Waiting for (Autistic) Chirac...

France is waiting for the tradi-comedy (see Chirac as our new Godot) to unravel this evening, as the French president is supposed to make a major announcement on the job-law that makes it easier to fire young workers. The French media and analysts today are expecting Chirac to say he will enact the new labor law. He probably will, but who knows...

Now, the question may very well be whether Chirac will be more boring or more annoying. But there is some hope with this great new device (via Daniel Drezner):

MIT Media Lab researchers are building a device to help autistic people determine if they're boring or annoying the person they're talking to. The "emotional social intelligence prosthetic device" is a camera that clips on eyeglasses and feeds images to a small computer that uses image recognition software to characterize emotions. If the listener doesn't seem to be engaged, the device vibrates to alert the wearer.