Weekend update: The weekly reference collection/research gleanings:

Don't miss this week's postings on the Herald blog; lots there this week. Useful reference tools will continue to be posted here, but there's much more on the WeBlog.


The useful links....

Reference :

Dictionary of Cultural Literacy from Bartleby.

Cartoon Research: look up information on animated features.

Giga-USA has databases of quotations, biography, and collections of book and links lists.

Holiday Trends and Traditions from Journalists' Toolbox, useful links.

Art and Architecture, from The Courtauld: great art.

San Francisco Historical Photograph collection: over 250,000 photographs from the public library.
News:

New on Nexis: CNN.com, from June 2003; Chillicothe Gazette (OH), Sept '03; Central Wisconsin Sunday, May '03; Courier-Post, Cherry Hill, NJ, June '03; Daily Journal, Vineland, NJ, Apr '03; Marshfield News-Herald, NJ, Feb '03; Noblesville Ledger (NJ), Feb '03; Observer-Dispatch, Utica NY, Dec '02; Stevens Point Journal, WI, Feb '03; Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, Feb '03; Topics, Marion County, IN, weekly, Feb '03; Le Point, France, Jan '95; Sud Ouest, France, May '94.
Journalism:

JournalismTraining.org search for training programs near you. A search of Florida gets 47 different events in coming months.
Tools:

Journalism Tools nice collection from Journalism.org.

UK Phone Track This is...scary? A new subscription service in the UK allows you to track (consenting) mobile phone locations.
Public Records:

Public Record Finder: another place to go to look for local state or county records online.
Florida:

Florida Politics blog: new address, design. Much easier to read.

Political Gateway: politics news site, by Bob Hoffman, Broward realtor/commission candidate.
Statistics:

Latest AIDS statistics from UNAIDS.

World Development Report, 2004 from World Bank.
Business:

NLJ 250 2003, annual survey of 250 biggest law firms by National Law Journal.
Governments, Politics, People: no links this week.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Cyberjournalist's blogroll aggregator has headlines from several journalism blogs on one page.
Fun/Entertaining:

Fun with Words

No Relevance: a collection of cultural ephemera.

Newspapers catching up:
Herald.com adds a blog: The Online FruGal is a blog of online shopping tips from online editor Georgina Cardenas.
That makes two.

Seattle P.I. RSS and Blogs: here's a paper keeping up with trends. They have 15 RSS feeds, on various topics, and three Weblogs, on Mariners, Microsoft, and Buzzworthy. The page also has some good RSS links (to readers and explanatory sites). (via Library Stuff.)

Happy Thanksgiving:


Some new photos from Miami:


Cat in blinds

Blogger is now offering Audioblogging: post to your blog by phone.

Scared in Florida:
We're all a little nervous over the latest state supreme court order on public records. Joe Adams Has links to some of the stories on his Florida Sunshine Review page.
The Manatee County Clerk of Courts has the order, and a reaction, on his Web site.

Best headline I've seen in awhile:
....and the story's pretty funny too. From Low Culture.

Online Tuesday:
IranFilter: Weblogging in Iran is hot, and this is a new test of a collaborative blog by several bloggers in English.

What blogs can do for newspapers (and TV stations). In Lost Remote.

Still think online doesn't matter? This report, from Pew Internet, says only 19 percent of U.S. population say it would be difficult to give up their daily newspaper for online or broadcast news. Another report, from a German company, says young people spend twice as much time daily online than reading newspapers. (via Poynter's E-Media Tidbits).

JournalismTraining.org search for training programs near you. A search of Florida gets 47 different events in coming months.

More on my Herald blog.

Later:
I've added several posts to the Herald blog.

Very cool and very new: Miami Herald Photographers photo galleries: Just up, online galleries from 22 photographers, with bios. Some real stars here.

Keep 'em coming:
In The Herald today, a profile of Sean Savage, who coined the term 'flash mobs'. Never much of a thing in South Florida, where Savage is from....

Bill Lucey is a researcher at the Sun-Sentinel. He had one of the first news research Weblogs a few years ago, between postings. He stopped it 2 years ago, but now has a new blog, of news chronologies. The first entry is a factsheet on the Kennedy Assassination.

Freeway Blogging: this seems to be getting bigger and bigger, and most of it pretty clever. So far mostly in California?

We the Haitian People:
And lest I forget, also in the Herald today (but missed because the special magazine report was buried inside the inserts): Incredible photos by Bruce Weber of Haitians in Miami, especially several detained by immigration.
The story by Andres Viglucci, commentary by Jim DeFede, and a message from the publisher, complete this special package. The online photo gallery contains some of the photos of these beautiful people from the magazine.

Worth a read:
In the Miami Herald today, Leonard Pitts on 1963: True Beginning of the '60s; and Carol Rosenberg on How the dead come home from Iraq at Dover AFB.
"Mortuary workers recall only one day since the Iraqi campaign began in March when an American's remains were not in the funeral parlor or the morgue.
...The building also serves a more traditional funeral parlor function, free of charge. Bodies are dressed and placed in coffins -- steel or wood, the relatives' choice."
It's the story about the war you don't hear often.

Weekend update: The weekly reference collection/research gleanings:

40 years ago today. Hard to believe. I was a college freshman and watched the events of this terrible weekend on a small b&w TV in the dorm lounge. That college year, eventful. The Mustang arrived. WABC, Cousin Brucie, Motown. And then...the Beatles.

Great stories out there, collected on JFK Assassination, at Yahoo! Full Coverage. Also, see Leonard Pitts' takeout on what 1963 meant to America, in Tomorrow's Miami Herald, and links in yesterday's posts, below.

The useful links....

Reference :

Ethnomed: news and links on immigrant health concerns.
News:

Middle East Media Guide find newspapers, magazines, broadcast.

Press Display: this new service from NewspaperDirect displays front pages in PDF of 160 newspapers around the world. Zoom in on text to read. Download entire paper with a minimum $9.95/month subscription.

MSN Newsbot: attempt to reproduce Google News, this is a beta site for UK.
Journalism:

Media Resource: project to link journalists with scientists.
Tools:

Create RSS feed: if you have a blog, you need this. From Feedster. (Yes, I will try this soon.)

Shadow TV: subscription service lets you search texts of TV programs, then view the video.

Sparkpod: new full-service Weblogging service, easy to use, they say. Free for 60 days, then $25/yr.

Some more good Google searching tips from Gary Price.

Vivante: new geo search engine, choose a metro area or enter a place and search within local sites.
Public Records:

Unique IDs: programmer tells you how to decode 'Soundex' driver license numbers.
Florida:

Miami Beach: historical background: nice information, old maps, etc. from city Web site.
Statistics:

Personal bankruptcies in the U.S., 2003" stats from UScourts.gov.
Business, Governments, Politics, People: no links this week.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Think your FOIA request is taking a long time? Here's something on The 10 oldest FOIA requests -- going back to late '80s.

Snopes.com on the 'sex bracelet' thing.

GoogleRace: put in a topic and this site will do Google searches on all the presidential candidates and rank them by number of hits.

News-Images.com recent news photos by category.
Fun/Entertaining:

HarlemLive: a new site created 'by NYC teens'. This is very cool. Features writing, photos, education and politics pages, and a 'She Thang'.

Sendthemback.org If the RIAA doesn't want you to have that music, what to do with the songs?

I remember this:
Poynter has a report on how newspapers covered the Kennedy assassination in days of hot type. Link here to a gallery of several front pages of newspapers from that weekend, from a collection published by UPI.

Cool tool:
Nice collection of JFK stories from Knight Ridder papers, linked on The Herald as well as the other sites. I especially like this beautiful story in the Charlotte Observer about one of JFK's Secret Service agents, who drove the hearse with the body to Air Force One. Andy Berger can't remember any of it any more, he has Alzheimer's at 66. Despite this, the tale of Berger and his wife is a love story.
The cool thing: someone must have used Amazon's book search tool to find mentions of Andy Berger in books. They came up with 3, including several mentions in William Manchester's Death of a President. Congrats to whoever at the Observer thought of doing this. Researchers take note.

Joe, again:
More on a great researcher: obituary of Joseph F. Wright III in today's Miami Herald.
"Newsman". He would have liked that.

Tom Mangan
...writes to ask me if there's another blogger named Mangan out there. I mentioned a 'Dave' yesterday. My bad. TOM Mangan's blog is Prints the Chaff.

Joe Wright:
Was a library assistant at the Washington Post when I met him in 1968. He was doing that part time while trying to finish a degree at American University. News librarianship became his passion, and after many years at the Post, he became the librarian at the Trenton Times when the Post bought it, then came to the Miami News around 1979. He was there until the News, an afternoon Cox newspaper, folded at the end of 1988. Since then he's been archivist/researcher for WPLG, Miami's Post-Newsweek station.
Joe had a real love for news and research and was one of the best I've seen. At the Post he was responsible for marking/indexing the clips for filing, but in later years he really got into using online backgrounding databases and putting together reference tools like chronologies. Not to mention, of course, all new skills of editing and retrieving videotape.
I am going to miss him terribly, he's been that friend who was always there. Now he's not.
Joe died last night: he was 60.


Some photos of Joe in better times.

Blogging the news:
This week's Free Trade Area of the Americas talks in Miami have yet to develop any serious problems with protests, but the week's still young. Meanwhile, The Herald's doing a great job of updating the news online.
There's some blogging going on too: however, so far it just seems to be me (but not much) and local blogger Marc Kevin Hall at Hidden City. So far in last few days, Kevin and I have mentioned each other several times each. This blogging thing can get incestuous sometimes.
I've been prowling around looking for any other bloggers covering this but have come up short.

Meanwhile, the first protest to cause much interest, a march which started in Fort Lauderdale and which is reaching downtown Miami just about now, will probably inconvenience a few people -- like me -- who will have to cross Biscayne Boulevard to get home, in the next hour.
We have, though, been enjoying the fashionable vests, helmets and gas masks that any reporter 'embedded' with the local police must sport....

Jonestown:
Was 25 years ago today, just a couple years before I came to The Herald. Reporter Don Bohning and photographer Tim Chapman covered the hell out of the thing.

This weekend The Herald ran a reminiscence by Mohamed Hamaludin, who as a young Guyana newspaperman was one of the first reporters on the scene. Hamal is now a local news editor at The Miami Herald, and had a long career at the Miami Times.
It's a wrenching account. It ends:
"It was not so easy for him (Jones) to flee his personal demons.
Neither is it for many who came in contact with Jonestown."

Today, Tom Mangan points to Jeff Jarvis on Jonestown.

For more information on Jonestown: Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple at San Diego State U.

FTAA update:
So, thanks to the media coverage, downtown Miami is empty today. Traffic was like a holiday and even the Herald parking lot full of open spaces. Out in the bay, there are marine patrol boats cruising around the causeways, and helicopers overhead. (Heraldcam shows our view of the bay, but boats look like dots.....The western view shows beautiful blue skies over the hulking performing arts center skeleton....) Marc at Hidden City is posting heavily on what's going on downtown.

FTAA:
Free Trade Area of the Americas talks start here in Miami this week. Herald coverage. I posted links for information on FTAA here last week.
Also, Miami blogger Marc Kevin Hall (Hidden City) posted good FTAA links this week.

Although some say the media hysteria over FTAA protesters is highly inflated (One local TV station showed a heavily tattooed and pierced anarchist saying "F.... you" to the cops, over and over and over), there is some concern over whether we'll have trouble getting to the downtown Miami Herald building this week. Stay tuned.

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).

Getting the blues:
...Is a lot easier now, with Radio VW: an Internet radio station from Volkswagen. A Blues channel, one for new music, one for music used in VW ads, and one called "Mermaids and bewilderbeasts" playing everything from Ella Fitzgerald to Ali Farka Toure. Ok with me. Why VW? They say: "Music's been good to us. We thought we'd return the favor."

Random postings:
After posting the last message, I can't believe I've been doing this only 3 years. It feels like more.

I've been posting more to the Herald blog this week...

Keith at 60:
This Pretty surprising profile of Keith Richards ran in the Spectator, on the occasion of his upcoming 60th birthday. I always knew Keith was a gentleman underneath it all....
"He’s fanatically loyal not only to his mum but also to his various exes, none of whom has a bad word to say about him. He wrote the haunting ballad ‘Ruby Tuesday’ for one former girlfriend, and frequently protests his love for Anita Pallenberg (his partner from 1967 to 1980) in print. Tom Keylock remembers that he snapped at his own wife once while on the phone at Redlands. ‘Keith overheard me and I got a bollocking — it was all about “she’s your lady” and “show some respect”. I admired him for that.’ "

Get ready:
Several good postings recently of links for Election 2004 coverage. Today Poynter's Al Tomkins adds to the list, with Places Political Journalists Should Go.
Gary Price posted his the other day: Election 2004 Resource Compilation #1.
Also worth a look: How campaign coverage will change in 2004 by Steve Outing in E&P.
And, a new campaign contributions site: Fundrace 2004: follow the money in the presidential race. Has candidate rankings on a number of issues/types of contributions, and maps. Very interesting.

Anniversary:
I realized this week that since the Ramble at Fairchild Tropical Garden was this weekend, this blog/Website is 3 years old. I put the site together over a Saturday and part of Sunday, because I was going to be speaking at a journalism class at U. of Miami and wanted to have a list of links to present. I never made it to the Ramble.
(First anniversary archive mention in 2001, look at Nov. 11 entry. Or: Complete page on The Internet Archive.)

But, unfortunately, I have given up on the Ramble, a wonderful event I've attended most of the over 20 years I've been in South Florida. (The photo above was taken at the 1999 Ramble.) Joe and I went to the 2001 Ramble but traffic made it really difficult; I tried to go last year and gave up because of the traffic trying to go in. After waiting forever and feeling very frustrated, I just went home. Unfortunately, it's become a giant event, too big for the people who once loved it. Too bad. (I did visit a week or so later, though, and posted photos on my web site, no longer there. Maybe I'll do that again soon.)

Technically, the original site wasn't a Weblog, but I called it that because I updated it regularly (usually weekly) with new links. And interestingly, I've discovered that even though the original address at home.infi.net/~edonovan has been discontinued by Earthlink, I am still finding links to those old addresses (e.g. via Google, and that photo, above) working! What's up with that? I may have to go back to the old address, it was LOTS more stable than the new one (edonovan.home.infionline.net). Just as I posted this I discovered the photo in upper left corner is --again-- a dead link. But not the two-year-old archive photo.....

More on rural Wi-Fi:
Mount Airy, N.C. has installed a downtown wireless Internet network, according to this article in LocalTechWire.com (via BoingBoing). Now downtown merchants in this small city of 8500 have "WiFi HotSpot" signs outside. (Mount Airy was the model for Andy Griffith's Mayberry.)

How many have you read?
100 greatest novels of all time: list from The Observer. I count 44. I think. Maybe more?

More Iraq blogs:
Mark Glaser has a list of a couple dozen, in this article on Iraqi Webloggers in OJR.

Interesting:

ClarkO4: this is the new community site developed for the Clark campaign. It features blog entries by the candidate.

...our president's due for a rude awakening in London....

Meanwhile, the administration is making extraordinary demands to shut down London during the visit, including...."But the Met and the US Secret Service have reportedly agreed "rules of engagement" allowing Bush bodyguards to shoot anyone they believe is clearly threatening the life of the President. " From This is London. (via IDO3, added Wed.)

Fascinating story about mythology believed by children in Miami homeless shelters; apparently this phenomenon is found around the country. In Miami New Times.

Timely help:
I've been putting together some tipsheets with links on searching better for a writing seminar for reporters (my part's this afternoon), so this article on Pandia.com will be very useful: Search the Web more efficiently nice article on using search engines (with links to the engines).

And this one:
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. (both of these found on Virtual Chase newsletter today -- thanks, Genie Tyburski)

Remembering:
Wonderful column by Joe Galloway of Knight Ridder about the veterans of the 1965 battle of Ia Drang.
I found his (and Hal Moore's) book We Were Soldiers Once ...and young... one of the most moving accounts of war I've ever read. In fact, there are three books about Vietnam that I couldn't put down. The others are Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie and John Laurence's The Cat from Hue.

It's November:
And they were surfing in Cornwall last week, but Charles Winpenny has updated the Cornwallcam site, which displays just 4 days' worth of photos, and the surfing one is gone.

Vacation photos
Swell fall colors in the southern Appalachians:

Weekend update: The weekly reference collection/research gleanings:

This week's list is longer than usual since it covers two weeks' worth of gleanings (before and after vacation):

I never planned to put a photo of myself on this site, but decided this week that since most other bloggers do, maybe it would be some sort of service to readers...At any rate, the photo on left is the same one that runs on the Herald page over my blog there. Now that you know what I look like, does it make any difference?

Big doings this week at Miami Book Fair International. For an inveterate reader like me, it's strange I've never attended the Book Fair. (I have too many books already.) In past years the Fair has been acclaimed as one of the best. Yesterday a reporter friend took her daughter, just past toddler stage, to the children's book section, they had the best time. It's a wonderful thing.

I added some things to the NewsLiblog yesterday...and also to the Herald Blog (OK, lots there)...

The useful links....

Reference :

Military law and legal links from AF Air War College library.

Arab culture and civilization new encyclopedic site.

The Windfalls of War: Center for Public Integrity report on companies reaping profits on Iraq reconstruction.

The Canterbury Tales two original Caxton editions online at British Library in full text.

Iraq Timeline from InfoPlease, has Recent crisis in detail.

Faces of Valor: List of Iraq dead from Military City, has all dead since March.

Places Online from Assoc. of American Geographers, lists useful geographic Web sites by place, worldwide.

Online Preservation from the National Trust. Good articles on endangered buildings nationwide.

All But Forgotten Oldies look up a song by title, artist, or search, find out what CD it's on. (Covers 1960-1975)
News:

Links for upcoming news events: nice compilation from Gary Price.

Resources for covering wildfires from NICAR.

U.S. Forest Service Fire Mapping Program shows currently active fires, more.

Also new on Nexis: Al-Bawaba (in Middle East) from Nov. 2002, Alameda Times-Star (CA) Nov 2001, The Argus (Fremont, CA) Nov '01, Aviation Week's Homeland Security and Defense Feb '02, Connecticut Post (Fairfield co.) Nov '01, Daily Review (Haywood, CA) Nov '01, Eastern Daily Press (eastern UK) 3/03, Oakland Tribune (CA) Nov '01, San Mateo County Times (CA) Nov 01, Tri-Valley Herald (Pleasanton, CA) Nov 01; several Netherlands newspapers, Teesside Evening Gazette (UK), WashingtonPost.com (online only stories from April 2000).
Journalism:

theory.org.uk: a site on media and popular culture theory.
Governments, Politics:

Free government e-mail newsletters: get latest news from various agencies by email.

Election 2004 Blog: several contributors adding links to latest news.

For more election 2004 links, Journalists' Toolbox: election 2004 has good links.

Congressional Directory, 108th Congress
Tools:

Search Engine Tips: Unusual power searching commands from Greg Notess.

Identifont.com look up a font by name or by description.

Search.Yahoo.com new simple search page just gets you to Yahoo! search and searches of maps, people, news, images, etc. There's also a Yahoo! toolbar, similar to the Google toolbar, for downloading. A separate Dir.Yahoo.com gives you the Yahoo! directory minus ads, etc.

Rules, rules and more rules: Detroit Freep's Mike Wendland tells you how to set up Outlook rules to vanquish spam. He says it's eliminated spam from his mailbox.

Mooter, new search engine from Australia, compiles results from metasearches and groups it into visual clusters.

Mooch: a site that filters out the "best sites". displaying in Flash. UK based.
Public Records:

Indiana criminal history search (limited)

Offender.us has links to available criminal history and offender searches.

Why we should fear the Matrix: good analysis of threats from the huge public records database being compiled for law enforcement; from Findlaw.

Nexis.com added divorce records in Nevada, property records in some Alabama and Georgia counties, mortgage records in some Arkansas counties.

UK Land Register search property records. Covers England and Wales.
People:

The Sunday Times Rich List has Britain's richest millionaires by type, region, etc.

Sports Agent Index
Business:

2003 Global 100: Biggest law firms from American Lawyer.

PR Newswire press releases by category, from LA Times. (If this link doesn't work, go to LA Times business page, click on 'press releases' in left-hand column.
Florida:

MiamiFTAA2003.com.

Florida's Historic Places, lists places by county. About 40 sites in Dade, and 20 in Broward, among them. Photos included.

Loophole, Inc. report in St. Pete Times on Florida corporations that don't pay state income tax.
Statistics:

New Census migration report: on young single college grads. Most popular area: San Francisco. Miami-Ft. Laud is 14th.

Also: Migration by race and hispanic origin: last week's Census report on migration.

Global Education Database from USAID.

Stats on veterans for veterans' day, from Census.

Crime in the U.S., 2002 FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. Includes Index of Crime, stats by state.

Trade Stat Express new site from U.S. Commerce Dept with export-import trade stats (national and state).


Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

How to save the world: seriously fascinating blog.

The Blogging of the President 2004: how the Internet and blogging are going to change politics, by Christopher Lydon.

Low Culture.

Why journalists should read Weblogs from Jeff Jarvis.
Fun/Entertaining:

Aurora Gallery: photos taken last couple weeks of northern lights in unusual places.

This is Broken: This site has posts with photos of bad design and services.

Trends in graphics design

So you want to move to France? check out France Property and Life.

DesktopPictures.com: Tallahassee Democrat librarian Deb Galloway and her husband provide nice photos to use as wallpaper; check out the white sand beach photos and beautiful leaves.

All in the interpretation:
I've really been enjoying the quips on various blogs this week about Donald Rumsfeld's claim that he doesn't think he has a mojo.
Whenever I think of 'mojo', instead of the voodoo charm that I used to connect with the word, now I think of Cuban mojo (pronounced mo-ho), that wonderful sauce that makes pork and chicken and other foods taste great. It's made mostly from lime (well, sour orange juice -- naranja agria-- but that's harder to get) and garlic (how can you go wrong?) with various other ingredients (oregano, olive oil, etc.).
So 'get your mojo on' is a phrase that just makes my mouth water.....

In the Sunshine:
Joe Adams, he of fantastic public records seminars fame, and author of the Florida Public Records Handbook, has added a new feature to his I Dig Answers Web site. Now, besides Joe's Hit Records, which links to Florida news stories using public records, there's The Florida Sunshine Review, a compilation of news stories about access to public records in Florida. The list is scary (because the threats just keep coming), but there's fascinating stuff here. Joe's entire site just keeps getting more and more useful.

Another newsroom research blog:
Diane Lamb at the News and Record in Greensboro, NC, has started the N&R Newsroom Blog. This isn't new though...the archives go back to April. Sorry I didn't have this listed on my news research blog list for the talk and article this summer. The blog appears to be for in-house mostly, but still notable.

Internet by air:
Mike Wendland has an interesting piece about a northern Michigan town which offers high speed, wireless Internet access as a utility. This is really encouraging and I can't wait to find out if we'll be able to receive the wireless Internet offered by our local electric co-op in the mountains (depending on whether we're in range of a tower -- probably not yet according to the map).
But at any rate it's amazing to me that even rural areas are starting to get access to this. Another alternative, of course, is the Directway satellite Internet service offered by DirecTV. Depending on whether a dealer in the area installs it, unfortunately...and whether your dish can see the southern sky.....and MUCH more expensive...

At the very least, good news in the local paper there last week announcing wireless service throughout the local public library building...just bring your laptop and sign on. They claim to be the first public library in NC to offer this. Not bad for a library serving a town population of 1600...

Finally, a photo:
...of Salam Pax. In Stern.

707 in the garage!
Fun story about John Travolta's new house near Ocala, Fla, where he keeps his 707 and several other planes right outside the door. From NY Times Florida papers (in the Sarasota Herald Trib). (via Metafilter).

Do you remember Lori Piestewa?
...The Seminole tribe of Florida does, and they honored her military service yesterday for Veterans' day. Lori's death was nearly ignored in the media flurry surrounding Jessica Lynch, her roommate. The Arizona Republic profiled her in the aftermath.

...(Added later)....Now that some of Jessica's upcoming interview has come out, in which she accuses the military of manipulating her story and says Lori is one of the real heroes of that day, will people pay more attention?

The sky:
...was amazing over Miami and Miami Beach this afternoon. Some photos of the sunset light:

Update on the white men:
My comment was mild compared to others posted today. Among them, Atrios, who headlined it "7 men smile and laugh as they take control of your uterus"; and linked to the "shocking original photograph".

What blogs are good for, part ##?:
Nice use of blogging for news coverage: Oswego Daily News blog on election night. (via Cyberjournalist).

Old White men do it again:
Today's story about the abortion bill signing didn't need any better explanation than the photo that ran with the story in the morning paper:

...a room full of old white men (well, Santorum just acts old) making decisions for young women. Yet again.
This image just jumped out of the newspaper page.

More online history:
After the enjoyable reminiscence about Viewtron yesterday, today there's an item in E-Media Tidbits on the last gasp of Prodigy. It cites a great Timeline of Online news and information systems by David Carlson. What a fun resource. Here's the Viewtron entry (with screen shots).

Funny cats:
Take a couple minutes and watch this hilarious video. Even non-cat lovers ought to enjoy this. Via Presurfer.

Funnier cars:
Tom Mangan has photos of Art Cars at the San Jose Artcarfest held in September. This stuff is too much. I like the car with lizard skin made out of CDs. I might just have enough old ones around to do this.

Foxtrot:
You know HTML has made the big time when it appears as part of a comics text:
.
I expect a good portion of readers actually got it.

Newstalgia:
Via Dan Gillmor, a link to this Poynter report on Viewtron, Knight Ridder's pioneering online news service (long before HTML and pretty much before AOL, too). I've had lots of friends and colleagues over the years who spent a few years working for Viewtron; when it folded they ended up at The Herald (Viewtron's offices were in Miami Beach across the causeway) or other KR properties. It was interesting times.
Reminded me of another early Knight service, a newspaper (Miami Herald) delivered by radio facsimile, actually produced and delivered for a few months in the late 1940s. I couldn't believe it when I found those old clips. Amazing.

Back again:
And spending a week in the mountains made me think about how I could do it permanently. So I enjoyed this story in the S.F. Chronicle, linked from Romenesko yesterday, about a former reporter who lives on desert land he bought at auction for little money a few years back. He built a 'hogan' to live in and is living the 'good life' on his Rancho Costa Nada. (That is, 'good' if you don't mind hauling in water from a public park miles away.)

The book he wrote about the rancho is available at Loompanics.com; the list of books sold through this online catalog is worth perusing on its own. (Categories include 'Revenge' and 'Head for the Hills', among others. The main page states "Certain of the books and papers in this catalog deal with activities and devices which would be in violation of various Federal, State and local laws if actually carried out or constructed. ") Rancho Costa Nada listing.

I know we've all thought about telling the editor to go stuff it, but this seems a little extreme. Nevertheless, you've gotta admire someone who gets fired because "The mere happenstance of holding the rank of 'employee' made me feel servile in the presence of a perfectly pedestrian, usually well-meaning dimwit who happened to be the boss..."

Sheila has more links on this story.