What's the best university in Norway?

Some time back I wrote about the Times Higher Education world ranking of universities. At first only one Norwegian university - the University of Bergen - made it to the top 200-list, but the University of Oslo has later been places as no. 186 (see 'Editor's note' at the end of the ranking), which schockingly places them only as Norway's second-best university (on other rankings, such as the Shanghai ranking, UiO remains Norways highest ranked university).

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This peculiar little story envelops in my Norwegian language blog, Utopisk Realisme ("Hvilket er Norges beste universitet?").

Pics and videos from Langedrag

I am in the process of making available pics and videos from Langedrag mountain farm and wildlife park. Unfortunately I've encountered some technical problems, not least due to poorly-functioning, low-performance Blogspot (essa porra não functiona...). Pics, therefore, will have to wait for a little.

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Videos are in the process of being uploaded to You Tube (MrMortenTonnessen's channel).

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Walking with Mr. Wolf

Socialized wolves at Langedrag meet kindergarten kids

Application for research project 2011-2016

I am involved in an application for the prospective research project "Environmental Semiotics: Theory and applications in changing culture and environment". Timo Maran is the project's Principal Investigator and head. Through the project, which would span over the years 2011-2016 (until I'm 40...), I would have a research position (full work load), with the title 'Extraordinary researcher'. Other scholars involved include Jelena Grigorjeva, Kati Lindström, Riin Magnus, Ene-Reet Soovik, Renata Sõukand and Kadri Tüür.

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If the application proves successful, it will imply that I establish ties to the University of Tartu for the years after I have completed my PhD (beyond my obligations partaking in the research project Dynamical Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations, until 2012).

Summary report from Polar Zoo available online

Last week I finished my summary report after my field trip (in March) to Polar Zoo in Bardufoss, Northern Norway (cf. previous posts, including pictures and links to videos). The 23pp work paper has now been uploaded to Scribd.

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Contents:

1. Factual questions (and questions to the human caretakers)

2. The wolves' interaction among themselves

3. The confinement

4. The wolves and other animals

5. Wolf senses

6. The wolves and their caretakers

7. The wolves and the visitors to the zoo

8. The wolves and me

Acknowledged in David Abram's 'Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology'

Today I received my copy of David Abram's long awaited Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. At Amazon it has now climbed to no. 2.801 of the millions of books on offer - it is right now ranked as no. 1 in 'Phenomenology', no. 3 in 'Epistemology' and no. 7 in 'Ecology'.

I am honored to be mentioned in the book's "Acknowledgments" (p. 312). Excerpt:

A couple of warm dialogues with physicist Brian Swimme helped hone certain reflections, as did conversations with a broad range of luminous souls, among them Jay Griffiths, Kalevi Kull, Wendell Berry, David Cayley, Patrick Curry, Donna House, Omar Zubaedi, Georg Glazner, Eva Simms, Tom Jay, Will Adams, Niel Thiese, Morten Tonnessen, Stefan Lang-Gilliatt, Maya Ward, Jan van Boekel, Deborah Bird Rose, Ed Casey, Bill Plotkin, Keren Abrams, Steve Talbott, Craig Holdrege, Eileen Crist, the late and much missed Briagn Goodwin, Peter Adams, Chris Wells, Jennifer Sahn, Jon Young, Peter Manchester, and Arthur Zajonc.

Other Norwegians mentioned: Arne Naess, Per Ingvar Haukeland and Per Espen Stoknes.

PDF, and bibliographical reference, for "Is a wolf..."

September 16th I posted that Humanimalia vol. 2, no. 1 was published. At that point no PDFs were on site. Now, however, they are - including for my contribution "Is a wolf wild as long as it does not know it is being thoroughly managed?" (which has been given the short-title "Is a wolf wild as long as it does not know it is managed?").

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Bibliographical reference:

Morten Tønnessen 2010. "Is a wolf wild as long as it does not know it is being thoroughly managed?" Humanimalia - a journal of human/animal interface studies 2(1): 1-8.

Multimodality anthology published

The anthology Sammensatte tekster: Barns tekstpraksis [Complex texts: Children's text practice] is being published as we speak. I have assisted the editor and the contributors with proof-reading, by composing index etc.

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Here's a presentation at the page of the publishing house, here the table of contents. In the book my assistance is credited on page 7, in the preface.