Weekend update: The weekly reference collection/research gleanings:

In another frightening glimpse of how things are going to be, this photo: Caught in public? Gawker has a photo of Boris Becker, taken from the seat behind on an airplane. Was this from someone's photo phone?

I hope you read the obit of Richard Pearson, the Washington Post obit editor. He loved obits. We all should. (And this is the 3d -- at least -- former Post colleague who's died of pancreatic cancer. hmmmm.)

Continual bad news out of Iraq, and we spent time this week trying to find stats and info on all the troops there. Here's a good source: Iraq's crumbling coalition: This Independent article had a great front-page graphic Friday with list of coalition forces/casualties/status. The text from graphic is attached to the story.

For more: Humanitarian Information Center: Iraq: has lots of background, maps, etc.;
Continuing Collateral Damage: report on health effects of the Iraq war, including 21,000-55,000 deaths. From Medact, in PDF.


The useful links....

Reference :

Experts database from College News service, search database of liberal arts colleges experts.

Medical Expert witness database

Greenwood's Map of London, 1827: interactive map created from original.

Database of French WWI dead

Zimmerman's Research Guide is a great guide to online reference sites, which has moved from its old site to LexisOne. The guide is heavy on legal topics but has much, much more.

HometownLocator Gazetteer nice site to quickly find census or map information about a city, town or place.

The Role of Metro Areas in the U.S. Economy from U.S. Conference of Mayors. Long PDF document.
News:

Tyndall Report: tracks amount of TV news air time given to topics, going back to 2000 at least. (via Al Tomkins).

Quick DFW: new Dallas Morning News free tabloid (for busy readers) in PDF, page by page. Home page.
Journalism:

Clickety-clickety: what do newsrooms sound like these days? From Rip Rense.

Online News Association Conference in Chicago, today, includes live blog.

Rich Gordon on convergence in a chapter from a new book on digital journalism.
Governments, Politics:

The White House Tapes study of bugging by Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, from American Radio Networks.

Nationmaster: creat your own charts and tables of statistics covering nations around the world, or get rankings.

Fundrace 2004: follow the money in the presidential race. Has candidate rankings on a number of issues/types of contributions, and maps.

Election 2004 resources from Poynter's Al Tomkins.

Useful Campaign 2004 links from Gary Price

How campaign coverage will change in 2004 by Steve Outing in E&P.
Tools:

Babelfish Virtual Keyboard wait a couple seconds and the keyboard appears: use it to enter accented letters for Spanish, Italian, German or French, or Cyrillic letters for Russian. The keyboard's for entering text to translate in Babelfish, but why not copy/paste it to use anywhere else?

Reverse Dictionary A First? Put in a description or concept, and get the word.

Search the Web more efficiently nice article on using search engines (with links) from Pandia.

WHOIS Source lets you search domain names by partial words, names, companies, etc.
Public Records:

SearchSystems criminal records searches searches by state or county, account required. Searches from $9-$29 (sex offenders $5).

Home price comparison tool from Coldwell Banker. Find out what a house value difference is between two cities nationwide.
Business:

Janes Fast Track to Defense Industry choose a weapon or service, get info about manufacturers.
Florida:

Charlotte County criminal and traffic records
Statistics:

U.S. Cancer statistics, 2000 from CDC, latest report. Also PDF.

Hate Crime statistics, 2002 from FBI.

Inflation: the value of the pound, 1750-2002: research report from House of Commons library.
People: no links this week.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

What those economic recovery figures really mean from How to Save the World blog.

Best of the Blogs ('Clark and Dean friendly'): a four-person blog that links to interesting news.

Iraqi Webloggers: links and info by Mark Glaser at OJR.

PR Watch: Spin of the Day "daily reporting on public relations, propaganda, and media spin."

Brand names for babies? is this true? In BBC.
Fun/Entertaining:

Marbles: a simple game.

Seen one of these before, but....Online Etch-a-Sketch works (sort of) like the original, on this Elf movie promo site.

Wildlife photographer of the year: from the London Natural History Museum. Great photos. (via Ottmar Liebert).