The weekly update:
It was a slow week for hard reference links (although some good ones here) but the holiday season is producing lots of fun stuff (at bottom):

Reference

CDC Factsheet: Smallpox

Spices profiles from UCLA library.

Know your money from Secret Service, how to identify valid bills.

National Health Observances, 2003 find dates of days, weeks, months devoted to promoting health concerns.

Holiday Season Facts from Census.

AAA daily fuel gauge report daily pump prices national and by market.

World Weather Information Service new worldwide official forecasts from UN World Meteorological Assn. Also has climatological data.

Cold War archive from UK govt.
Statistics

Census Metropolitan Areas Census data broken down by Metro area, from Mumford Center at U. Albany.

America's Most Dangerous and Safest Cities another ranking from Morgan Quitno Press. Most dangerous: St. Louis Post-dispatch story, safest: Amherst NY (Buffalo suburb). Most dangerous in Florida: Tampa 9th; West PB 20th, Miami 21st. (But Miami comes in 2nd after Memphis in Metro areas....)
Governments/Politics

Senate Intelligence Committee final report on 9/11: Conclusions, and Recommendations

Congressional Directory has been revised to reflect changes in 107th Congress.

Bill of Rights Defense Committee organizing against the Patriot Act....
Tools

Two new experiments from Google Labs: Google Viewer lets you view the Web pages from your search results in a "slide show" format. Google Webquotes gives you annotated info about a site from other sites.
Public Records

Taxrecords.com covers property records in New Jersey, Maryland, and two Pennsylvania counties.

DC Area property, taxes and sales at Washingtonpost.com.

Tennessee Felony Offender Lookup from state Dept of Corrections.
Business, People, News, Florida,Journalism: no links this week.


Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Devil's Excrement a weblog from Venezuela, keeping up with events there....

BBC: Websites spread al-Qaeda message quotes OutthereNews' Paul Eedle, who's compiled links on militant Islam.

FarrellMedia Weblog by former Boston Globe reporter and columnist David Farrell and his brother.

The Wi-Fi Boom: special report in NY Times.

Fun/Entertaining:

Powers of 10 watch the image for an amazing tour of outer and inner space.

Stewardess Uniforms a Dutch collector has hundreds....

Earth as Art great photographs from Landsat.

Worldview Desktop this site tells you how to set up your desktop to have views of the globe, satellite images, weather radar, and weathercams at your fingertips.

Biz-o-rama the Wall St. Journal launched this promotional website....

Aspen Magazine: there were 10 issues. It came in a box.

For an English Christmas.....Delia's Christmas recipes and tips from England's star chef Delia Smith.

The Letter Project: put in words, any words......