INTERESTED IN DISASTER PREPAREDNESS? Check out Bill Quick’s new online forum.

Related: Post-Apocalyptic survival gear.

UNITED NATIONS APPOINTS official representative for space aliens. But why should the space aliens listen to the U.N.? Nobody else does.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE won’t endorse Barbara Boxer.

6 ROMANTIC MOVIE GESTURES that can get you prison time.

SCOTT BROWN UPDATE: Senator Hits Harvard Over Stance on ROTC and Immigrants.

LIST: Real Cookbooks For Real Families.

RECOVERY SUMMER! Treasury Can’t Seem To Unload Citi Stock.

BILL CLINTON STUMPS FOR BARNEY FRANK, 250 Sean Bielat supporters protest.

UPDATE: More: “There’s an arrogance of power when people stay in power too long.”

WISCONSIN SENATE RACE: A Bellwether For The Nation?

FULL CIRCLE: What, we’re back to worrying about “global cooling” again? If that happens, we’re going to wish we’d spent the last decade coming up with new strains of frost-tolerant food crops, instead of banning incandescent bulbs. And Fallen Angels is looking steadily more prophetic . . . .

UPDATE: Reader John Chalupa writes: “Fallen Angels is available for download at the Baen Free Library.”

MAPPING THE racial breakdown of American cities.

LOOKING AT the new iPods.

AND I HAVEN’T EVEN GOTTEN AROUND TO HOOKING UP MY OLD ONE YET: New Roku Boxes Announced.

PJTV: Kruiser Control: Carter’s Superiority Complex, Matthews’ Moment of Clarity, and Crist’s Change of Stripes.

HOW OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS REDUCE INFLAMMATION.

OH, GOODY: Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management Makes Your Computer Vulnerable.

HOWARD LOVY: Leelanau at last after 24 years in journalism.

THE RISE OF THE political unicorns. “27% of self-identified gay and lesbian voters chose John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008. That’s a figure that translates to roughly 1.7 million gay votes for McCain/Palin. If gay conservatives are unicorns, our herd is huge.”

Related: Politico: They’re Gay, Conservative, And Proud. “Even among the gays, the right is on the rise.”

Hey, this is only news if you haven’t been paying attention to the leading indicators.

WALTER SHAPIRO: The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate: Are We Better Off than 50 Years Ago?

COMING: Machine co-processors for the brain.

ANN ALTHOUSE: