SOME DISASTER-PREPARATION ADVICE FROM TEXAS, courtesy of reader Fernando Colina:

And in the good ole Houston, USA, in the aftermath of IKE, telephones, internet and cable TV were down, and cell phones were unreliable due the spike in traffic. The only means of communication that approached useful levels was SMS messaging and good ole AM/FM. Sometimes text messages would be delayed for minutes but they almost always got there. I’m putting my el-cheapo crank-up radio in a pedestal next to my cell phone. They kept us in touch and made us comfortable for 60 hours. And let’s not forget the car charger for our phone. Sure, a generator is great, a car-pluggable DC-AC inverted will do work for small appliances, but a lowly $20 battery charger plugged to your car 12V outlet will power your radios, phones, flashlights, even coffee makers can make the difference between terror and small comfort.

Yeah. I have a bunch of big uninterruptible power supply units for my computers, DSL modem, wi-fi, etc. These will keep the Internet going for days without power — so long as the Internet is up, of course — and also recharge gadgets like cellphones and laptops.

UPDATE: Reader Dale Britton writes: “Say, I wouldn’t mind owning one of those. And I’m thinking Amazon wouldn’t be depressed about selling a few dozen – errr, strike that – thousand of those, I’m sure. You’ll probably sell them 1,000 in Houston alone this week. Link your faves!”

I have several models — this one is the most recent, and features a mute button for the annoying power-off alarm. It’ll run a computer for a while, but it’ll run low-power devices like the DSL modem and router for days. However, since you have to, you know, charge it first, I don’t think it’ll help folks whose power is out now.

DEXTER FILKINS ON HOW MUCH IRAQ HAS IMPROVED. “When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope.”

Well, you know it has to have gotten much better, as the press has quit talking about it. Meanwhile, TigerHawk notes how much Filkins’ reporting echoes Michael Yon. And, if you missed it earlier, be sure to read this WSJ piece on why the Surge worked.

WHICH CHICAGO SCHOOL?

IN TEXAS, more than 800,000 remain without power in the wake of Hurricane Ike.

YESTERDAY it was a watch sale. Today, it’s a jewelry sale. Why all the markdowns? Is it because of the economic news?

SELF-OTHERIZING at the Obama campaign? With help from the press. “So if Americans think that Obama is somehow different from the average American, perhaps it is because Obama and his presumably well-meaning Leftist friends have been telling them that for nigh-on two years. You can hardly blame them if they’ve come to believe it.”

Related item here.

WHAT WOMEN WANT: From an expert! And, yeah, it’s getting harder and harder to tell satire from reality in this election.

60,000 PEOPLE SAW SARAH PALIN IN FLORIDA TODAY, but two of them blogged it. Here’s a report from Pereiraville, and here’s one from Baker Street. Lots of photos at both.

UPDATE: Here’s more from The Orlando Sentinel.

WHEN PUBLIC RACISM is perfectly acceptable.

FROM ARNOLD KLING, an open letter to Ben Bernanke:

We have excesses. Too many housing units. Too many “homeowners” who don’t have equity in their homes and never did. Too many banks and financial institutions. The excesses need to be worked out by the markets.

Henry Paulson is not the first strong Treasury Secretary to appear in a crisis. John Connally held that job in the Nixon Administration, In response to a run on the dollar, he abandoned the Bretton Woods agreement and introduced wage and price controls. In the short term, this was well received, and it allowed the economy to rebound in time for Nixon’s re-election. In the long run, it was a disaster, ultimately unleashing virulent inflation and, as oil prices rose, leading to the painful disorder of rationing and lines at gasoline stations.

Connally’s cure was worse than the disease. I strongly suspect that Paulson’s cure will prove similarly harmful.

I hope not.

READER FRANCES JENSEN emails that Amazon has discontinued its price-protection policy. That’s never been a big deal to me, but it matters to a lot of Amazon customers. I wonder what’s behind that change? Does Amazon expect a lot of price-drops in coming months? I would have bet on inflation myself, but they’re probably in a better position than me to forecast these things.

UPDATE: Reader Jay Dean writes: “Sometimes when a company gets big enough, in market share or otherwise, it doesn’t feel the need to keep up with all the extra bells and whistles that it needed to attract that market share to begin with. Could Amazon be the new doctor who dumps the girlfriend that stuck with him all the way through med school?” Gosh, I hope not.

WELL, JUNIOR ROTC WOULD BE BETTER, BUT. . . . Educating high-schoolers with America’s Army.

SARAH PALIN DRAWS 60,000 people in Florida.

LINING UP FOR GAS in Nashville. “People have panicked and there hasn’t really been a calming voice. Until this morning, most of the media (new and traditional) has exacerbated the problem.”

UPDATE: Atlanta, too. Part of the problem seems to involve people topping up tanks out of panic that gas will run out. If everyone does that, gas does run out, even if there’s no shortage to begin with.

Plus, praise for Phil Valentine.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bob Krumm emails: “It’s true that of the five gas stations I saw today, four were out of fuel and one had a line. However, if people would stop topping off their tanks when they have 5/8ths there wouldn’t be a problem. I figure that by the time I need gas, everyone else will have filled up. (I hope).”

And reader Mark McCarthy reports gas shortages in Asheville, N.C., too.

EXCITEMENT REIGNS with the all-new Zune 3.0. No, really: “The 3.0 update also introduces the new MixView music suggestion feature; which has been warmly received and even touted as being better than the Apple iTunes Genius offering.” Plus, a wi-fi tie-in with McDonald’s.

CALL THE COPS: A kid is climbing a tree!

MAY THE (CASIMIR) FORCE BE WITH YOU : DARPA Seeks to Use the Force, the Casimir Force.

THE CARNIVAL OF SPACE is up!

MICHAEL YON: Totally Wrong. “If NATO and the French persist in making these claims, the secret report, written by American Special Forces who were present, could find itself on the internet. Certain embargoed details in the report are even more troubling than the facts that were published in the Globe and Mail article. The loss of ten French soldiers is bad enough. Let’s not make it worse with cover-up.”

WILL CELLPHONES SAVE THE WORLD? “Here, you may use your phone for calls and messaging, perhaps for some computing lite, but likely little more. In Senegal, however, farmers are using phones to track crop prices, in Japan, writers are SMSing whole novels, and in Sweden, they’re texting to apply for instant loans. An app that lets you kill time on the subway, this is not. Within a year and a half, half the world will use cellphones, predict analysts, and with the bulk of new users emerging from developing nations, the question of what phones can do for their owners has never before had such potentially world-changing answers.”

PALIN HACKER UPDATE: FBI serves David Kernell with search warrant. (Via Gateway Pundit).

RICK MORAN: Live From Blogworld: The Political Blogosphere in Transition.

Here at the 2008 Blogworld and New Media Expo, there is plenty of evidence that rapid change in the blogosphere will alter the way that bloggers blog and the news consumer gets information.

The key is content. The way content is delivered, the way in which it is used by the blogger, and the way a blog community digests it and disseminates it further is driving the innovations in blogs, extending their influence, and ultimately changing the manner by which people get information

The growth of video, spurred on by YouTube and other video sites as well as blogging platforms that have become user friendly for uploading audio and video to a webpage have created nothing less than a revolution in blogging. In fact, the changes that occurring are so sweeping that the terms “blog” and “blogging” — at least the way those terms are generally understood now — may be anachronistic.

Of course, some of us have been predicting that for a while.

BEST OPENING SENTENCE EVER: “Groups of rogue MILF fighters are wandering around the south, looking for food, and fighting back when they encounter police or troops.” Really, it must have been a CIA mole who named the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

UPDATE: Reader James Egan writes: “Curious…the MILFs I’ve always encountered are very friendly.”

LAST OF THE Neanderthals.

CELEBRITY ACADEMICS on video.