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)
8/20/09
a critique of economy of intellectual property, an introduction
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.
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.
8/14/09
excerps from the miserable life
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.
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.
8/8/09
nevertheless they cannot understand that i am a kurdish man and i can never be a veteran
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.
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.
8/5/09
secrecy or flat out evil?
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.
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.
8/1/09
guest log: (...) a giant leap for exploitation
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
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
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