Weekend update: More research links from last week

Among the interesting things found last week, this great example of illustrating data. Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait. Fascinating works by Chris Jordan depicting America's consumer culture. See what 11,000 jet trails looks like (the number of commercial flights in the US every 8 hours); or 426,000 cell phones, the number retired in the US every DAY! and many more, from SUVs to paper and plastic bags.

I've added a couple more public records sites and want to say one more thing about my Friday posting: although I am focused more on tools for freelance writers and researchers these days, especially no-cost tools, I think any newsroom that doesn't subscribe to Search Systems is missing out on a great deal. Certainly any researcher/writer who needs public records constantly should also subscribe. It's still the best out there.

The links:

Statistics:

Little Green Book 2007: pocket size compendium of environment data from The World Bank.

Journalism:

Cub Reporters: advice and links for aspiring journalists from Mark Grabowski, a third-year law student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. who's learned the ropes.

People:

PIPL: a new Web search for finding people: digs into 'the invisible Web' to find links and info about a person that might not show up in another search engine. Gives phone/address search results as well as stories, web pages, My Space, and suggests other name variations. Review in SearchEngineLand.

Business:

CountryRisk.com has country background profiles, statistics, rankings, and risk assessments.

Researching Public Companies Through EDGAR: A Guide for Investors; tips from SEC.

Public Records:

WikiFOIA has links to state laws, info on using FOIA requests. There's a blog, too: State Sunshine and Open Records.

Free Bankruptcy Search from Courthouse Direct; you'll still have to pay for dockets or documents, here or from PACER.

Tools:

Sputtr searches everything, with a funky format.

News:

Six Day War 40th Anniversary Guide From The Israel Project.

Fun/Entertainment:

The Bluegrass Blog.

Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990, UCLA library's collection of photos from the LA Times and LA Daily News. Searchable and browsable.