Quick Roundup 174

Global Warming as "National Security" Issue

If you thought it was bad enough when the Republicans decided that a ban on online gambling belonged in a port security bill, just wait until you see what both parties have in store for us now.

The CIA and Pentagon would for the first time be required to assess the national security implications of climate change under proposed legislation intended to elevate global warming to a national defense issue.

This is a very disturbing development, but one that has been on the radar for quite awhile. In fact, even former Objectivist, Alan Greenspan, shares the blame!

Quoth the central banker who once advocated a return to the gold standard: "[A higher federal gas tax is] the way to get consumption down. It's a national security issue." While he wasn't specifically talking about global warming, his remark both opened the door for such foolishness and gave it the undeserved blessing of a man widely regarded as a capitalist. This is too bad. Here was someone who knows better and whose opinion carries considerable weight -- but who did not speak up against further increasing the power of the government to meddle in the lives of ordinary citizens. Shameful.

Great. Now we can begin diverting precious resources from protecting our country from real foreign threats to tilting at imaginary meteorological windmills. And somehow, I doubt it will stop at that.

Searching for a Good Idea?

Student of Objectivism reminded me of a search engine that Mike N also blogged about, Goodsearch. The engine searches the web via Yahoo! and donates a small amount towards a user-selected charity with each search.

When I first learned about it some time ago, either I was too busy to figure this out or learned that I could not make the Ayn Rand Institute the default beneficiary. I didn't want to install the links until I'd found a way to save my readers the trouble of having to specify ARI. In any event, after Student jogged my memory, I found out how to do that.

So now, you can use the Goodsearch banner in my sidebar or the link on my resources page to search the web and help support ARI every time without even once having to select it as your charity.

I am glad that I am able to set the default charity, but one thing I really could use that seems to be missing is a way to get the form to automatically restrict the search to this site in the same way Google allows. Until then, Google remains the best way to do so without having to type in "site:gusvanhorn.blogspot.com".

Switching gears, Student also has an interesting post about last November's appearance by Yaron Brook at UC-Irvine.

Blogroll Addition

I have added Prometheus, the blog of Dinesh Pillay, who hails from Mumbai, India, to my sidebar. If I am guessing correctly, we had an interesting conversation about education in the comments not too long ago.

His latest post points to a new web site about Ayn Rand's novels, which is also worth visiting. On a quick rummage, I was able to find a link to the web site of the Ayn Rand Institute that features the essays of the past winners of its Fountainhead essay contests.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Minor edits.
4-11-07: Corrected spelling of "Prometheus".