Weekend update: The weekly reference collection/research gleanings:

My backyard birds have disappeared in the last 6 weeks or so. Have yours? I thought it was due to the loss of trees in my neighborhood, where several older houses are being replaced with much larger buildings, but then I found recent stories in the Orlando Sentinel and Providence Journal that report it's happening in lots of places, at least reduced numbers.....Project Feeder Watch keeps track.

New Iraq links:

The big news from Iraq found several new links to add to your Iraq list:

• Poynter's Al Tompkins has ideas for local coverage of the Saddam story.
  
• INDICT international organization dedicated to setting up tribunals in Iraq.
  
• IraqNet: blog-style news and information on Iraq. U.S. based.
  
• Coalition Provisional Authority
  
• Future of Iraq portal (large page of links).
  
• The Saddam Hussein Sourcebook from National Security Archive, has documents from past U.S. relations with Iraq.
  
• Operation Red Dawn: Centcom Powerpoint presentation on the capture. Lots of maps, charts.
  
• The Osama Clock

More useful links....

Reference :

Collection of "Best of 2003" lists.

International Religious Freedom report, 2003 from State Dept.

A roadmap to African American resources from Santa Fe Community College.

Kennedy and Castro: the secret tapes and documents from the National Security Archive.

TheatreHistory.com: history of theater around the world, and a script archive of plays or monologues in the public domain.
Florida:

Dear Florida Hero: send a holiday message to a National Guard member.

Demographic profile, Miami-Dade County, 1960-2000 Census data from county planning department. More data, including Miami-Dade Facts, a 62-page compilation of stats.
Statistics:

Preliminary Uniform Crime Report, Jan-Jun 2003 from FBI.

Foreign-Born Population of the U.S., 2000 Census report.

Institute for the Study of Homelessness has lots of stats, reports.
Tools:

Google Print is a new beta test search that searches fulltext of books. This link leads to FAQ page. Sample search. (I searched my name and found out there's been a character in a romance novel. Hmmm.)

JAlbum: highly recommended (by Scout Report) free photo album software: save albums on your hard drive or publish to the Web.

More software recommended by Scout Rept: WebAssistant lets you download Web pages to read or use when not online.
Business:

Cable Industry statistics from Natl Cable and Telecom. Assn.

Job Watch: Economic Policy Institute, tracking jobs and wages.
Journalism:

News Page Designer a place for designers to show off their work, info about design.
Governments, Politics, Public Records, People, News, no links this week.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Coaches who prey: amazing series by Seattle Times.

Mention on UM law prof Michael Froomkin's blog: 100 interesting math calculations for kids. Fun for the holidays?

Philly Inquirer has a story on bloggers' reactions to Saddam capture.

Fla's Bill Nelson says he and other senators were told Iraqi missiles could hit U.S. in Florida Today.

OK, here's an environmental problem I never heard of before.

Scary story about a Nigerian scam from Guardian's Paula Toynbee.

Newsweek debunks the Telegraph story that said Atta was in Baghdad in summer of '01.
Fun/Entertaining:

Tales of the Holy Cow: a fake 'priest' milks one of the Nigerian scammers...

Mistletunes: in case you can't remember all those old rock 'n' roll Christmas songs.

Radio Lovers: free old-time radio shows in MP3.

Modern Humorist: Best of the Web

Photo/poems: these are beautiful.

Pong story: how the whole video game thing got started.