The autotune remix highlights the racial bias that Ramsey himself highlighted in the interview, at which point the interviewer rapidly and sort of embarrassedly cuts off the interview:

I knew something was wrong, when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. (..) That’s the only reason she’d run into a black man’s arms: either she’s homeless, or she’s got problems!

Will Stabley has an interesting analysis of this, although I’m not sure I agree that the autotune treatment in itself is racial.

The fact that the autotune highlights the uncomfortable description of racial almost-segregation is an interesting example of how remixes can politicize existing comments simply by changing the order, repeating – and autotuning. The blander part of the interview in this autotune remix is not autotuned, and that, and the repetition of the black man/white girl statement certainly serves to emphasise it.

Update: also, see The Guardian on the race issues here, and then another story reports that maybe Ramsey wasn’t the main hero, but a Hispanic neighbor who had too poor English for the news reporters to bother to interview him. There are certainly many levels to this story.

Probably these are not exactly new jokes either:
- “Once Monica Mæland made a Happy Meal cry”
- “Every time Monica Mæland doesn’t get her way, a unicorn is born.”
- “If you Google “Chuck Norris” it says “did you mean Monica Mæland?”

While slightly amusing, I doubt this is going to win any elections. A bunch of (lets admit it) mean jokes with no actual political content – other than to claim that Monica Mæland is scary and gets whatever she wants – aren’t going to convince anyone to change their vote. At most, they might make people who are already committed to a political view laugh or be annoyed and perhaps share them with friends. I suppose conceivably it might get more people to actually vote and be involved in the elections. Perhaps you would laugh at is and en decide to go and find out what Monica Mæland actually stands for and has done. I’m looking forwards to seeing more political content in these ads, though. The Hey Girl Audun Lysbakken have more of that, although they’ve sort of declined after the first couple of days.

Here are the students from WVU and Temple – all very excited to be coming to Bergen and full of interesting skills, ideas and backgrounds. And you can spot Rod and Scott in the second photo as well.

We’re also meeting with deans and coordinators and international relations people about setting up longer term exchanges, and there’s a lot of interest here. One point I find interesting is that in Norway (and Europe) we’re largely set up for semester long exchanges, whereas here there are a lot of shorter exchanges, 2-4 weeks seems fairly common. It might be interesting to set up a course at UiB that has an intensive two week session at start of semester that’s open to short term international students, and that continues at a less intensive pace for the rest of the semester for our local students. Many possibilities.

I’m generally quite torn about the professionalisation of university elections, which was also a topic on NRK Hordaland on Monday night. This is the first year that the rector candidates have had a budget for the campaign, 25,000 kr each. Apparently the University of Oslo gives candidates more. It seems reasonable to compensate for the cost of flyers and so forth in order to try to get as good a debate as possible, because the main point of having an elected rector is to encourage debate about issues that are important to the university. And we certainly had a lot of debate this year. There were dozens of letters to the editor, many meetings with voters and 25 separate debate meetings across the faculties and departments of the university. We didn’t turn down a single invitation to come and speak with groups, large or small, and although we spoke to many, we kept hearing that Team Olsen had been there the month before. They must have surgically gone through every single student group, PhD student group and department in the whole university. Very smart but I have no idea where they found the time! We literally spend 2-3 hours most days of the week for 2-3 months on the campaign, and my impression is that Team Olsen must have spent more – although they also had a much larger support group (well, we didn’t actually have a support group) so perhaps they were able to spread things around more. Having a more “professionalised” campaign may mean more debate, which is good but hey, only 29% of students and employees voted. Last time, with a much less professional campaign and far fewer debates, 39% voted. So does having a budget and rollups and buttons and campaign managers really make for more democracy? And if this campaign was more intense than in 2009, and 2009 was more intense than 2005 – what will the campaign in 2017 look like? Do we really want to keep escalating this?

Participating in a rector campaign comes on top of your regular job. I haven’t finished the chapter I was supposed to have completed weeks ago, I’ve done no new research and have skipped many staff meetings I really should have attended. It’s not been easy, with small kids that need me every afternoon. But it’s been an amazing learning experience. I have met people – many leaders but also students and professors and staff – from every part of the university and have discussed problems specific to so many different groups. I  have been impressed by the astounding knowledge student politicians have of the university system and its politics. I have stopped being nervous in debates, and can easily drop a few sound bites about internationalisation needing to combine research and student exchange or about the university needing a digital strategy that spans education, research, administration and communication. I have grown to know and respect the professors of medicine, social-anthropology and seismology in our team – a gift in itself. And I have enjoyed getting to know our opponents too – we have seen them at so many events and have shared this campaign in many ways.

I like many things about Dag Rune Olsen and his team, although obviously I also disagree with parts of their program and their approach. But our two teams agreed about more than we disagreed about, and I’m looking forwards to working with them in the next four years – I’ll have to, as head of the alumni board! Luckily, I’ve had several conversations with Dag Rune about alumni, both before and after the election campaign, and I’m sure we’ll be able to work well together.

Having spent so much time thinking about and discussing university politics I also know that there are some things I’m going to keep fighting for. A better gender balance, especially in leadership positions in the university, is one of them. Better use of digital tools in education and subject-specific digital skills for students and teachers is another. I think we need to do an even better job in international relations, especially in looking after newcomers. And I want to keep working for the humanities, and (but not only) the digital humanities, and be more active in the discussions at the research council and elsewhere – we should all take part in these national (and international) discussions, and I want to participate more than I have.

So congratulations to Dag Rune Olsen and his team, and I look forwards to continuing to participate in discussions about university politics in the years to come!

(Also, not getting elected means I get the sabbatical I had coming to me – a whole year of nothing but research starting next semester! Hooray!)

And so I started, and others chimed in. I set up a separate Facebook page, Atakan Memes, so as not to scare off any serious supporters who might be turned off by silly photos with slogans. Some are really just little ads, but some of them are closer to real memes – oh, not all of them follow the rules, but we’ve certainly had fun with them. Here are some of my favourites

This one, Scott made, arguing that our team should have buttons:

The SiB cat is a fixture at Studentsenteret, and has recently acquired its own Twitter account, where it considers applying for professorships in catemathics (kattematikk) and the like. Naturally, Professor Cat wonders whether the SiB cat will vote Catakan. (Thanks to Vegard for collaborating on this one!)

Scott created a whole series of posters for the various faculties that I rather liked. For some reason, the psychology one seemed to have quite impressive appeal, garnering many likes.

The IT-department is rebuilding the website in Drupal and has hired several Drupal people. So clearly we needed to appeal to that demographic too.

And then of course I tried to jump on the “Hey girl Audun Lysbakken” wagon. Not sure I quite pulled it off, but I had fun!

Here’s one that’s very boring visually but I thought was pretty effective as a quick response to a particularly worrying statement our opponent made in an interview on the day the election started, about wanting a “national division of labour” when it came to small subjects in the humanities. I wanted to get this message out fast, and I think it worked, because this particular issue was mentioned many times afterwards.

This next one was the first picture I tried making, actually, and it was on quickmemes.com or somewhere like that and I didn’t notice the lack of æ, ø and å until afterwards. Oh well.

And this one is from Twitter. Good for trekkies

The next one is about what was an important campaign issue for me – we have many international employees, and require that they all learn Norwegian within two years. The university provides excellent Norwegian classes for them, but no teaching release, so newcomers have to adapt to a new job in a new country AND learn a new language after a full day’s work. The teachers of Norwegian as a second language told us that this is a huge problem. Many employees drop out, and those who stick around aren’t able to concentrate fully. And to learn a new language, you really need to concentrate, for many hours a week.

I love this one that Scott made – oh, Kuvvet Atakan is a professor of seismology. So he does, indeed, know earthquakes.

Walter contributed this one, which impressively combines the Archaic Rap meme with Team Atakan’s commitment to improve the gender bias and hire more women!

And a comment to a comment I made in a debate

Here’s a great one Scott made the day before the election was over, from a photo he took at the Dali exhibition in Philadephia, I think.

And here’s a rather simple argument – simple that our opponents didn’t have any representatives from the humanities faculty, which is the largest faculty in the university. Obviously targeted at humanists!

I had never seen an example of an application for promotion to full professor when I submitted my own application, in September 2009. The process was veiled in secrecy, it seemed. The criteria were clear, sort of: in Norway you have to have a PhD (of course) and then the equivalent again to merit a full professorship, and any associate professor with a permanent job at a Norwegian university can apply, you don’t have to wait for a chair to be available as in some countries.

So I had no idea what a professor application should look like. There were no mentorship programs, no annual talks on what was expected and how to prepare an application, no other professors happily sharing their applications. There were brief guidelines, similar to these 2012 ones, but nothing that seemed very specific. Instead I found blog posts from US academics on how they were preparing their tenure binders, and so I decided to copy that model, and actually use a binder. I filled it with sections on research, teaching and outreach, each with a selection of material. I spent an hour in the university bookshop deciding which colour binder to use, and opted for a dark, rich pinkish-purple: feminine yet very serious. I photocopied five copies of ten publications, put it all in a big cardboard box along with five copies of the book I wrote and the book I co-edited and lugged it all over to the Faculty of Humanities administration.

Uncharacteristically, I didn’t blog it. I was too nervous my application would be rejected. And nobody ever talks about their professor applications. It seemed as though it was taboo, and so I didn’t.

But four years later I’m annoyed to see how closed the process still is. So I’m putting my whole application online so anyone else who wonders what a Norwegian application for full professor looks like can see. I still haven’t seen more than a couple of other applications, so I’ve no idea whether this is a typical or even a particularly good application, but I did receive my full professorship from an international jury of my peers (or rather, of people who had already been full professors for several years), so it must have been good enough! And I’ll include the evaluation report too so you can judge for yourself. I’m not including all the publications or all the articles and course descriptions and so on that were in the teaching and outreach sections, but the table of contents should give you a pretty good idea of what I put in there. Here are links to PDFs of the documents I wrote specifically for the application:

• Professor application form
• Application-letter-promotion-full-professor
• CV-summer-2009
• Annotated-list-of-research-publications
• ToC-for-outreach-section
• ToC-for-teaching-section

And here is the evaluation report so you can see how the committee received it and what they emphasized. It’s in Norwegian, but most people applying for a professorship in Norway can probably stumble their way through it, and I expect Google translate will get you some of the content. Now, my field is digital culture, which doesn’t exist as such at other Norwegian universities. They sent my application to the media department at the University of Oslo. So this may all vary in other fields, I really don’t know!

• evaluering-professoropprykk-jill-walker-rettberg

Best of luck if you’re applying!

Hey girl, real men are feminists.

Today I’m loving these Hey Girl Audun Lysbakken photos – Lysbakken heads the socialist party (SV) and I suppose he is rather good looking. Someone has started a series of photos of him based on the Ryan Gosling memes, or more specifically, really, the feminist Ryan Gosling memes. But to be honest, I think these are even better. They have a very clear set of rules:

1. Sexy (but not undressed) photo of Audun Lysbakken looking flirtatious
2. Start out with “Hey girl”
3. Punch line has to be something seductive, sensitive and political

And of course, national elections are coming up in September. So far, the political points appear to be real campaign issues. I’m sure there’ll be some rip-offs, though.

Hey girl. I’ll build you student housing. With my own hands.

Here’s a Feminist Ryan Gosling photo to compare – and hey, did you know that you can actually buy a whole book of these?

Of course I’ve been chatting about this on Facebook, and my favourite meme expert, Kristine Ask, wrote a great short summary there of the appeal of the feminist Ryan Gosling meme:

Hey Girl, Ryan Gosling is one of my all time favourite memes. It so nicely sums up the fangirl culture found on f.ex. tumblr: Its sexualized (photo of hot guy), its feminist (and done without fear of sexual harassment from Commentary Field Heroes) and it speaks to/for an audience that idolizes knowledge and intellectualism (like gender theory).

I wonder how these Hey Girl Audun Lysbakken pics hit SV’s demographics? I know women are an important group for them, but I’m not sure about the generational demographics. And I don’t know whether these would appeal more to younger or older women. I like em, anyway

Hey girl. He said it was possible to discuss womens’ rights and a shared fight against “hersketeknikker” (suppression techniques) without mentioning Berit Ås, and I just said, Oh no you didn’t!

Hey girl. I’m rolling up my sleeves for equal pay. Keen?

Hey girl, the visionary in me is thinking we should share a strawberry daiquiri while we get Norwegian weapons exports under control.

Update: A few hours later, there are new versions everywhere. There are some slightly nasty ones about Erna Solberg, the leader of the conservative party Høyre: Hey boy Erna Solberg. And @olainnset made a Hey man Torstein Dahle photo.

Hey man, bike paths are nice, but shouldn’t the workers have their fair share of society’s value creation soon?

And oh, look at that, “somebody ” (ahem) made an Atakan version! Fancy that. Could probably use some more work for that to really take off – but at least I’m having fun! (And, hey, if you work or study at the University of Bergen, vote Atakan for rector! The deadline is Wednesday April 24 at noon.

Hey student, let’s demand that the ministry for education rewards quality and not just quantity in education.

“But E’s little sister is in hospital because a bomb took away her legs,” Jessie continued seriously. E’s mother told me yesterday about E’s imaginary little sister. It took me a while to realize that the imaginary little sister with the amputated legs and the bombs over the preschool represent these five-year-olds’ way of dealing with a very real, though in some ways distant threat: this is how news of the Boston bombings filters into children’s awareness. Doesn’t help that she didn’t hear it at home. I don’t think she heard it at home. Maybe she heard us talking when we weren’t thinking of her listening.

I can keep telling her that wars are all very far away. But bombs and danger aren’t necessarily.

Mostly, I agree with this cartoon that’s been making the rounds on Reddit and Facebook. But sometimes, turning off the television is not enough.

I wrote an op-ed in Aftenposten last week about this that got lots of Facebook likes and Tweets and comments: Hvorfor lærer vi ikke barna våre å kode? Read it if you haven’t already! (The English version Google Translate suggests isn’t too bad, actually).

Torbjørn Skauli, the person who has developed the Norwegian version of the kids’ programming language Scratch, is one of the people working on Lær kidsa koding! and he recently posted a really promising outline of what a curriculum in programming could look like, in four levels. It’s definitely worth spreading, so I took the liberty of copy and pasting it, and translating it to English (below the fold). What do you think? Would you want your kids to have the opportunity to try this curriculum?

Nivå 1: Avmystifisering av IT (for alle)

Hva: Lære at et program er en oppskrift laget av mennesker, som datamaskinen følger, og at veldig mange av tingene vi bruker inneholder en datamaskin. Lære at programmering er en nyttig ferdighet i arbeidslivet, og at man også kan gjøre det på fritiden med sin egen datamaskin. Ha det gøy med å lage enkle programmer.
Hvem: For alle, inklusiv foreldre! Målgruppen er særlig barn i barneskolealder, men “Nivå 1″ er aktuelt for alle som ikke har prøvd programmering før.
Hvor: Overalt hvor vi kan komme til! På SFO, klubber, barnebursdag, utstillinger og arrangementer. I fremtiden burde dette være del av læreplanen for barnehage og barneskole.
Hvordan: Scratch, Legorobot og andre enkle, lett tilgjengelige verktøy.

Nivå 2: IT-allmenndannelse (i obligatoriske læreplaner for ungdomsskole og VGS)

Hva: Lære om konseptet algoritme og om hvordan informasjon kan representeres som digitale data. Lære noen forskjellige algoritmer for behandling av informasjon. Overordnet forståelse av lagring og overføring av data. Digitale medier: lyd, bilde, web. Enkel robotikk.
Hvem: Elever i ungdomsskole og videregående skole.
Hvor: På kort sikt burde det være mulig å få dette inn som valgfag i ungdomsskolen, men dette bør inn i skolens læreplaner, enten som eget fag eller som utvidelse av matematikk, naturfag og kunst&håndverk.
Hvordan: Jeg er usikker på hva som vil være de beste verktøyene her, men neste versjon av Scratch er en god kandidat. Legorobot og enkel tekstbasert programmering er også aktuelle, men dette nivået bør unngå å ha fokus på det programmeringstekniske.

Nivå 3: IT-håndverk (valgfrie fag i ungdomsskole og VGS)

Hva: Lære å bruke et fullverdig programmeringsspråk. Lære mer om representasjon av informasjon, datamaskinarkitektur og nettverk. Skrive programmer som oppleves som fullverdige og relevante, f.eks. for web eller nettbrett. Dette nivået kan inneholde andre ferdigheter, f.eks. simulering, animasjon, digital fabrikasjon (3D-printing etc.) og robotikk
Hvem: Elever i ungdomsskole og videregående skole.
Hvor: Valgfag i ungdomsskolen, linjefag i videregående skole.
Hvordan: Python, Java, C++ eller andre fullverdige språk. Fullverdige verktøy for andre ferdigheter som læres på dette nivået, f.eks. 3DS animasjon og 3D-printing.

Nivå 4: FritidsaktivITeter (på ungdommenes fritid)

Hva: Lære å utvikle programmer og systemer på et mer avansert nivå. Skrive større programmer. Lage roboter, apparater og installasjoner. Avansert animasjon. Hjelpe til med instruksjon av yngre barn, og samtidig være rollemodell for dem.
Hvem: Elever i videregående skole, og kanskje på ungdomsskolen. Bare en liten andel av elevene vil være aktuelle, men det er ønskelig at alle blir gjort kjent med mulighetene slik at de som har en latent interesse eller talent får muligheten til å prøve seg.
Hvor: På fritiden, helst i nettverk av folk med sammenfallende interesser, lokalt eller på nett.
Hvordan: Få hjelp av voksne mentorer som kan ha LKK som sitt nettverk. LKK og/eller skolen hjelper med å koble interesserte elever sammen med lokale likesinnede og mentorer.

And here is an English translation:

Level 1: demystifying IT (for everyone)

What: Learn that a program is a recipe created by humans, which the computer follows, and that many of the things we use have computers inside them. Learn that programming is a useful skill in the workplace, and that one can also program in your spare time with your own computer. Have fun creating simple applications.
Who: For everyone, including parents! The target group is especially children in school age children, but “Level 1″ is appropriate for anyone who has not tried programming before.
Where: Wherever we can get to! At after school care, clubs, children’s birthday parties, exhibitions and events. In the future, this should be part of the curriculum for kindergarten and elementary school.
How: Scratch, Lego Robot and other simple, easily available tools.

Level 2: IT general education (in the compulsory curriculum for middle school and High School)

What: Learn about the concept of algorithms and how information can be represented as digital data. Learn some different algorithms for processing information. An overview of the storage and transmission of data. Digital media: audio, visual, web. Simple robotics.
Who: Students in middle school and high school.
Where: In the short term it should be possible to get this in as an elective in high school, but this material should be covered in the school curriculum, either as a separate subject or as an extension of mathematics, science, and arts & crafts.
How: I’m not sure what would be the best tools here, but the next version of Scratch is a good candidate. Lego Robot and simple text-based programming is also relevant, but this level should avoid focusing on the technical programming.

Level 3: IT Crafts (optional subject in middle school and high school)

What: Learn to use a fully featured programming language. Learn more about the representation of information, computer architecture and networking. Write programs that are perceived as valuable and relevant, for example for web or tablet. This level can contain other skills, eg. simulation, animation, digital manufacturing (3D printing etc.) and robotics
Who: Students in middle school and high school.
Where: Electives in junior high, main subjects in high school.
How to: Python, Java, C + + or other valuable language. Full Worthy tools for other skills taught at this level, eg. 3DS animation and 3D printing.

Level 4: Leisure Activities (in teenagers’ spare time)

What: Learn how to develop applications and systems at a more advanced level. Write larger programs. Create robots, equipment and systems. Advanced animation. Assist with the instruction of younger children, and be a role model for them.
Who: Students in high school and maybe middle school. Only a small percentage of students will want to do this, but it is important that everyone is made aware of the possibility so those who have a latent interest or talent are given the chance to try.
Where: At the time, preferably in the network of people with similar interests, locally or online.
How to: Get help from adult mentors who may have LKK (Lær kidsa koding!) as their network. LKK and / or school helps connect interested students with local peers and mentors.

Further reading:

• Why Johnny Can’t Code
• Computing at School Working Group (UK)
• Code.org (USA, with lots of resources for learning)
• Kodeklubben
• Lær kidsa koding!