you think that just because of the color of someones skin, or the way he dresses up or talks he acts in a certain negative way, you are racist.

another friend who is learning turkish, after six months, asks me whether i have european ancestors and tells i don't look turks. i tell her, i quickly learned that german girls are not all tall and blonde. she tells me no, those are swedish. i was speechless of course.

when it comes to the empirical reason for this kind of thinking; i just want to say if you want to look and find stereotypical turks, you will see them. you don't walk around with a racemeter and asses what kind of race looks and dresses up like.

and finally as it comes to how i feel personally about it, malcolm x will give the answer for me:

"If you're afraid of black nationalism, you're afraid of revolution. And if you love revolution, you love black nationalism. To understand this, you have to go back to what the young brother here referred to as the house Negro and the field Negro back during slavery. There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes — they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food — what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved the master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master's house — quicker than the master would. If the master said, "We got a good house here," the house Negro would say, "Yeah, we got a good house here." Whenever the master said "we," he said "we." That's how you can tell a house Negro.

"This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He'll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about "I'm the only Negro out here." "I'm the only one on my job." "I'm the only one in this school." You're nothing but a house Negro."

-- Malcolm X

i might dress up and talk like the master, but i am not a fucking house negro/white turk that will accept and be happy about the racist discriminatory behavior of the master race.

free speech in university - a.k.a. how to fend off lying ministers

2009-10-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

very fresh news. vice prime minister arrives in ankara university to attend a mini conference on "democracy and human rights"

before he starts his talk, a student says he and the government violates human rights dailiy, be it the killing of uğur kıymaz 12 year old, a set up anti-terrorist operation; or the death of engin çeber under custody in prison due to beatings; or the lack of desire to lawfully release the cancer patient güler zere who is a political prisoner.

the students desire for him to leave is expressed with unending applause, nevertheless he appreciates the comments and continues;

Untitled from sendika.org on Vimeo.

not for very long.

the crowd go mad, as one student yells "you talk about democracy. what you understand from democracy is giving a examplary service medal to the likes of coronal ali ertosun," who was responsible for the prison hunger strike crack down of 2001, which resulted in 32 deaths (2 of them soldiers).

the bit i want to make note is that before hell breaks loose, cicek tells that when he is trying to be silenced, it is against democracy. imagine a situation where you know mainstream tv channels would not show the demonstrations, hence you need to have a handy cam so that the footage can be online, is that a equal representation of freedom of speech? as the media and information flow is consciously controlled to suppress free speech, is it really undemocratic to make the vice prime minister leave?

i would say no.

nobody needed to sit through his lies and clap in the end just because of common courtesy.

sustainability can be an excuse for revolution

2009-10-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

it is not unusual for bourgeouise to use intelilgentisia to rationalize profit maximization policies in the expense of lower class and the nature itself. the subject of sustainability is a different matter however, it is totally a gray area.

last weekend we were in a workshop where warner zittel, the publicizer of the peak oil concept joined us in for a weekend in frankonia to teach us all about non-sustainability non-renewable resources.

although his main area is oil and energy sector he talked about world models.

the main problem with the approach as all the data also points to, is the non-sustainability of the current idea of economic growth. patrick, god bless him noticed it right away in the beginning. the current ecological problem is a very core one, that was pointed out by marx and even before engels: the current concept of development is defined upon accumulation of wealth or simply capital. hence the bourgeoisie constantly searches for cheap resources, cheap labor, working longer hours with higher efficiency and new markets to sell their goods. due to the economy of scales, the more they produce, the cheaper it costs, hence they can raise their profits. this is the unending loop that we are pursuing in the current capitalist mode of production today in the expense of nature.

zittel showed us how we have reached the oil peak somewhere between 2007 and 2008 and from now on the production will be on a decline.

there is a more important point in all the analysis. there is such a thing called system analysis, in which world is taken as the system and the human factors are added on top, to see how does the economic activity of the man:

one of the shortcomings of the system analysis is that it does not take into account the national and class differences. which is not "very" interesting for the big picture.

the bottomline is that with declining resources, the world will overshoot its capacity of production and population. because of this, the simulations show that, production will decline, due to pollution and lack of resources to feed people, people will die population will decrease.

this is apparent even with an optimistic view on resources and resource extraction:

the solution offered by the limits of growth people is population and pollution control, productive equilibrium. this will generate not an exponentially increasing human growth but rather equilibrium in both economy, production and population. hence, the argument is, progress in technology can be harnessed for quality for human life, rather than growth:

these were all copyrights of meadows, randers and meadows work with world3 from "limits of growth."

my point is, this already been said more than a hundred years ago in the "manifesto of the communist party" anyway. but now the data even shows this and worries people. what needs to be done is to change the definition of what growth is and realize the problem itself cannot be solved without changing the core of the problem, the capitalist mode of production and the meta fetishism that drives the bourgeoisie to indefinitely "grow."

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. (...) It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party

a comment about the role of phd comics in grad culture

2009-10-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

i sent a mail to Jorge Cham, our very own phdcomics artist. i am still considering to throw a shoe at him (figuratively speaking) when he comes to heidelberg next week.

Dear Jorge Cham,

I am a PhD student of Astronomy in Germany and as understandably, a
fan of PhD Comics. I believe your strips not only describe and
crystallize the situation of a PhD student but brings the students
together in their anguish. As the career development guy says[*], the
strips resonate with PhD students all over the world, due to the
common adversity. But make no mistake this mail is not simply a fanboy
expression of admiration but rather a hate mail aimed at you as an
artist who is the most important representative of the graduate
students in contemporary culture.

Your strips decipher what we care about most dearly and fear the most;
to sacrifice of our personal lives, the insignificance of our very
specialized research, built upon this shaky ground the competition and
the pretense surrounding it. This simply means, what PhD Comics does
best is to expose the exploitation in the "industry of science."

You are an artist who depict the reality in such a way that the crowds
find it compelling. This certain group is the main "labor force" of
the "industry," and should be the most educated minority of the
community but nevertheless they look at your strips when they feel
frustrated and then continue with their depressing routine and then
take some. Sometimes these are so terrible things that they don't even
make their way in your strips; like mobbing, sexual harassment or
being plagiarized by your superior.

What makes this mail an actual hate mail is my feeling that you
overlook your responsibility as an artist and even worse (again as the
career development guy says[*]) normalizing the miserable existence of
the graduate students. Your depiction of the PhD student is subaltern,
inertial and in most cases disempowered which, I agree, is not far
from reality and almost an exact description. The problem is, this
kind of crystallized depiction only furthers the learned helplessness
of the individuals. I was involved in arguments where PhD comic strips
were shown as evidence to keep the graduate school and the University
as it is because it is as it is, hence normal and acceptable.

Currently we are profiting from the glimpses you present of the big
gears that drive the science industry. These are things that we,
students do not have the opportunity to experience personally, your
work in exposing the inner workings (like the science vs. nature
strips) is highly appreciated. But keep in mind there are small and
almost unknown struggles happening in different cities and campuses in
the name of local grad students, be it for unionization or fair
employment, or to struggle for a just set of rules for graduate
school. I realize personally, it is our responsibility to point these
things to you, to the public and basically make them more visible.

In the final analysis I can neither judge you or suggest you a road
map. But what I could tell is having a political structure in the back
of an artist mind makes all the difference between pure entertainment
of daily ordeals or art that shifts the perception of the spectators.
Like the difference between contemporary hip-hop which barely will be
remembered and Gil Scott-Heron's spoken word which will echo over
generations through his words "the revolution will not be televised."

Have nice travels, and hopefully see you when you come to Heidelberg
(if I can find a spot in the auditory).

Ferayebend, Heidelberg**

[*] "The message of the presentation really resonated with our
students. The graduate school journey can be extremely isolating, and
Jorge Cham's presentation and comics normalize the experience and
provide solace and humor.“
-John Nonnamaker, Graduate Student Career Development, M.I.T., from
"the PhD lectures" testimonials http://www.phdcomics.com/speaking/

** i used my real name in the actual mail, of course.

2009-10-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

if i don't write right now, i won't be able to ever. i came back from a stressful vacation, just because. my choice of not having drama in my life worked and i started worrying about work due to lack of problems.

also realizing i won't be able to go turkey to work (ok, maybe istanbul), i came back to heidelberg with great motivation due to a destroyed ego. mevlevi acolytes go into 40 days of seclusion just before their acceptance. if accepted they start out by cleaning, cooking and washing in the temple. before you give up your your property and everything worldly, you first need give up on your ego. it is self emancipating.

i met a lot of interesting people, and discussed a lot of interesting things during my vacation. from open source science to a cultural conscientious objection.

but before i write about them all, i need to leave for a workshop on sustainability. meaning, let's not listen to karl marx, and find ways to maintain conspicuous consumption, but this time reborn as environmentally responsible. physicist are collaborators in this story (sorry patrick!)

Tolga Yarman (Wiki)Resolution

2009-09-16T00:35:00.000-07:00

one of the main drives behind me starting this blog was my anger against the self promoters of science. one that stand out throughout my posting was of course our infamous tolga yarman and more importantly his actions in editing wikipedia.

you may have followed his ordeals through my blog, but finally after he was listed for deletion by the wiki user aadagger, pretty seamlessly he was found not notable enough to be in wikipedia and his page was deleted. now noone will be able start the page tolga yarman.

this is not a triumph of `good science' but rather the proof that opensource information is more democratic. money and power to have a press release is not enough to be mentioned in cyberspace. there are democratic checks and balances.

the right to be lazy and the vacation deceit

2009-08-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

there have been a gap in the blog for our revolution, because it is time to come back home.

travelling is a marvellous thing. i don't know how you are but i am addicted to sensory input, either music or reading the news or watching a something on the side. this leads to basically not being able to finish any kind of work, mail the friends that you are missing out on, and more importantly have time to think.

sad that we need to say that we need "reflection."

we basically have a lot of things to "do" and not enough time.

augusto boal put it the best, "when you are in prison you are trapped in space, but you realize you are no longer trapped in time you are not bound by the pace of the daily life." (my words)

the conquest of time is not a new concept, that's what the bourgeoisie does, which the best reactionary example to that fact is the fight for the 8 hour working day. and for you dear young scientist, remember the adverts you saw about time management in your university.

anyhow, to return to the main point; traveling gives you the unique chance to be in limbo of boal's prison and freedom at the same time. while travelling although you are trapped in the receptacle of the means of transportation (train, bus, plane, boat) you are actually going to your planned destination. hence during the trip, we are partly free in time, with a time to reflect and think and realize all the things we hope to do and think or more importantly postpone the things that are dear to us and most humane.

it is time of "re-flection" or most probably deflection, deflection from the things that distracts us which we call daily life. deflection of a system that normally surrounds us and binds us in time to work be "productive."

i believe in the right to be lazy, and the best place to do it is while traveling.

(i wrote these while watching ghandi, i cut myself some slack from total meditative)

a critique of economy of intellectual property, an introduction

2009-08-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

it is time, as we the scientist need to acknowledge the fact that there is an economy behind our rather solipsist defined "search for reality" practice of science. Not only a whole industry of "tool building," is out there what is worse, our intellectual property gets owned by scientific journals so that they can sell subscriptions.

this discourse is motivated by a recent phdcomic.

they argue that they are providing the important service of deciding what is "cutting edge research." imagine the journals that affect you getting a job, continuing research are basically setting the "contemporary trends" in contrary to what most of the scientists think of as the science they need to pursue. i don't know what my molecular biology and biophysics friends think but my astronomer and physicist colleagues are fed up and disillusioned by the choices these highly regarded magazines make.

and get this, they are getting paid for this. be they are non-profit organizations or not.

here comes another challenger, called Public Library of Sciences. they support ideologically all articles should be publicly accessible and they publish online journals. they emerged from a very effective public relations stunt, which was triggered by a boycott of journals to make their archives public.

now they are considered to be a new business model in which they rely on scientist charges and do almost the same kind of editorial "filtering" that the high brow journals do.

i became interested in the progress of scientific publishing which not only affects but defines most of our lives. and this is a first post in this series. and i want to finish with a post from phdcomics phorum.

If I had any editorial input at The Onion, I would do an article about Nature announcing a new spin-off journal: Nature Horseshit. There'd be quotes from Nobel laureates about all the horseshit research they had that would be perfect for the journal, etc, etc.

excerps from the miserable life

2009-08-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

this week i had my birthday.

i hate birthdays, not because of this stupid fear of getting old but the significance of earth's movement around the sun escapes me.

i hated till last year, i came home exactly on my birthday. i tried to spend time with friends but it didn't work. i knew "home" wasn't home anymore. the life of a scientist, is the life of a heimatlos. who we have are each other, and i truly appreciate it, after seeing people leaving one by one.

i feel i came to the absolute climax of my phd experience. the closest i am to people, the most fun i had with my work, the most relaxed i am in heidelberg. and unfortunately everything will be downhill from now on.

from now on the job search, the thesis stress and separation from true comrades one by one start.

it is the middle thesis crisis.

i am happy and sad at the same time.

no i truly appreciate the friends i made here, how many nice people surround me.

nevertheless they cannot understand that i am a kurdish man and i can never be a veteran

2009-08-08T17:36:00.001-07:00

i come home after a great night with dear HD friends, simon and kelly. spending time with them is always very intellectually fulfilling and more importantly fun.

near the end of the night i somehow brought up the topic -as always- to my desire to be a conscientious objector and to not do my mandatory military service. it is always grim, and since i am not doing anything for it i always feel like a poser.

and as i come home to listen to a bit of black steel in the hour chaos:

i saw the news in the sourtimes that
a) 25000 people attended a memorial of a pkk militant in hakkari.
b) also people were discussing that mothers of pkk militias met the mothers of the soldiers who died to call for peace. (the article in turkish is here)

some (actually two but they are enough) wanted the people who attended the funeral to simply be killed by the government.

after discussing a similar issue with my friends just tonight about a funeral service about a canadian soldier, and how they unknowingly interrupted the memorial as they jogged through the crowd, these stories and the responses to them really agitated me.

basically the father of the dead pkk militant asked for the guns to stop and the pseudo strike in the city hakkari to end, while the statists in sourtimes asked for -basically- more blood in the name of the martyrs and the sovereignty of the holy turkish nation.

my HD friends felt bad interrupting the funeral and on top of they felt guilty of feeling bad because the soldier died in afganistan as a volunteer officer, i.e simply he died in an unjust war. imagine my situation, to be pushed to support and participate in an unjust war, and before doing that living beside the people which support blood and death. glorification of death for the country is one thing that i can and may empathize but glorification of killing is unacceptable.

secrecy or flat out evil?

2009-08-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

i have been accused of secrecy before. both in sourtimes and by tolga yarman. people who think my ideas are atrocious, think that i am only doing these because i am a tricky, sneaky bastard.

well in reality these people should wonder and consider how i am in real life. let's take away the fact that people are so getting used my radicalism that they are in the border of not listening to me ever, but at the same time i seem to reflect upon a strange aura, even in a scientific background.

this is from the conference proceeding i received two weeks ago by mail:

guess which one i am? ok i learned afterwards that they showed this picture in the conference dinner, alongside with other "funny" pictures but i mean, wtf? this is the actual proceeding publication.

as you can guess i wasn't very social this conference.

guest log: (...) a giant leap for exploitation

2009-08-01T02:02:00.000-07:00

One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
Destiny has its funny ways: 40 years from that first legendary moonwalk in the year of the much more terrestrial departure of the "moonwalker"...
Two different but strong symbols of one same culture: the american dream, the possibility of reaching the impossible, of physically touching the sky starting from nothing.

The culture also where things are not what they seem. A black man that looks white, an old man that wants to be an eternal teenager. A science mission that nobody will ever remember as scientific but that only served to the purpose of showing the strength not only of a country but of a whole political, economical and ethical system. A mission so similar to a hollywood movie to be surrounded by the myth of a setup.

One giant leap for mankind, but in what direction? It is undeniable that that day the whole western world held its breath and dreamed of whole new frontiers of knowledge and freedom. The movement of the students, then in its most intense and creative years, surely dreamed of a different freedom that seemed only a step away that night in front of the television as well as the next day in the streets with thousands of people.

But there is probably no better symbol than the mission to the moon to relate the exploitation of scientists and of the concept itself of science to a more general defense of a political and economical model. That was not a step for mankind, but a step ahead of the Western block with respect to the Eastern one, not a sign of unity but of division, not of brotherhood but of predominance. And all this defended (at least waiting to see whether it worked or not) under the shield of "science" and "progress".

The whole rush to space, as the cold war in general, gave to the great science that was produced in those years on both sides, its character of competition and suspect and secrecy, and highlighted the necessity for scientist to accept the concept of "production" to survive.
The cosmonauts...a childhood dream or one more shiny commercial?

- ailu

taverns in ottoman empire

2009-07-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

my dear ultra progressive friends were surprised to hear that alcoholic drinks were served in ottoman taverns.

i was telling them the story of the name tequila; tek-i-ala (the good single shot), from the mouth of a tavern keeper of a 17th century konstantiniyye (istanbul) from ihsan oktay anar's book, kitab-ül hiyel.

then they interrupt and ask me, "wasn't drinking alcohol forbidden?" and i responded "yes but do you obey every law?"

the point of my rhetorical question is not that apparent but i think it closely resembles the fact that we are still continuing to download and copy illegally, violating copyright laws. the state either gave up on trying or simply turning the blind eye. and i think the situation was similar in most of the ottoman history.

i did some fact checking and it seems non-muslims had the right to sell and trade alcohol in ottoman empire. and there were specific taxes for selling alcohol and owning a tavern which serves alcohol.

i admit that it is a valid question to ask, but still prohobitionism is such a hard state philosophy to maintain that it is almost absurd for me to think that there were time in the history in old turkey without the culture of drinking while eating.

was "whitey" really on the moon?

2009-07-20T01:33:00.001-07:00

today is the day of the moon landing, but for some people the question still remains: were "whitey" really on the moon?

for the ones who are following my blog (who like 3 people?), remember that i mentioned the "whitey on the moon" by gil scott heron. who criticized the fact that scientific advance on space travel advanced despite and probably due to the inequality and poverty in U.S. (USSR also).

some are actually not even sure about that:

you probably heard the conspiracy theories that the apollo 11 mission is the greatest hoax in the history, because U.S. government taped everything in a stage.

well, while writing my last post i realized that the lunar laser ranging experiments that measure the distance between earth and moon makes use of the reflectors that have been put on the moon by apollo 11 mission.

sorry to disappoint the skeptics but scientists are using the machinery that is set up on the moon by the apollo 11 astronauts. to be fair, the signal that arrive from the reflectors are very weak. and it is very hard to precisely aim for the reflector, a lot of painstaking analysis goes into finding the exact photons that bounce off the reflector.

coincidentally i found this guardian article from last month, reporting the cancellation of funding of mcdonald laser ranging station at fort davis in texas. national science foundation apparently does not find the science case strong. apparently laser experiments will continue in the future at apache point in texas and observatoire de la côte d'Azure in france.

p.s. thanks to giulia for giving me the idea for this post, and claudia for excessive ranting about the most ridiculous things on the moon.

tolga yarman revolutions part 1

2009-07-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

it took me a long time to answer dear professor yarman, but to be honest i did not expect an answer or a rebuttal of such a degree of psychosis going even to the extent that i am a personal enemy of his. presently i am feeling more and more like otisabi facing ajdar and saying "i wish you were acting, but i see now that you are real."

now i am really sorry from yarman that i have upset him and caused him personal agony to an extent that he felt the urge to give out his misinformed concept of what wikipedia is, and tell that i am manipulated by his personal enemies. i know turkish science politics are revolving around the insignificant prepherial scientific topics but i would never would have guessed i would be part of one. and i am so glad that i am far away from turkey and the social structure of the turkish university.

having said that he needs understand that he has the responsibility of a professor to uphold the ethics and behaviourism of what a normative scientific community expects from him, i.e. not to come out with borderline fringe theories in front of the turkish public and more importantly without international recognition or discussion. unfortunately i am the only physicist with half a brain to read his articles and commented on them publicly.

point 1: okan university press conference title read: "turkish scientist debunked einstein's theory(türk bilim adamı einstein’in teorisini çürüttü)"

are you aware of the press release that your university published, if yes why did you let them use this title? if you knew perfectly well that this sensational approach was taken, why are you commenting on my blog that you never intended to disprove Einstein:

"My aim was not to disprove Einstein, at all. It was, to understand his ideas and results... In fact, I have no problem with the Special Theory of Relativity) STR, to which, I hope, I contributed to some extent."

if you are honestly behind what you are saying, why are you manipulating the public, or collaborating with the manipulation of the public?

point 2: your papers are hard to reach

this is not a question of individual inconvenience but a problem of visibility and verifiability. if you are publishing your work in obscure journals and non peer reviewed conference proceedings how do you expect the scientific community to respond to your claims? i am not an individual but i work in a university institute and the university do not have a springer account to these specific articles and i don't blame them. since looking at your articles ignore the most basic principles of special theory of relativity (STR), one wonders how can these journals expect the institutions to pay for this kind of lack of quality.

and by the way i reached your most important articles as one can see in my sourtimes article and i was explicit in your mistakes.

anyhow according to this point i challenge you to submit your papers to the physical review letters, which i and honestly most of the community adheres as the reliable journal for physics even before approaching the high level of e.g. nature.

point 3: your papers have factual and computational mistakes

in your blog reply, you mention that i did not "pin down" your mistakes. it is simply not true, i don't know what did you read but in my criticism which was simply a click away (unlike your papers which are in obscure conference proceedings). in my comments in sourtimes (which is under the title görelilik ilkesinin çürütülmesi [the disproof of relativity]) your mistakes and more importantly how you did end up with correct results from wrong starting point was explained explicitly.

to make the point clear to the bystanders, yarman suggests that weak equivalence principle is not satisfied, which translates as a difference between inertial and gravitational masses. he further argues that this effect is due to the gravitational binding energy, which is the reason of the centrifugal acceleration. and the velocities induced by this acceleration translates into a "mass defect" as some misinterpretations of STR suggest (which lev okun talked wrote about how wrong this misconception is, extensively). from yarman's annales foundation louis de broglie (2004, v 29, no 3) article page 487:

in his "theory" due to the gravitational accelerations effect on the mass, the equivalence of these masses rather depend on the velocity and he proposes some ways to measure it.

i am really sorry Tolga but your "theory" is debunked just starting from your results, i.e. measuring the difference between inertial and gravitational masses. your predictions should have been observed since the reference you give Braginsky Panov experiment reaches the precision of $$10^{-12}$$ which is lower than what you propose $$2.6\times10^{-12}$$. even worse you suggest that only $$10^{-4}$$ precision is reached in the lunar laser ranging experiment while $$10^{-8}$$ is needed but unfortunately the precision of the lunar laser experiments to measure the acceleration differences of moon vs earth reach $$5\times10^{-13}$$ surpassing far above the limit you need to prove your theories. in your defense, i think you are confusing the weak equivalence with strong equivalence, that is applied for the gravitating bodies and related closely to the experiments which search for changes in gravitational constant $$G$$.

i encourage all the readers to check the williams, newhall, dickey, 1996, physical review d. article "relativity parameters determined from lunar laser ranging" abstract, which includes the summary of the results and is public.

without even showing the problems of conceptualizations and the absurdities of your reasoning, your theory already discredited.

i will return the conceptual misunderstandings of yarman, and his computational errors.

as a preliminary analysis, i don't want to personalize this case, i hope he doesn't take spite in what i present here, since now it should be clear that this is not a personal attack but rather based on facts. i took great interest in this case simply due to the fact that yarman by his actions constitutes what is wrong in science today. publicity without substantiality or verifiability.

note: i am sorry for the latex typesetting, i am in the process of installing mathtex.

physics of oppresion, an intro

2009-07-19T03:25:00.000-07:00

this week was a strangely busy week with less science and more politics. we had, as astronomers, two evaluations in heidelberg. one for our relatively new astronomy institute and the other for the doctoral program.

what was amazing was the involvement of the students, while in once they had the urge to only nod, in the other evaluation people were more active.

yet again i am cryptic.

let's go back to the basics. everything started on last sunday, gisella called on my bullshit about oppression (based on my lord of the rings analysis), and then i had to really conceptualize.

the temporary employment of the science workers is the basis of the class struggle.

PhD students and postdocs are the workforce of the professors and directors of institutes who are more involved in delegating work, administrative efforts and fund finding.

i first enunciate the problem with the analysis that is the directors do not directly own the means of production, but the access to the means production. computing facilities, high quality data, access to collaborators and most importantly the credibility embedded inside the community or the specific "highly regarded" institute.

before i become highly relativist and holistic, i just say that the increase of huge project demands the employment of the low level scientists to do the fordist production line type of work like coding data analysis pipeline, building instruments and varying the physical parameters of a code for specific problems.

this industrious productive nature alienates the majority of the young researchers from physics and/or astronomy. whom work with the desire that one day they will be professors and good scientists, and the only reason they are disillusioned with their work is that they are not smart enough they are not hard working enough. post-docs/proletariat live with the dream that one day they will become professor/bourgeois themselves.

the simple statistics show that there is not enough permanent position for each post-doc. hence we move with the mobility scheme (again one of the aims of the bologna process) from one job to the other, so that the our bosses can tap into the competitive international market of educated workforce. and we "the educated" don't even have the collective bargaining rights of a common factory worker, because science is such a fucking individualist/competitive enterprise. the nature should be investigated via collaboration, not by competition. that's why our papers are publicly accessible, unlike the patents of the pharmaceutical companies.

the point was, is and will be raised that as the educated class of the society with relatively high wages we can not be oppressed. i will make a loop argument, pointing out the comment i face everytime i propose change:

"our director cannot change anything because it is university rule."
"the university cannot do anything because it is national policy."
"the ministry cannot do anything because it is a european policy."

this kind of empathizing with the position of power really pisses me off. especially if it is argued to curb the action for demanding the rights, no matter how trivial this may look to "the hunger of manual laborers."

i will rather prefer if freire finishes instead of me by the pedagogy of the oppressed:

"The “fear of freedom” which afflicts the oppressed, a fear which may equally well lead them to desire the role of oppressor or bind them to the role of oppressed, should be examined. One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription.

(...)

"The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion."

-Paul Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 1

tolga yarman reloaded

2009-07-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

with my utter inexperience in blogging i haven't noticed dear prof. Yarman's comments in my blog. even worse i had the nerve to edit the wikipedia article about him. of course he needed to fix my "utterly biased" edits, which weren't my words but doç. dr. cesimcan delidumrul's.

you will remember Yarman from his fringe theory on gravitation and relentless publicity stunts, moreover my former article on him.

here is parts of what he left in my talk board, named "ANSWER, TO PARTICULARLY, THE PERSON HIDING HIS NAME, AND CALLING HIMSELF FERAYEBEND, by Prof. Tolga YARMAN, July 13th, 2009." the "open letter starts out with "dear editor:"

Some people seem to be carried away so much to imagine that, I or my students, have started out this page. As you know, this is not true at all. In fact, I found it out, totally unexpectedly... I was flattered and happy, of course, when I crossed it... Chiefly, to convey as briefly and clearly as possible, the peculiarities of the approach, I have developed with my Colleagues, only then, I was indeed enthusiastic to add few lines to the text, thus already, so skillfully prepared by Wikipedia.
(...)
Ferayebend continues on saying

- I have added this criticisms into the article however I believe that mention of such a disregarded press conference by the scientific community is undue weight in the article, and should be taken out completely. The lack of international interest on Yarman further shows that this biography article is more appropriate for Turkish Wikipedia and not the English version. Ferayebend (talk) 17:18, 4 July 2009 (UTC).

What is this? Who is he? He does not even have the courage of revealing himself. Who does manipulate him? We talk about experimental factualities (and even we may not have, were we proposing merely a novel theory, this would have been quite fine, but we do present sımultaneously experimental results), and this person, considers him, as a universal arbiter, having no respect to other stand points, no respect to hearing, no respect to defense, no respect to trial, no respect to appeal, to establish about our work, and more audaciously, about our personalities, such an absolute outrageous verdict.

Moreover, I was not even alone (I could of course be, but I was not), when we conveyed our results to the public. Why then, according to him, I self publicize, and not the others?.. To me, clearly, Ferayebend’s behavior is just not normal. He is so much carried away with malice that, finally while linking his behavior to his earlier paraphernalia, he could not avoid, but makes the channel leading to his headquarter caught, red-handed.

There are thousands of statements processed by Google, on our work, and he thinks, his ill and only judgment, must take place alone, in the page, Wikipedia kindly offered to our work...

I am afraid, his behavior is not even honest, for while he cites a criticism, he seems to forget about our replies to it, and more importantly, he does not even refer to our response to his own criticisim (http://marxistsinspace.blogspot.com/2009/05/intoduction-to-tolga-yarman.html). He behaves as if, there is no such reply.

Wikipedia, should not allow such a misconduct...

In case that link’s content is lost, I will be happy to provide the copy I have of it. It may in effect not stay there for long!..

It is sad that, a singular pathological behavior, such as that of Ferayebend, can spoil, the flattering text, Wikipedia team originally prepared, which unfortunately now is mostly plucked. The family feelings are gone, the tonalities are gone, the original beauty is gone, and basically the essence of the work we achieved is gone.

The reply I have sent to Feraybend's criticism (http://marxistsinspace.blogspot.com/2009/05/intoduction-to-tolga-yarman.html), I hope, will allow Wikipedia team to judge things better.

Let me state one last thing, as now the professor of many dozens of full professors, with regards to Ferayebend, who presents himself as an astrophysicist. Let him detach himself at once, from his malevolent manipulator (and I am afraid I can guess who he is), and considers seriously our work. He may very well pin down that we are mistaking. This would not constitute any problem for us, scientists… We extend our gratitude, to anyone showing righteously that we are mistaking... But if Ferayebend cannot say anything concrete against our work, and results, then I should like to invite him, and people like him, no matter how biased they may be at the beginning, to contribute to the line of research we have so painfully drawn, over the years.
(...)
I can understand envy. I can understand jealousy. I can understand hard feelings. I can understand regret, for what we have done could have been done by many, throughout the passed very many decades … But pathology should be avoided.

(...)

I would like to be accorded by Wikipedia, the possibility of adding references to our work, that has appeared in respected journals, and substantiate the text with regards to the explanation of our work.

But first of all, I would like to ask Wikipedia team, to please reorganize this page, considering first the very original lovely text, they have so kindly offered, and the few additions and citations I made to it, and to protect it from, shameful, unscientific attacks.

Note please that even sentences related to my beloved parents, family, and son, and furthermore now, the names of my collaborators, had been utterly chopped.

I thank anyway, the Wikipedia team, with all my heart, for having considered my biography and work, seriously.

Tolga Yarman, Ph.D., Nuclear Engineering, 1972, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor, T.C. Okan University, Istanbul, Turkey

so it gets better and better. i owe him a response yes, but before that i need to convey in english what were my criticisms, which he failed to reply.unfortunately on saturday.

black powa

2009-07-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

after getting into the black power "spoken word" beginnings of hip hop, i became obsessed with the movement. it is very instructive, not only to investigate the marxist roots of a racial based movement but also the propaganda strength of the art that derived from it.

here is the current marxist brothers, the coup. i am happy because i never was able to get into public enemy, so 80s.

and 5 million ways to kill a c.e.o. must be the marching song of the masses:

"black powa to the motha-fucking people" - sara suten seti

the song feraye

2009-07-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

the people who are reading my blog (who like two?) may still be wondering what is this song feraye?

it is the name of the girl who is the daughter of the leader of the nomads (yörük). feraye and the son of the patriarch of the nearby city have this thing going but the nomads don't like this idea. finally to be with the man she loves she runs away to the mountains but her brother finds her and takes her out.

the lyrics of the songs are written from the perspective of the son of the patriarch.

ferayedir kızın adı feraye
yar yandım aman esmer yarim de
haydi yandım feraye
türkmen de kızı katar etmiş mayayı
yar yandım aman esmer yarim de
haydi yandım feraye

rinni rinna rinni rinna
rinanay rinanay da
aman da yandım feraye

demirciler demir döğer tunç olur of
yar yandım aman esmer yarim de
haydi yandım feraye
sevip sevip ayrılması güç olur of
yar yandım aman esmer yarim de
haydi yandım feraye

rinni rinna rinni rinna
rinanay rinanay da
aman da yandım feraye

i want to translate but it only has nice imagery of how much he loves the dark haired, turkmen girl feraye.

in the final analysis, the song is terribly misogynist and male oriented as my favorite turkish news portal bianet points out. nevertheless the song i love, the descriptions are vivid, and the culture is something you never run away from, it is a curse and a blessing.

the most turkophobic strory of all times: lord of the rings

2009-07-07T05:37:00.000-07:00

islamaphobia and ethnic antagonism towards turks is a serious problem in europe due to the high immigration rates. negative stereotypes and scare propaganda of conservatives is deeply entrenched in the western european society, moreover this is neither an effect of a sudden reaction nor a contemporary event. the demonization of turks has been apparent in the western culture since the conquest of constantinople, or konstantiniyye as referred by the turks namely the current istanbul.

ethnical identity awaiting its appearence in industrial age, has been subsumed into the islamic one. the antagonism against the islam, a sympton of the turk and european relationship, is described as best in edward said's orientalism;

the European doctrine "turned Islam into the very epitome of an outsider against which the whole of European civilization from the Middle Ages on was founded."

hence it is not abnormal to expect the negative picture of the turk would be apparent in the art and literature of the times. from victor hugo's "…to destroy the written word you need only a torch and a Turk." from the hunchback of notre dame to shakespeare:

"And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turbanned Turk Beat a Venetian, and traded the state I took by throat the circumcised Dogge And smote him thus." (Othello)

"What! Think you we are Turks or infidels? Or that we would, against the form of law, Proceed thus rashly in the villain’s death." (Richard III)

"Wine Loved I deeply, dice dearly, and in woman out-paramoured the Turk." (Edgar in King Lear)

"Why, Tis a boisterous and a cruel style, A style for challengers; why she defies me, Like Turk to Christian." (Rosalind in As You Like It)

with the decline of the ottoman empire, the evidence of this negative picture disappears but the symbol of the turks as the perfect antagonist survives the collective unconsciousness. although the signified is always the same as "inhumane, uncivilized, barbarian, ruthless, brutal," or simply "the other," the template of it always remains the same as "the turk." the subtlety of the appearance of the turk is hidden in the implications of any western work and here i will give you the best example of modern turkish antagonism or simply turkophobia, the lord of the rings.

in the widely acclaimed work of j.r.r. tolkien, a group of so called "heroes" are depicted as the defenders against the evil forces of sauron, who is after the power ring. and the demi god sauron hopes to accomplish his goal through his evil vassals from mordor, and also through the born again evil sorcerer saruman. all these symbols simply boils down to the antagonism against the current immigration wave of the turks and the threat of loss of identity that europe faces due to that. these will be all the more evident as i disassemble the subtle signs one by one.

the most apparent theme of the story is the ring, some may say ring symbolizes simply the eternity like the simple circle but we need to acknowledge social message behind it. as the occams razor would dictate, to the modern world the ring symbolizes the marriage, and in this case the marriage between turkish males and foreign females. the importance of marriage is the realization of the bonds that are created between the cultures in the smallest unit possible, and the reproduction related to the traditional concept of marriage. in the mind of the white european clearly the key to power in europe is definitely assimilation through marriage. the scare of their women and further generations losing their european identity through the persistent search of the turk for marriage, so that he can become a citizen while keeping his culture intact.

the physical denotation of the powers of the ring proves this point even more. not only it symbolized the will to power through marriage, but it depends on the will and capacity of the holder also, which is the main reason why frodo baggins is the main protector of it, since he is "less corruptible." what does less corruptable mean in a world where domination over females guarantees the survival or extermination of a culture? one very distinct hint comes from the self dependent experience of the wearer, e.g. frodo becoming invisible while the others shying away from wearing the ring since stronger effects/corruption are expected. the simple meaning of the invisibility is nothing other than the disinterest of women to the passive married man.

to explain; imagine if you walk in a bar and as a guy you have no interest in ladies, what happens? you suddenly become invisible. even if a female could be interested in you with the realization of your married status you suddenly become invisible. but imagine the reverse: if you are a man who is after sweet booty, you exploit the common knowledge of women's attraction to married man (which is even responsible of marissa tomei's crash on george costanza), and put on a ring before starting your hunt for feminine prey. the basis of the lack of will to power (will to get females) is clearly proved for the case of frodo baggins, who is clearly gay. hence the power of the ring is a direct reference to the greater corruption that frodo's heterosexual comrades are afraid of.

the virility of the easterners are clearly observed throughout the story. the production (as opposed to reproduction) of the uruk hai is a clear example of the scare of the great young population of turkey that the european union is so scared of, which was one of the arguments against eu admission of the turkey, since a greater population would bring about greater seats in the european parliament. we observe this amazement in the quantity more vividly in peter jackson's production as frodo and sam approach mordor and see the vast armies marching north.

as we approach with the protagonist to mordor, another important symbol is emerged, the phallic tower. center to the industrious and productive nature of the invasion, the tower is the epitome of the phallic desire to dominate the civilized west. now we not only have two gay characters aiming to reach our great phallic symbol but they run into the danger of temptation, nevertheless this danger is more apparent by the fact that arwen or any other female compatriots are left behind.

the phallic tower is important also in another aspect as it holds the very vaginal eye of the sauron. this nature of the eye is expressed by the descriptions of our male characters enthrallment by it. no one can look directly to the eye and be in control, they are more or less in day dreaming state. this is simply the realization of male mystification with the vagina, as both the object of desire and the safe cavity where the male comes from and separated eternally from.

now we observe a dichotomy in the story, on one side we have the raw description of the aims of the evil "other" as the desire to dominate feminine west; simply the phallic tower hosting the vaginal eye. and on the other side we have the symbol of the conservative concept of family, the ring, that might be acceptable, understandable and even adoptable by the western white males. but nevertheless its corruption and danger very decipherable. hence the quest of the heroes is to simply dissolve this dichotomy and make the true desire of the east once and for all crystallize.

finally with the destruction of the ring, the danger disappears and the emasculated west is once and for all free from the threat of the virile and masculine turks. the symptom of the destruction of the male symbols in the story is becoming clear as the boderline homosexual, emasculated male friendship of frodo and sam in overcoming all the obstacles is overemphasized.

as a final note, one of the greatest popular literary work of the modern time is not only infested with ethnic phobia but based on cultural despise and hatred, but more importantly without the existence of turks, there couldn't have been this fear and incidentaly no lord of the rings. for me this is all the more argument that culturally turkish people are connected to the west and europe is dependent on their hatred and fear of the turks as "the other," to generate and sustain their own values and art, which simply means europe and eu needs turkey.

----

p.s. i stole some stuff from here.

Sivas Massacre

2009-07-04T04:28:00.000-07:00

it seems i have lost my inertia in posting and to make things worse i am accumulating too many ideas.

anyhow the important topic of this week was the anniversary of the sivas massacre, in which 37 progressive intellectuals and young activists were burned alive by fundamentalist in sivas hotel madımak. on 2nd of july 1993, intellectuals, artists and activists gather in sivas to commemorate alevi[*] cultural icon pir sultan abdal. the reknowned and subversive writer aziz nesin was the most important guest who incidentally at the time started translating salman rushdie's satanic verses to turkish. frictions between the progressive guests and the conservative (fundamentalist to be more exact) locals were expected, even before the organization, as the organizers received threats, but the contraversy that surrounds the incident which led to the massacre still continues which were discussed this week in sourtimes, excessively and thoroughly.

The first aspect of the controversy stems from the local newspaper headline "are they selling snails in a muslim neighbourhood?" the article that condemns aziz nesin's controversial claims on islam. Apparently the news with the verbatim headline was served to the local newspaper "hakikat" from the sivas police headquarters, as claimed by sourtimes. after the friday prayers, the fundamentalist crowd seemed to be agitated and they moved off to the town hall chanting "mayor resign," "sivas will the grave for aziz nesin." after chanting, gathering and a standoff stone exchange from the crowd of turkish folk singer arif sağ's listeners, the elected head of municipality urged the crowd to dissolve before their actions hurt their cause.

the second unknown about the incident is as the speech seem to work and crowd dissolve someone or some people called the mob back and directed them to the hotel madımak. the mob of 5000 sieged the hotel yelling "down with laicite." from 16:00 to 18:00 police could not disperse the crowd as the numbers got larger. and finally they decided to ask for help of the türko-islamist conservative party (the big solidarity party; büyük birlik partisi; bbp) local leaders. in effect they addressed the mob, according to the witnesses inside the hotel, saying (godspeed, "gazanız mübarek olsun"). Also the comments about the success of the "demonstrations" further agitated and credited the mob.

the role of military

the military commander of the local base, ahmet yücetürk is also central to the controversy. during the early hours of the uprising, military dispatched in a way to protect the shops and the army residential buildings.

when the soldiers first approached the hotel, the mob blocked the roads chanting "military to bosnia." after bargaining the military pulled back with the mob chanting "our soldier is the greatest(en büyük asker bizim asker)."

according to a recent interview with sivas victim serdar doğan, who was present during the massacre and lost his little brother to the fire; an officer and according to sourtimes the local commander ahmet yücetürk, got inside the hotel to snatch (and incidentally rescue) the police chief mehmet yıldız, who was responsible of nesin's protection. during the siege and just before the arson he insisted on taking mehmet yıldız out, and he responded "if i can get out, so should the others here." as the argument continued one of the civilians asked, "how can we escape," which in effect his answer was "escape the way you got in, son of a bitch!"

the lack of involvement of the military during the incident was defended by ahmet yücetürk as the lack of information from mayors side. later the mayor refuted by explaining, he received a call from the chief of staff (supreme general?) and commander yücetürk was present at the time and at the place where the phone call took place. he had a chance to receive orders directly from the chief of staff, nevertheless he was reluctant to effect the uprising directly, up until the attack on the town hall right after the arson of madımak hotel.

18 gendermarie soldiers were able to disperse the mob who attacked the town hall after the arson of madımak was over, aziz nesin rescued and putting off the fire was underway. military commander found to be not responsible by the central command investigation. nevetheless later that year, he was forced to retire with a raise in his rank.

role of the türko-islamist conservative party, bbp

i have already mentioned the agitating comments of the party members, during the incident. also the history of this party is always shroded with contraversy in mystery because of their own paramilitary organization alperenler (which is supposedly the youth organization of bbp, a good example is hrant dinks killer samast's and his collaborators involvement with alperens).

their most important involvement during the massacre happened right after the arson, when the victims discovered a passage to the neighboring building from the hotel, after giving up on the arrival of the military or firebrigade. unfortunately the passage led to the local headquaters of bbp.

the pary members, opposed the entry of the victims by attacking them with sticks. the swearing, fighting off the victims continued until an older looking party member calmed them down and agreed on protecting the victims. some people were saved eventually by the bbp party escape path.

role of the fire brigade

the mayor of sivas supposes that if the fire brigades intervened to the burning of the cars around the hotel before the arson, it would never had happened and lives could've been saved. and the mayor acknowledges the lack of enthusiasm of the fire brigade.

the clearest example of brigades mob friendly disposition was the way they treated aziz nesin during the rescue. initially they extend the staircase to the window of aziz nesin, thinking he is a police chief and as they realize he is the main target which the mob initially antagonized against, one fire brigade officer grabs him by the wrist and throws him to the ground from the top of the fire truck. from there nesin dragged to a police car while being lynched, to be beaten more which is stopped finally by the intervention of a police commissioner.

role of the social democrats

at the time of the massacre social democrats were the partners in government, and the head of the social democratic peoples party (sosyal demokrat halkçı parti; shp) erdal inönü was vice prime minister. aziz nesin called him directly, making him listen to the chants of the mob, but he couldn't do anything other than calling the mayor. later he received wide criticisms asking for his resignation, which never happened.

fikri sağlar, minister of culture at that time cancels his visit to sivas mysteriously. his expected visit was seen as an insurance, according to serdar doğan. his apology came too weak, too late.

the outcome

37 dead, 60 injured. the trials dragged on till 2001 and finally 34 people were sentenced to life without parole, 4 accused were sentenced to life, 4 accused to 20 years, 1 accused to 15 years, 9 accused to 7.5 years, 1 accused to 5 years and 14 accused were found not guilty. the mayor, elected head of municipality, police commissioner were fired. local military commander was forced to retire after an increase in rank.

final analysis

some of the information comes from the testimonies of the victims and the mayor, which can be heard and seen from a nice documentary by can dündar (as nice as it can for a massacre depiction).

I remember the incident although i was young. being raised by cautions of free speech constraints, news of violence, stories from the recent realization of torture in the former coup prisons the visions of a lynch mob did not seem to sink in. but my mother yelled at my disregard as "shut the fuck up, your grandfather is there." my grandfather luckily has left the hotel before the incident started hence was saved.

looking back at the whole massacre, in my mind there are clear indications of foul play and agitation to the crowd, not by the participants of the events but by even governmental institutions or people involved with government. more importantly the lack of intervention by them sealed the fate of the events as a tragedy. the facts and mysteries of the massacre needs to be remembered.

[*] a religious minority, often considered to be heterodox by islam, which believe in the holyness of muhammed's cousin and son-in-law ali, hence named ali lovers "alievis".

Absence, Ginzburg, UFO Hunters, and Ersatz Academia

2009-06-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

you know i hate people who post with a title or tag "random thoughts." come on, let's be real. who searches for "random thoughts" of other people. i mean yes, i would like to in real life, but not in a blog. this is one of those instances. well first i have been sick for a week, while i was trying to work. i traced down the major work on magnetized plasmas. it is "the propagation of electromagnetic waves in magnetized plasmas" by Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg. he is one of the great figures in soviet science, a nobel laureate and it hurts me so bad to see how short his wiki article is with respect to Tolga Yarman.

i always have this fetish with soviet physics and astrophysics (as dear Giulia) since Oktay Guseinov, a fellow collaborator and student of Zel'dovich who worked on x-ray pulsars and detection of black holes from binaries came to middle east technical university for a short time. not to mention our dear proffessor Aliev. during my bachelors degree i always tried to learn from Landau books and i still use them in my lectures.

the area of magnetized plasmas have progressed quite a bit during 70s and 80s after the slow 90 it again picked up late 90s with the interest in magnetars. of course i am talking about astrophysics not lazer science. but nevertheless, Ginzburg has this very clear picture and vivid explanation of plasma concepts. i am feeling thrilled with the joy of learning since my works topic in undergraduate was electromagnetics.

other than these, i have spent all my time watching history channels UFO hunters. yes! another stupid addiction in my life, the last thing i need. as i lie in my couch sick and spending my time watching public talks online about physics and astronomy in youtube, i did the mistake searching for nazi scientists. since i was reading this book on the history of kaiser willhelm gesselschaft during nazi germany. anyhow, behold i ended up with nazi ufos!

so the concept is not so bad, since they subject the evidence to the "scientific inquiry." unfortunately their starting point is biased so they end up with ridiculous claims, with their supposed "supportive" scientific data. it gives the viewers a good chance to asses in my opinion.

finally as i was going through the scientific explanations of ball lightning, i came with another self publicizing scientist in wiki.

Former researcher in SLAC Stanford, current businessman Mario Rabinowitz is using wikipedia as his personal webpage apparently. sad but what is more sad is that i need to do something about it and i am not doing it.

as the revolution comes to iran (but not as cheerful westerns expect), i procrastinate writing about it. but you can read what Zizek said about it and watch besiç (basij, the paramilitary force) beaten up.

learning gimp

2009-06-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

after being ridiculed by Selçuk, i decided to learn to design and do it by gimp (since it is open source) and this is the first vector conversion i did from the well known dev-yol fist. dev-yol was the brigate rosse and rote armee fraktion analogue of turkey at the same time, their name means revolutionary path.

the choice of colors are very conscious.

cryptic update

2009-06-02T14:24:00.000-07:00

today is the day i solved one of the major problems of my phd thesis.

after all this time of not writing, i decided to tune on to write this. and the worst part is i cannot talk about it. not only i am keeping myself anonymous, as if i am an important person, i am keeping my work secret, as if it matters. as if anybody cares about my blog or my work, or anybody will find this out in a search engine. for fucks sake only approx. 5 other person work on my topic in the world overall, and still i (we? i an my supervisor) need to be careful for our work not to be stolen.

so this blog is called marxists in space and yet i admit my copyrights, or worse intellectual property. in my mind, in a communist society information should be open (as in open source) and free (as in freedom). but nevertheless, the world of science is based on merit and i cannot ignore the existence of these concept just like communists consuming goods from capitalist production, investing their money and financing their future.

there is a well known cliche about the communist kid who has converse shoes and levi's jeans which comes from the "common" people as a criticism to show the idiosyncrasy of the marxists, inescapability from the market and the impossibility of communism. the basis of the criticisms are not only ill founded also what kind of communist the people expect us to be is uncertain.

probably an alien, who has nothing to do with the social comtemporary life. another reason why marxists should go to space.

hence why as a scientist who is critical of the ethics behind the meritocratic system of intellectual rights, which puts competition before collaboration, i practice the same values in order to not parish.

but other than that i want to show you!

this is a circular polarization spectrum, it is quantified by the ratio of stokes parameters. stokes parameters are basically the amplitude of a photon as an electroamgnetic wave. hopefully i will explain these things more in detail later. but nevertheless i am working on modeling of astrophysical objects and their spectra is the main diagnosis tool for us. this object very peculiar just by itself, have been modeled before, but reason for its high circular polarization has been unable to be untangled before. i have a quite good idea what is causing it, and i made some test. this all happened today around 19:00 pm, but i will present my hypothesis to my supervisor.

even if it is correct, the following precise modeling will be painstaking and tedious and life shattering. (ok i am a bit dramatic)

whitey on the moon

2009-05-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-22T02:31:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-20T06:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-20T00:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T10:19:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

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.