Weekend update: More research links from last week

Just a few last week, but some very useful, and one really interesting anecdote about a story I didn't see publicized much, some politicians who made a small sacrifice to make a point:
Congressman Tim Ryan's blog on losing his food to TSA: Ryan is one of a few congresspersons trying to live on $21 -- the equivalent of food stamp money -- for a week. TSA seized his PB & J. The comments on this posting, from others who have learned to live on food stamps, is amazing. One suggests this site for good tips on how to eat well with little. Some really good recipes here.

The other links:
Reference:

U.S. Drought Monitor maps the problem areas. We're in one.

Global Environment Yearbook 2007 from UN Environment Programme.

Global Terrorism Database from National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at UMd.

Terrorism Knowledge Base

Reports:

Accepting Realities in Iraq, a new paper from Chathamhouse, UK, by Dr Gareth Stansfield. Among the findings: ...Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation.

Governments, Politics:

Fedspending.org from OMB Watch, a free searchable database of grants and contracts. (I may have linked this earlier, but worth another look.)

People:

Mining social networks for sources and stories; nice roundup by Depth Reporting's Mark Schaver.

Ancestry.com military searches: free til June 6 (but you must register to see records). Includes more than 700 databases and titles and 37 million images of original and often personally autographed documents from all major wars and conflicts from American history, including the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts as well as the Spanish-American War and the War of 1812.

Tools:

Google Trends, improved search trends report. Each topic leads to search results.

DocMorph, from the NIH, converts files into PDF, TIFF, text, or synthesized speech through a Web browser. Or download MyMorph software to convert multiple files.

Koolwire converts any file into a PDF; just attach the file and email it and it comes back in a few minutes, converted.