May 21st is UNESCO World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.
Wednesday night Tonight! in the Viger Atrium of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec - one of the nicest lecture rooms I've seen so far in the city - I'll be giving a short lecture on the use of technology in the context of culture, knowledge and dialog.
I'll demo three videos as well, two of which are mine and another from the participants of Convergentes.
My talk runs from about 7:15pm until 8:00pm, though I'm also participating in a round table about "Issues of Identity" and "Cultural diversity and building bridges between cultures" from 6:00pm to 7:00pm.
Then from 8:00pm until 8:45pm we'll be treated to a sure-to-be-awesome multilingual spoken word performance hosted by my good friend Elizabeth Robert featuring Endre Farkas, Pauline Michel, Judith Munira Avinger, Alejandro Saravia and Dwayne Morgan.
BAnQ Auditorium
Centre d’Archives de Montréal
535 Viger Street East, Montréal
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- African Americans rioted against racial injustice.
- Immigrant workers in New York City rioted against the military draft.
- Working-class North Africans in Paris rioted to protest the death of two youngsters at the hands of the police.
- Tiananmen square intellectuals and students rioted for democratic reform.
Here, though, we riot when our local sports team beats a rival team, not in the finals, or the semifinals, but in the quarterfinals.
Whether it's actual hockey fans or anarchists using the crowd as a cover is anyone's guess, although the image gallery over at Fagstein's blog has an image of a hockey-flag waving fan next to a marijuana-tshirt-wearing delinquent, so maybe they're in cahoots! 
Sigh...
This is just a reblog from the Media McGill page that Gilberto Gil will be presenting today at 6pm, at the Omni Hotel.
There will also be a follow-up presentation tomorrow morning at the SAT on St-Laurent, which I expect to be more intimate (hopefully) than today's talk.
If any of my readers have any questions about community networking, technologies and culture, Internet governance, cultural development or anything else that they would like me to ask Mr. Gil tomorrow, leave it in a comment here and I will do my darndest.
I'm feeling it's not much of a step up from what they had before.
First of all, no one uses "text size selectors" anymore.
Second of all, if you're going to use one anyways, the least you could do is make sure sure that it doesn't completely break your design when a user selects a larger font:
Customer service can be pretty hit-and-miss around these parts. In the past couple of weeks I had some of the best and worst customer experiences I can remember.
1 - The Running Room, Sherbrooke Street, Westmount.
I've started running again. However, my father had 'appropriated' my 4-year-old pair of Asics Gel runners to do his gardening because they're comfortable. As all the other shoes I own are either dress shoes or zero-support-Converse, I needed to buy a new pair. I know enough about sports to understand the importance of buying a shoe that fits and supports your foot properly, and I knew which brands I wanted to stay away from. Your shoes say a lot about you:
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Duluth, between St-Denis and St-Laurent.
Montreal is one big studio set up for street photographers.
We've been seeing a disturbing trend recently in the growing number of women wearing big, poorly-designed Audrey Hepburn-style sunglasses. We're not sure how this started or who is responsible for it, but until we solve this mystery we advise all Montreal females to avoid purchasing, wearing or owning any such form of sunglasses. They are not flattering on you. They do not make you look classier or more sophisticated. Instead, they make you look like you failed the "A-B" test at the optometrist and were prescribed severe, Hubble-telescope-like corrective eyewear to treat your acute astigmatism.
These suited Audrey Hepburn because they made her look like, well, Audrey Hepburn. In a classic, tragic example of a modern fashion Pandora's Box, however, they will make you look absolutely ridiculous and unhealthy - unless your last name is Hepburn, in which case you should contact me.
This has been a public service announcement.
(gah! it was Sherbrooke, not de maisonneuve)
On my semi-regular walk from Westmount Square to the Plateau today, I was walking towards St-Laurent street just as the police were closing off a section of Sherbrooke. There was a small crowd gathered talking about what had happened.
Apparently, moments before I came by, a window-cleaning scaffolding cable broke off and a window cleaner fell to his death some 150+ feet down the Holiday Inn.
People were pretty shocked, though I didn't see the victim or an ambulance nearby as the police were cordoning off the area.
I always have trouble just going on my merry way when I come across something like this. I want to know exactly what happened, who the person was, which cleaning company, who's at fault, etc. Maybe I should've been a crime scene investigator instead. Like CSI, but without the retarded.
As I leave the area the police are taping off the far side and redirecting traffic away. Some guy in an Audi with an expensive sports suit and designer glasses is yelling at the cop for not letting him through.
I laugh to myself as I imagine him being 5 minutes late for his pedicure / bikini wax / heroin session, then I put my camera away, put my headphones back on, and keep on Imagining.
The cable broke while the platform was much higher. More photos after the jump.
Save the date: Wednesday June 13th at 6pm - yup, that's tomorrow evening! - is the last Noches De Poesia monthly get-together until after the summer season.
Noches de Poesia are informal, intense and intimate gatherings of local poets, writers, artists and musicians. The current venue is the delightful Le Dépanneur on Bernard street (fantastic drinks and food, but no Wi-Fi... otherwise I'd probably move in). The gatherings are organized by my good friend Élizabeth Robert, who is also a fantastic translator.
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