Weekend update: Other things found last week

You'd think that the ending of my work for the Miami Herald would have freed up lots of time to devote to the blog. But somehow the end of that job opened the door to more new jobs, and this week, instead of having a break from work, had even more. So I didn't get do do much browsing this week and the weekly roundup is shorter than normal. No categories, just a dump of some of the most interesting things I came across this week (I've added a couple new things at bottom of this posting):

Federal Courts contact information, a searchable database of all the courts.

PubMed Central, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. (Not the first time I've posted this, I think.)

Save Our Social Networks: Mobilize.org's new campaign to defeat legislation against sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster...

Hermits of the Florida Everglades assembled by students of Everglades City High School in Florida around 1980. Includes this touching tale: "... a would-be hermit Henry Dalmas, as told by Seely. Dalmas visited Seely on weekends and expressed his desire to become a hermit -- when he had enough money to support himself on an island, since he wanted a generator for electricity to run lights, power tools, etc. This daydream went on until Dalmas was seventy-two years old. He finally moved to an island -- only to die six months later. Commenting on the short-lived hermit career of Dalmas, Seely concludes philosophically: "If you ever have any thoughts about becoming a hermit ... do it now!"

Geographic Names Information System, new address for the USGS database of official names of geographic places in the U.S. (Click on Query.)

History of International Migration, from the Netherlands' Leiden University

Take a Break! Currency Converter from the British National Archives, good tool for finding out what money was worth.

Most popular baby names, Social Security Administration's latest list.

Baby Name Wizard, includes a Name Voyager, a Javascript program that shows how names have evolved over the years.

CIA's Electronic Reading Room has added lots of new documents, including intelligence briefs, Vietnam records and broadcast monitoring reports.

Air Ninja helps you find the best fares from discount airlines.

Oral Histories of the American South from UNC's Documenting the American South center.

Travel, Tourism, and Urban Growth in Greater Miami, a digital archive from UM's Richter Library. Includes histories, bibliographies, chronologies, and lots of old illustrations from postcards and other sources.

And, a couple dustups in the blogosphere:
Michelle Malkin is upset about a posting by Wonkette about her. She calls them 'intolerant liberal bastards'. Not sure I'd call Wonkette 'liberal' but they do make a point of sexual innuendo, and this one is too much for Michelle....

Miami city commissioner Johnny Winton had a bit of trouble with police the other night, and now there's a Winton Must Go! blog. This could get interesting if they keep it up....

Last, of course for best coverage of the problems in Guantánamo, there's Carol Rosenberg's reporting in the Miami Herald. She's the only reporter with access to the base; there's an audio interview with her on the site, too.

Speaking of Wonkette, founding writer Ana Marie Cox (no longer writing there) adds to the Al Gore story (see a couple postings down) with this, in Time: Al Gore, Movie Star. Cox says:

...there was (a) rock star in the room: Al.
...There's nothing as sexy as a tease and Gore probably knows that his dance of the seven veils does more to heighten the movie's profile than the movie could ever do for his.

Oh, yeah, remember the story (so last week) about the CIA, congressional favors, defense contractors and jailed rep. Randall Cunningham? It's still going on, behind the scenes, and the San Diego Union Tribune has been following up with interesting tidbits. Among the latest, a story about a vacation house in Hawaii. Raw Story has the pictures, via ABC News. Very nice. Everyone should get this kind of accomodations once in their lives. Don't miss the waterfall and the view of islands...