Some of my best friends used to be kids

Even, in certain cases, bright kids. Now I don't know if it's the weather, or whatever... but I find it harder and harder to met up with smart humans. At times, over the last few months, I've had the impression that some kind of a plague has swept through my old territories and infected some of my favorite watering holes. Only today, for example, I read in the press that a flu attack has wiped out 13 residents of a home for old folk in Lyon. It appears that the rate of vaccination in this establishment was 38%, but we'll have to await the results of an inquiry to see if some of those who died were in fact vaccinated. I hope that our future president François Fillon, who brought the Internet to France, will introduce a law that makes it obligatory for old-timers such as me to be vaccinated against the flu virus. Before that happens, I must remember to ask a local priest whether I'm maybe a public danger when I walk around in the super-market with my body full of flu-vaccine shit. Maybe they should ban me.

Once upon a time, I used to get all excited and full of fury whenever I detected cases of blatant stupidity in society. These days, I simple look the other way. If I were to snarl at every idiot I run into, more and more people would consider me (as many do already) as a mad dog, and try to shoot me. Such is fucking life. A fucking tragedy, whichever way you look at it. If God existed (which, of course, he doesn't), then he would have to be truly ashamed of his bull-shit creation.

Software for people who can’t handle traditional verbal culture

A Dutch software manufacturer named Assistiveware has created a tool named Proloquo2go for people who are incapable of handling traditional verbal culture. The tool incorporates a virtual on-screen keyboard with pictograms, and it is only offered, for the moment, to users of English, Spanish or French. Here’s an example of a typical pictogram phrase:

As soon as the user enters a set of pictograms, a speech synthesizer produces an audio version of the phrase.

This tool belongs to the domain of AAC [Alternative and Augmented Communication], which facilitates the life of people with elocution problems : autistic individuals, those with trisomy (including Down Syndrome) and victims of strokes or Parkinson’s disease. In France, about 1.3 million people suffer from such sensory handicaps.  In the special case of the Proloquo2go product, most users happen to be less than 11 years old.