Absence, Ginzburg, UFO Hunters, and Ersatz Academia

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.

ersatz yuppie academia

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

the ersatz yuppie academic

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

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

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

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

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

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

and last but not the least, of course Adorno:

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

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