http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=2&u=/nm/20050531/tc_nm/autos_japan_toyota_dc

And after he came here and said, “Trackbacks in the blosphere are basically dead…”, Weblogs, Inc. goes ahead and adds support for trackbacks, after a fashion. OK, so they’re not traditional “trackbacks” per se. Instead, they leverage a third party search company, initially Technorati, to determine the “trackbacks” to a post.

(which is funny, because my dev implementation of this here at ESPN.com does exactly the same thing… Welcome to the party (again), Weblogs, Inc.)

Now that there have been a few days, let’s see what the press has to say about the French sabotaging their own…I’m sorry, I mean the EU constitution, shall we?

What’s next for the EU Constitution? from CNN.com

France Votes on EU Charter also from CNN.com

France vote is Bad News for US

French No Vote on European Constitution Rattles Continent

Politicus: After French ‘no’ vote, all bets are off on EU

The No that’s shaking Europe

Is it possible that France could suck any more?

Lawrence Kaplan has a good article on the successes of the Bush foreign policy at TNR today. The article I think is the fairest account yet of the successes that this administration has been a part of. From the article:

Both arguments reflect what Georgetown University’s Robert Lieber calls a reductio ad Iraqum, in which every accomplishment or setback of U.S. foreign policy traces back to Iraq. Neither version of events fares well under scrutiny. When democracy blossoms in several different places at once in a region whose political culture hasn’t budged in 60 years, it’s illogical to credit internal forces alone. At the same time, crediting the inspirational effect of Iraq’s elections with events in places as far-flung as Ukraine and Egypt goes too far–and, in slighting the U.S. role as an agent of democracy in every one of them, not far enough.

The best thing about this article is that it covers some of the non-Iraq foreign policy initiatives, detailing the actions that actually followed the democracy rhetoric we hear from Bush all the time. Of course, I end up finishing the article and wonder why we couldn’t have done the same thing in Iraq? This war has become a process that will take decades to finish and in the process has put us in bed with folks like Karimov (see here or here or here). It still doesn’t seem necessary to me, this war… not even the cogent supporters of Bush have convinced me yet.

The foreign policy successes show what can happen with money, diplomacy, and opportunity… no war necessary.

• The New York Times > Technology > No Privacy in Your Cubicle? Try an Electronic Silencer
  (tags: babble buy cool know noise cancelling)
• What Is Torture? - An interactive primer on American interrogation. By Emily Bazelon, Phillip Carter, and Dahlia Lithwick
  Phil Carter is a smart man, and this looks like a comprehensive primer…
  (tags: vote know politics torture interrogation us military prisoner abuse)

Hope everyone is having a great day off (or at least a decent day at work if you’re in the office like me). I’m in the middle of trying to get ahead on something at work and a couple of projects at home, so posting will probably be light to non-existent today from my side.

So you’re not missing the FatMixx fun, I leave you with Mark Jenkins’ Tape Babies, found on the inimitable Boing Boing.

Update: I was driving out of the office and I realized that this was an insensitive post… while I know many people are having barbecues and are heading down to the beach, the holiday is supposed to be a time to honor and remember fallen soldiers. I’m sorry I forgot about that.

• wg:Inline Mini Tabs
  (tags: css design example web tabs menu code)
• L.A. Daily News - News - Drama students learn tough lesson: Dubya’s no joke
  Drama group forced to take down a poster with a satirical, apolitical picture of Bush
  (tags: bush vote know boyking censorship politics drama poster)
• MacZealots > Tutorials > Installing Rails on Tiger
  A walkthrough installing Ruby Rails, the technology behind all of 37 Signals popular applications (basecamp, backpack, and ta-da lists)
  (tags: rails ruby osx tutorial tiger mac development code geek programming)
• RubyForge: RubyGems: Project Info
  Reminds me of Fink or PEAR but for Ruby
  (tags: programming ruby)
• xkr.us / javascript / escape(), encodeURI(), encodeURIComponent()
  Compares the encode, encodeURI, and encodeURIComponent methods in JS
  (tags: javascript reference encode encodeURI encodeURIComponent code geek)
• Cloudalicious - Watching Tag Clouds Over Time
  (tags: del.icio.us delicious tagcloud visualization tool tagweight folksonomy geek)
• Star Wars: Episode III | Episode III Easter Egg Hunt
  Little funny details in Episode III that you might’ve missed
  (tags: geek starwars starwars3 easter eggs watch movies)

There’s a good tutorial on MacZealots.com about installing Rails on Tiger. Rails is a development framework built on top of the Ruby programming language, a scripting language similar to Perl or PHP but object-oriented. The Rails framework brings the model-view-controller paradigm to web development. While not the first or only language to do that, the fact that it brings things like AJAX to the table along with some pretty good data model generation functionality makes it worth considering in any new web development. The best endorsement, though, is that all of the 37Signals applications are built using Rails. Those are some great web applications with some excellent UIs.

• Microsoft Product RSS Index
  RSS feeds for your favorite (or not so much) Microsoft Products
  (tags: trendwatch microsoft rss feeds product)
• » What’s left for RSS to disrupt? Plenty | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
  (tags: rss geek)
• Yahoo! Mindset
  (tags: ajax search yahoo mindset geek intent driven)
• ESPN.com - Robby Gordon not buying into Danica mania
  Feeling a bit threatened, are we Robby Gordon?
  (tags: sports indy500 danica patrick racing prejudice fear)

Alright, so because I am not an NBA coach, player, administrator, owner, or really in anyway affiliated with the National Basketball Association any way other than as a fan, I feel supremely confident in saying this to the referees, “WOULD YOU PLEASE START CALLING OFFENSIVE FOULS ALREADY?!?!?!”

Just tonight alone, I have seen no fewer than 4 plays on which I would call an offensive foul against players on San Antonio, and an equal number that I would call against Amare Stoudamire alone. Now, I like the NBA alot, but its situations like this that piss me off. A person’s popularity should not determine the calls he gets. A person’s star power should not determine the calls he gets. His friendliness with the refs should not determine the calls he gets. The level of athleticism should not determine the calls he gets.

If a person levels his shoulder into the defender, that is a foul. If an offender wraps his arm around the defender, that is a foul. Offensive players have gotten away with much too much in these playoffs, and it is getting ridiculous. Even GREAT defensive players are being made to look like chumps. ENOUGH ALREADY.

Let me give you an example from tonight alone. Amare Stoudamire got the ball above and outside of the left block. He started backing down Robert Horry. That is fine. Here is where it stops being fine. With no other players around, he quickly turned, and JAMMED his left shoulder into the solarplexis of Horry — knocking him back BENEATH the basket! — and then laying the ball in.

Now, I know everyone does it. Hell, I used to do it at the playground or someone’s house (stop laughing, I used to play basketball competitively when I was younger.), but that didn’t make it legal then either. (no, seriously, stop laughing.) Horry is not a small guy. He’s 6 foot 10 inches tall. And Stoudamire doesn’t do it on every play, like Shaq (you thought I forgot about him, didn’t you?) does. He’s probably the grossest offender of this offense, but if the ref’s aren’t going to call it, then why should he bother to stop.

Its time to stop it. Great defenders should be allowed their days to shine, and it shouldn’t be at the whim of the NBA referees. David Stern, please instruct the referees to start calling these fouls, and that is what they are. They are fouls. Don’t let this situation get further out of hand. These guys are too big for you NOT to see them. Yes, I understand scores will be down, but maybe, JUST MAYBE, players will learn to shoot better. Maybe they will learn to pass better. And maybe, they will learn to play better.

Kevin Drum points to a goofy statement by NASCAR and former Indy driver Robby Gordon:

Robby Gordon accused Danica Patrick of having an unfair advantage in the Indianapolis 500 and said Saturday he will not compete in the race again unless the field is equalized.

Gordon, a former open-wheel driver now in NASCAR, contends that Patrick is at an advantage over the rest of the competitors because she only weighs 100 pounds. Because all the cars weigh the same, Patrick’s is lighter on the race track.
“The lighter the car, the faster it goes,” Gordon said. “Do the math. Put her in the car at her weight, then put me or Tony Stewart in the car at 200 pounds and our car is at least 100 pounds heavier.

“I won’t race against her until the IRL does something to take that advantage away.”

Um, a little concerned that she’s a better driver than you, Robby?

Drum’s thoughts on this:

Goodness! Those girls are practically cheating by being smaller than men, aren’t they? It just breaks your heart.

Still, maybe we should get into the spirit of the thing. Perhaps NASCAR’s men should be forced to drive with artificially stiffer steering wheels to make up for their naturally greater upper body strength. Maybe male tennis players should play against women but be required to use two-pound rackets. Maybe Tiger Woods should be forced to use 3 ounce golf balls.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? Men have dozens of advantages against women in practically every sport on the planet, and earn mountains of money because of it. But find one minor advantage for women in one single sport and the men suddenly start blubbering about how unfair it is. What a bunch of whiners.

Come on Kevin, it’s not the men that are whining, it’s the insecure men who are whining. Eyes on the prize and all that… after all, both you and I are men, are we not?

Update: I just saw Robby Gordon’s interview on SportsCenter and after listening to him, it seems likely to me that he wasn’t complaining about her being lighter because she’s a woman but that lighter drivers have an advantage in Indy car racing because of the way car weights are measured. It seems that NASCAR weighs cars WITH the driver inside while the Indy circuit weighs cars and drivers separately. Part of what convinced me was the fact that Gordon brought up some lighter male drivers that he’s complained about in the past.

Yankees team ERA as of this morning: 4.25.

Wait till the official stats come in tomorrow.

(Here’s what I’m hinting at)

Update: So, I did the math right after I wrote the post but had to run right after that. Anyway, the Yankees team ERA only goes up .25 or so to around 4.50 or so, I think. It definitely doesn’t go over 5. The bullpen ERA will probably go up significantly, but I haven’t run the numbers for that. Just goes to show how little one game means even this early in the season. The 17 earned runs goes into a pool of 200 or so runs over 430+ innings. It’s a significant number, but doesn’t really show up as much of anything.

I’m finally watching the Fast and the Furious… It starts off with a really stupid public service announcement that viewers should know that the racing was all done by professionals. Useful, I’m sure…

Oh yeah, and this movie really sucks so far…

• CNN.com - Study: 20M licensed drivers may lack basic safety knowledge - May 27, 2005
  I note a distinct inverse relationship between scores and population density…
  (tags: know driving drivers test rules road dumbest smartest survey)
• GOP Tilting Balance Of Power to the Right - Yahoo! News
  (tags: vote know republican tactics)

The move is halfway done, and I learned a number of important things.

1. Call to verify that your truck will be there. Then call again. I reserved a truck for Thursday at 2 pm. Confirmed it on Monday. Called at 1 pm Thursday to say that I was on my way over…and my reservation had been canceled. Wow. No explanation. My sweetly scathing tone inspired a down-home three-ring binder Budget representative to scramble around and find me a truck. Had the truck at 2:15. Crisis averted.
   Why would they cancel my reservation? Optimization. I hate computers. When a Budget center temporarily closed, they canceled my original reservation and gave me a reservation in Arlington. The original center closed, and the folks in Arlington assumed the original center would take my truck. No harm, no foul.
2. Inspect the truck. Two major points here: my truck has a cartoon on the side which gives me a helpful moving tip. Never use packing tape for a painful practical joke. Thank you. And while checking for damage on the truck (which is thankfully very damaged, reducing my liability) I could read great graffiti under the paint. Someone sucks cock. I don’t know who, but they do. The truck says so.
3. Check the weather. Wednesday’s rains were biblical. Thursday felt like London. I was so overheated that I didn’t even care. I’d better get some Vitamin C.
4. Economize. Condomize. My passionately-in-loveseat (so small that you snuggle with anyone who sits next to you) is too large to fit down the stairs. Rather than buy stretch wrap for $50 at Staples, my mother took el-cheapo kitchen plastic wrap and turned the couch into a giant shrink-wrapped candybar. It practically slid down the stairs. Emboldened by her success, she proceeded to use plastic wrap to fasten table legs to each other, to keep drawers from opening, and to ensure that every piece of furniture will arrive at my girlfriend’s parents’ house looking like a giant condom.
5. Know the rules, but decide how you feel about them. Somerville is happy to give out No Parking signs for your move, but my neighbors didn’t heed them. When I stormed out of my office at 2 pm, unsure whether I would have a moving truck, I wanted to tow their cars. Truck in hand, I mellowed. The good parking space helped, too. My mother, however, did not mellow. She wrote Please move your car or you will be towed on a newspaper and put it on the car windshield. Sometimes I forget which of us is the good cop and which is the bad cop.
6. Your truck is not a lamp. The team kicked ass. Filling the truck took an hour. Properly loading it and balancing it, so my crap wouldn’t slide around during the 200 mile drive took another hour. Two hours. Rental truck. Lights on. Do the math. When we got ready to drive away, I turned the key and (click) (click) (click). Adam saved the day with jumper cables. My goodness.
7. Choose your roommates well. At the end of a long evening of moving, there’s nothing like sharing a hotel room with your mother. I speak with my family a few hours every week, but my mom wanted to describe in detail the difference between the hospitality at our hotel and every other hotel she stayed at this year. Good night!

In short, if you’ve got to move, hire people. Failing that, surround yourself with people who will do anything to help you. Like carrying giant condoms in the rain across the street, past a car with a sopping threatening newspaper on its windshield.