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. […]
Hilde
Wow!
I played my cello yesterday! First time for years! (but I couldn’t find my rosin..)
We are getting closer to the plans about a Huminf band 😉
Jill
Oh, I was listening to Sheherazade the other day (remember we played it in HUSO? Geir Ove had the solos) and I was just aching to be playing instead of just listening! Do you have any music for violin/cello duets?
Liz
Nice photo!
Lane (age 9) is about to take up cello, which is exciting because my stepfather plays in the Rochester Philharmonic (and is also an accomplished bowmaker).
Jill
Ooh, cello’s so beautiful… My sister’s a musician, so hopefully my daughter will find that inspiring…
peggy
I loved your story. It makes me smile at my own stuff: a Chicagoan who first picked up a banjo (of all things) at the Old Town School of Folk Music there. I soon bought a kit to build my own, and just the other day noticed it again, leaning against a corner, behind a rocking chair. I have lived in Tennessee for eight years now, and some might assume the urge to play it would have been unavoidable, but no. Until today, that is.
fivecats
A friend of a friend once said about learning to play the violin:
“Do you know how bad those things sound until you know what you’re doing with them?”
I proved this point. My wife bought me a violin off of eBay, convinced that my deep Celtic roots would prove her Genetic Memory theory correct and I’d be a natural. I wasn’t. I took to practicing in a small bedroom off of the kitchen in our old, (former) farmhouse. The cats liked the bed in thereand so it was me and the cats. Guitar they didn’t mind; tenor banjo they didn’t mind. Violin they minded.
It got so bad that when they’d see me coming into the room with the violin case, they’d all run out. Seriously.
That was about the time I decided it was time to hang up the violin for a while.
Much better luck to your daughter!
…
Jill
Well, her first violin lesson was “good”. That’s all. “Good”.
She’ll be at her dad’s for the next week, and was too busy to talk on the phone so I doubt I’ll get much more out of her until I get to take her to a lesson myself – but it crashes with my teaching, so that won’t happen for a while.
The odds of her actually enjoying the early phases of playing enough that she doesn’t quit before it gets fun are pretty low. I’m so glad that I stuck at playing for as long as I did, because playing with people is so amazing, and in addition to the musical pleasure it gave me a much richer social environment in those awful early teens when I hated high school. And it’s wonderful being ABLE to play now, even though I don’t often actually do it. Having been a rather disastrous violin teacher myself in my early twenties (thank goodness not for very long) I know how to make sure kids quit playing violin, but I’m not sure how to make sure my daughter plays for long enough to derive pleasure from it.
peggy
Ha, Jill. Knowing what you know (now) is probably the key. It sounds like your daughter will have free rein to love it (or not), and it will be ok.
Francois Lachance
By coincidence a few days earlier to your posting of the picture of the f curves on the violin, Elouise Oyzon’s repro of a Man Ray photograph entered the blogsphere.
http://www.rit.edu/~eroics/MT/WeezBlog/archives/000211.html
And to find in the comments here about children and learning a similar thread to one found there: meaning constructed by experience.