Monday, September 28, 2009

Events of the G-20

As the world may have noticed, Pittsburgh recently hosted a G-20 summit. As a Warrior of Agape, I found that a major battleground had been established right beneath my feet! I sought to use this opportunity to fight the good fight, and I did so through the Pray-20 initiative. Maybe we'll get up a Pray-20 website sometime (Sept. 29 update: P-20 site is up!)

After we were done with the Pray-20 on Friday, we heard that the anarchists, or so-called "black block," were to protest against police violence just down at UPitt, so some of us decided to step up in white t-shirts and bring signs of peace and non-violence with us. However, the police took the threat seriously, and sent literally hundreds of policemen, outnumbering the protesters with about 10 to 1. Then the black block said they would project video of police violence instead of confronting them. So in the belief it would all be a peaceful demonstration, I got myself a jacket and a camera.

And it was all peaceful until the police suddenly, with no prior notice, advanced towards the crowd of various activists, black masks, students and curious photographers. No footage of police violence was ever shown.

I don't think the police handled this very wisely. The demonstrators was at no point a threat, and they did no damage to public property. The police, on the other hand, all stood showing off their batons and rifles.



Read more:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Protesters blast police response, Oakland arrests
UPitt: G-20 Pittsburgh Summit 2009
My act of warfare: Pray-20

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Prayer of Peace



Almighty, eternal God,

You who can bend the hearts of men, we ask You:


Help and brace all those who today have the great responsibility for peace on earth.


Take in your mighty hand the heads of the nations, bend their hearts towards You and give them strength in the war against evil.


Give peace on earth, and help your church promote peace between the peoples.


Protect our world against war and discord, and let us settle and live on this our beloved planet, which You have given us.


Bless our leaders and their houses, and give wisdom to all who have authority and responsibility in society.


Help us to serve You with faithfulness, and together with all the peoples of the earth to stand firm in the war against evil.


Through Jesus Christ, your beloved son, our Lord,

Amen.



Lutheran liturgy from the Norwegian State Church

Freely translated by Warrior of Agape

Thursday, September 17, 2009

When to eat

Do you ever find yourself outside Spice It Up Grill, depressed that they stopped serving five minutes ago? Now you can know beforehand if you are to late for those delicious custom made burgers, or if you still can work on your thrilling homework for another hour before you must hurry. With this handy guide to food on campus, you never need to go hungry again! So do it, do it now, bookmark this page for reference and guidance in those critical moments when the hunger approaches your constant urge for homework. This is your ultimate food-finding friend! Simply click on the menu, and it will fill your screen with all the serving times you can possibly want! Do not hesitate! Bookmark now!

More food:
Jon's hopeless attempt on the same overview (however, he does provide you with a campus map and try to tell you what makes a block)
Campusfood: Carnegie Mellon University

Saturday, September 12, 2009

CMU bookmarks

Since college started a few weeks ago, my bookmarks bar has drastically changed. The link to the online studies at the University of Tromsø is of course removed, and many others with it; instead, I now have links to different online services provided by Carnegie Mellon, which are frequently visited.

Blackboard is the most important one. On Blackboard, I find all my homework, all the course documents, syllabuses and calendars (except the physics homework, which inconveniently enough have it’s own web page). Though Blackboard isn’t especially intuitively navigated, it does a decent job, and you can probably make it do anything within the area of administrative communication. I visit Blackboard several times a day.

My CMU is a web portal that tries to gather information from as many different services as possible on one place. I don’t use My CMU much, though, as I either find the services boring, useless or inefficient; it shows my web mail, but I get my e-mail to my e-mail client; It has a CMU news feed, but I get the most important news as e-mail; the blackboard links are less efficient than going directly to blackboard, I already have the Pittsburgh weather forecast on my dashboard and I find the emergency alert service to be intrusive enough already before I sign up for further paranoia. The primary use I have of My CMU, is the meal plan overview (how many meals I have left and such).

ScheduleMan is a powerful tool when creating the schedule; however, it also serves as a handy reminder of when I should attend classes in which classroom. My SceduleMan –page is always up on my iPod, in case I want to reassure myself that I still have an hour before class.

One of the most amusing services is the Henderson Laundry page; it shows how many washers and dryers that are available at any given moment, or how far they have come in their cycle. It also sends you an email whenever your laundry is finished.

The Bandwidth Monitor is helpful in keeping track your bandwidth usage; we have a maximum bandwidth limit of 10 GB for every five days, and 3 GB every day. Because of the bandwidth monitor, I know that I’ve never even been close to 100 MB, despite a few Skype calls. Local traffic isn’t measured, so the hours of listening to music shared on the CMU network aren’t reflected.

See more:
My schedule: ScheduleMan
Henderson Laundry: eSuds