Weekend update: Other things found this week:
Here's the best story of the week: Lexington Herald finds fugitive the cops couldn't track using public records databases. Great example of why journalists need access to these sorts of records and why closing records because of privacy concerns is not a good idea. These folks in Texas didn't know they had a dangerous fugitive living among them. Congrats to Linda Johnson and the Lexington Herald team.

More links....

Reference:

Status of Coral Reefs of the World, report from Australian Institute of Marine Science.

Marine Health Check, 2005, from World Wildlife Federation (via The Guardian): not good.

National Security Archive: 9/11 Commission staff report on FAA.

Fish Online, an international guide to sustainable harvest/fish types.

Thinking about political polarization: Brookings Inst. study says Americans aren't really that far apart.

Public attitudes about Social Security and private accounts: survey by AARP.

IFEX: International Freedom of Information Exchange.
Tools:

Addresses.com, another phone number directory with lots of searches available, easy to use.
Journalism:

World Press Photo contest winners: amazing.

Raising a stir: Philip Meyer's new book, The Vanishing Newspaper, is getting cited and dissected everywhere, including some interesting thoughts while reading it from Tim Porter on his First Draft blog. Also: Meyer's summary in CJR.
People:

How to conduct a background check great guide from legal research guru Genie Tyburski.

Federal scientists and engineers, a searchable directory.
Public Records:

Pretrieve: a new free public records/address search. Not as complete as pay services but has a nice selection of databases and is a bit easier to use than something like searchsystems.net which requires searching in each location. As with all public records sources, this is a good tool to finding out if a record exists but always best to check the original source (local courts, etc.) to confirm.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

LeskoBlog: Matthew Lesko was a serious information professional with an interest in government information before he started those silly TV ads. The blog is a bit of a mixture of both.

Daily Business Review reports Dept of Justice is trying to charge for information.
Fun/Entertaining:

Collard Patch, a Southern recipe blog.

Internet Archive's live music archive now has free downloadable recordings from 20,000 concerts.

Super Bowl Ads, all available for download.