I just signed a petition calling for Norwegian universities to use research expertise on AI when deciding how to implement it, rather than having decisions be made mostly administratively. , If you are a researcher in Norway, please read it and sign it if you agree – and share with anyone else who might be interested. The petition was written by three researchers at UiT: Maria Danielsen (a philosopher who completed her PhD in 2025 on AI and ethics, including discussions of art and working life), Knut Ørke (Norwegian as a second language), and Holger Pötzsch (a professor of media studies with many years of research on digital media, video games, disruption, and working life, among other topics). This is not about preventing researchers from exploring AI methods in their research. It is about not uncritically accepting the hype that everyone must use AI everywhere without critical reflection. It is about not introducing Copilot as the default option in word processors, or training PhD candidates to believe they will fall behind if they do not use AI when writing articles, without proper academic discussion. Changes like these should be knowledge-based and discussed academically, not merely decided administratively, because they alter the epistemological foundations of research. Maria wrote to me a couple of months ago because she had read my opinion piece in Aftenposten in which I called for a strong brake on the use of language models in knowledge work. She was part of a committee tasked with developing UiT’s AI strategy and was concerned because there was so much hype and so few members of the committee with actual expertise in AI. I fully support the petition. There are probably some good uses for AI in research, but the uncritical, hype-driven insistence that we must simply adopt it everywhere is highly risky. There are many researchers in Norway with strong expertise in AI, language, ethics, working life, and culture. We must make use of this expertise. This is also partly about respect for research in the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and law. Introducing AI at universities and university colleges is not merely a technical issue, and perhaps not even primarily a technical one. It concerns much more: philosophy of science, methodological reflection, epistemology, writing, publishing, the working environment, and more. […]
Frank
Actually, Verdana is the font that almost every Windows installation will use to render your website and it looks good too. The “Lucida Grande” font is (almost) exclusive to OSX and will give the site a bit of a distinguished look for OSX surfers (imho). You can take out the “Lucida Grande” and OSX will likely display the site with Verdana 🙂
The “Bitstream Vera Sans” and “Luxi Sans” are there primarily for *nix browsers. See, if an OS doesn’t have the first font in the list, it will try the next one, and the next one, etc. till it finds a font that it as.
Setting the font-size to 76% on the body and setting it to 1.1em for the body text actually renders pretty much like “medium” sized. Maybe it looks a bit different for you now, because you see it rendered with Lucida Grande.
btw I see I forgot to take out the original “verdana, sans-serif” definition and now it gets redefined a couple of lines later. No biggie, but you can safely remove the first font-family definition 🙂
Frank
oh… and *blush* I’m honored to be a hero ;-P
Nina Terese
Your blogg looks great now!
Jill
Thanks, Frank! I quite like the Lucida Grande – I might try Verdana again in a few days and see which I ultimately prefer.
Still quite a few details to fix. I think I’ll start by getting those round corners on the blue background working properly.
Thanks Nina Therese – hey, nice round-cornered boxes you have in your new design, btw!
🙂
fivecats
The site looks great. Very slick and polished. My favorite part is how you continue the blue of your t-shirt into the full right-hand border. Clever use of color.
(Frank, you did a great job getting all of the rough edges smoothed over! BTW, we work with a Shaaper over here in the states. Is there a family link in your last names?)
First she gets interviewed on the Beeb, then she gets all fancy with her blogsite. Geez, what’s next?
…
Frank
I don’t think there’s any family link there. “Schaap” is not a terribly uncommon name in the Netherlands, so even if you find someone with that exact name, there doesn’t have to be any familial connection.
Donut Age
CSS Hacks
Jill Walker has been redesigning her blog (the new design looks very slick by the way) and has posted on a few of the CSS tricks she has learned in the process…