Everyone has probably had trouble at some point pulling themselves away from a computer solitaire game. It’s almost as addictive as Facebook and is much healthier than biting your nails. This site is also incredibly addictive, and if it’s actually doing what it purports to be doing then you can waste all the time you want with a guilt-free conscience.

(And it has nothing to do with the Secretary of State…)

This is purported to be a genuine recruitment ad for the Ukranian army. I think the fact that I don’t speak a word of Ukranian makes it even better.

Are you a parent? Are you concerned about your child’s health? If so, you should pay close attention to the information in this PSA. And don’t kid yourself–it could happen to you, too.

Some more beesty javascript, this time a timer that counts down to the day everybody’s waiting for: January 20, 2009. Don’t have anywhere to put it at this point, but it’s kind of cool. It can also easily be modified to count down to whatever else you’re looking forward to. See it in action here.

function countdown() {

	var today=new Date();

	var target=new Date(2009, 0, 20, 00, 00, 1);

	var time_left=(target - today);

	var year=Math.floor(time_left/(1000*60*60*24*365));
	time_left%=(1000*60*60*24*365)

	var day=Math.floor(time_left/(1000*60*60*24));
	time_left%=(1000*60*60*24);

	var hour=Math.floor(time_left/(1000*60*60));
	time_left%=(1000*60*60);

	var minute=Math.floor(time_left/(1000*60));
	time_left%=(1000*60);

	var sec=Math.floor(time_left/1000);
	time_left%=1000

	var half_sec=Math.floor(time_left/10);
	if (half_sec <= 9)
		half_sec="0" + half_sec

	document.getElementById('clock').innerHTML=year + ' year, ' + day + ' days, ' + hour + ' hours, ' + minute + ' minutes, ' + sec + '.' + half_sec + ' seconds until Bush leaves office.';

	t=setTimeout('countdown()',5);
}
window.onload=countdown;

Although the Wildebeest is currently in the throes of final exams, he has been able to find a few quiet moments to relieve some stress by playing around with javascript. In addition, he has been undaunted by the fact that all major keyboard manufacturers continue to practice blatant discrimination against those with non-standard manual endowments. Ok, designing a keyboard for people with cloven hooves may not necessarily increase your bottom line, but society could definitely stand to broaden its conceptions of manual identity to include non-traditional paradigms of digital configuration. I mean, how’s a Beest supposed to get ahead when The Man is always holding him down?

Nevertheless, he has managed to bang out a few lines of code, and it has brought back pleasant memories of messing around with BASIC in the early 90s. Although he’s pretty sure all he managed to write back then were programs that would count to ten and then output a randomly generated number for good measure.

Anyway, this is a navigation bar with a set of sub-menus that drop down when a user mouses over them (ok, not the most original thing in the world, but you have to start somewhere). Here’s the code (formatting has been screwed up by WordPress):

function change() {
    var length=document.getElementById('nav').childNodes.length;
		for (i=0; i<=length; i++)  {
			var sm=document.getElementById('submenu'+i)
     		if (sm)
				{sm.style.display='none';}
		}
		for (i=0; i<=length-1; i++) {
			var dropmenu=document.getElementById('nav').childNodes[i];
			dropmenu.onmouseover=function ()
			    {
          if (this.getElementsByTagName('ul')[0])
          {this.getElementsByTagName('ul')[0].style.display='block';}
          }
 			dropmenu.onmouseout=function ()
          {
          if (this.getElementsByTagName('ul')[0])
          {this.getElementsByTagName('ul')[0].style.display='none';}
          }
		}
}
window.onload=change;

The HTML should be a series of nested unordered lists, with the parent getting an id of “nav” and each sub-menu getting an id of “submenuX” (submenu0, submenu1, etc…)

<ul id="nav">
  <li><a href="#">Home</a>
  </li>
  <li><a href="#">Drop-Down Stuff</a>
    <ul id="submenu0">

      <li><a href="#">Item One</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">Item Two</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">Item Three</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href="#">Fishies</a>
    <ul id="submenu1">
      <li><a href="#">One Fish</a></li>

      <li><a href="#">Two Fish</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">Red Fish</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">Blue Fish</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li><a href="#">Another Menu</a>
    <ul id="submenu2">

      <li><a href="#">Link One</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">Link Two</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

And that’s pretty much it. You can see them in action (in a very basic way) here, and if there are any comments or suggestions from those with much more experience than the Wildebeest they will be most welcome.

A slightly unrelated follow-up to the Iran post:

I work at a decidedly liberal-oriented radio station in one of the most liberal areas of the country–Bethesda, Maryland–and we regularly have bored housewives of retired rich lawyers around doing volunteer work. They generally work in the cubicle next to mine so I get to listen in on their conversations with the volunteer coordinator, and although they’re nice people they occasionally come out with something completely outrageous.

This morning they were talking about Bush’s press conference where he basically told Iran to admit it was still making nukes, which, let’s admit it, looked pretty silly considering the NIE which came out a few days ago. The exchange went something like this:

Retiree Volunteer: “Why does Bush keep doing these things that are going to embarrass him? I’d like to know which advisor thought that would be a good idea.”

Volunteer Coordinator: “Yeah, it was probably not the smartest move.”

RV: “And who does he think that’s going to impress? It’s these people who live in these places like–I mean–I’ve got some in-laws who live in Ohio, and they just don’t have the same understanding of the world as people on the coasts and, you know, Chicago do. They just don’t have access to the same things we do–they don’t get the papers and they don’t have, you know, network news and stuff like that.”

Ok, retiree volunteer, lets think about this for a minute:

In the same sentence you claim that coasters (yourself included) have a broader world-view than people from the “heartland”, and you then proceed to make an outrageously ignorant comment about a part of your own country that you obviously have no understanding of. Gee, and I wonder why people from places like Ohio are suspicious when you try to tell them that you have the best solutions?

Hypocrisy knows no bounds.

The new National Intelligence Estimate released the other day should make everyone think a little harder about Iran.

The report contradicts the 2005 NIE by saying that U.S. intelligence agencies are now fairly certain that Iran froze its nuclear weapons program several years ago in response to international pressure, although it continued to enrich uranium. It has become the hot news item overnight, which is not surprising considering the stakes involved as the more conservative elements of the administration are taking a harder line against Iran.

So depending on which side you’re on it’s either come in just the nick of time to keep trigger-happy neocons from embarking on yet another misguided military escapade, or it’s a not-so-veiled attempt by the “diplomatic approach” crowd to use the intelligence community to reinforce their own point of view.

A few things to keep in mind:

First, the Wildebeest is currently in the process of reading a book by a British writer who spent over a year traveling around Iran (and attempting to avoid politics while he was at it). One of the striking things about his experience is that, nearly every single day he’s there, he gets ripped off by somebody. Often it’s a cab driver who tries to exploit the guy’s desire to get close to “real” Iranians by establishing some sort of bond with him (taking him to a cafe, introducing him to friends), and then charging exorbitant amounts for the time they spent in brotherly conversation.

The Wildebeest has heard this from other people who are familiar with Iranian culture–that being bad-ass negotiators is basically something they learn in the womb over there. So, given the fact that the main strategic advantage of having nuclear weapons is not using them, but making sure that other people know you have them, it would make sense that the Iranians would be trying to exploit international proliferation fears while avoiding the many costs and dangers associated with actually having the things.

The book also describes the Iranian fascination with conspiracy theories. Sitting in a cafe with a friend overlooking a river that’s been dry for three months, the author listens to all the locals’ theories about the reasons for the lack of water: an ex-president has a mansion upstream and is diverting the water to irrigate his pistachio orchards, the government made a secret deal with the Kuwaitis and sold the water to them, etc. When the author suggests that it might have something to do with the ongoing drought in the region, everyone rolls their eyes and tells him not to be so naive.

Paranoia can lead one to an irrational sense of victimization, but it can also enable one to construct devilishly clever schemes to counter the imagined plots.

Second, the intelligence agencies are generally the more politically conservative agencies of the federal government. There are lots of ex-Peace Corps volunteers working at places like USAID who are usually pretty skeptical of anything having to do with the military, but people who work for the CIA are usually not afraid of committing to whatever it takes to keep America #1. So people (like Michael Ledeen) who think that this is part of some liberal conspiracy to aid and abet the enemy should think twice. They should also take some time to wonder why the same people who were saying that intelligence hadn’t been deliberatly manipulated before the Iraq war are now so eager to accuse the intel community of politicization.

Finally, the report has been greeted with huge relief by American allies, especially in Europe, which had been struggling to reconcile the need to keep nukes out of Iranian hands with the need to restrain an overly-aggressive United States from jumping the gun. No rational country would accept another nation’s opinions as the sole yardstick for evaluating its own interests, but if the entire rest of the world is saying something different then maybe that country should stop and at least reconsider. After all, nearly everyone outside the US thought Iraq was a pretty bad idea from the beginning.

Everyone needs to keep in mind that this remains an extremely ambiguous situation, and we should all take some time to make sure the wool isn’t being pulled over our eyes.

On a tour of Alabama, the Pope took a few days off to visit the coast for some sightseeing. He was cruising along the beach in the Pope-mobile when there was a frantic commotion just off shore. A helpless man, wearing a University of Tennessee jersey, was struggling frantically to free himself from the jaws of a huge shark.

As the Pope watched, horrified, a speedboat came racing up with three men wearing Alabama jerseys aboard. One quickly fired a harpoon into the shark’s side. The other two reached out and pulled the bleeding semi-conscious Vol fan from the water. Then using heavy clubs the three heroes beat the shark to death and hauled it into the boat. Immediately the Pope shouted and summoned them to the beach. “I give you my blessing for your brave actions,” he told the heroes. “Even in Italy I have heard of the bitter hatred between your two colleges, but I have now seen with my own eyes it is not the truth”.

As the Pope drove off the harpooner asked his buddies “Who was that?” “It was the Pope,” one replied. “He is in direct contact with God and is considered very wise”. “Well,” the harpooner said, “he may have great wisdom and direct contact with God, but he doesn’t know anything about shark fishing. How is the bait holding up?”

After listening to this weekend’s podcast edition of “This American Life” (yes, the Wildebeest is a dork), I was inspired to find out more about the show and the folks who make it. To my surprise I found out that the show is in fact much more than a show: it was originally conceived as an attempt to provide the world with an “indispensable source of information for years to come about the thoughts and tastes of bespectacled cynics prone to neuroses who are actually doing just fine”.

I’m particularly excited about tracking down the story about “miniature golf and its miscontents”.

Read the full article here.

Sorry to any Frenchies who might be reading this, but this was just way too funny.