An interview with a forensics expert

An investigator whose cases included the U.N. oil-for-food scandal and the investigation into Holocaust victim assets held by Swiss banks discusses his work. His cases involve millions of paper and electronic records, and his tools of choice include SQL Server, Access, SAS and I2: " ... the element of intuition, creativity, intelligence, or, quite simply, thinking about what one is doing, is essential to the investigatory enterprise," he tells Fraud Magazine. "I think anyone who has sat around with a boatload of computer results and is trying to figure what they mean would agree to this notion."

Language Log: Probability theory and Viswanathan's plagiarism

The Language Log argues that probability theory rules out the possibility that 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate Kaavya Viswanathan's plagiarism in her now-withdrawn book was inadvertent.

Congresspedia

Congresspedia is the "citizen's encyclopedia on Congress that anyone can edit." "Congresspedia is designed to be a place where you can get a closer look at representatives in Congress and a better understanding of the environment in which they work," the site explains. "Because this site is a wiki, it’s open for anyone to edit or add new information, so you can share what you know with everyone else. To help insure fairness and accuracy, Congresspedia is overseen by a paid editor." An editor? What a concept!

Foreign words

Foreignword.com, "The Language Site," offers online dictionaries and translation tools for dozens of languages.

Free 3D software from Google

Google is now giving away 3D software. Called Google SketchUp, it's free for non-commercial use. There's also an online "3D Warehouse" where you can upload and share your 3D models, which can be imported into Google Earth, its 3D satellite imagery software. Google SketchUp "makes our long-time vision of making 3D accessible to everyone a reality," the Google blog says. Google is still charging $499 for a more sophisticated version, SketchUp Pro 5, "for design professionals like architects, designers, builders, art directors and game developers."

Journal on Information Research

Information Research "is a freely available, international, scholarly journal, dedicated to making accessible the results of research across a wide range of information-related disciplines."

Greenscanner

With Greenscanner "is a public database of opinions about the environmental friendliness of various products." You enter the UPC code - i.e. barcode number - from a product package and it tells you how others rated the product's environmental friendliness. ResearchBuzz tried it a few weeks ago and found its coverage limited so far. The site is designed so you can use it with a PDA or other portable device in a supermarket.

Drugs and Lactation Database

The Drugs and Lactation Database is "A peer-reviewed and fully referenced database of drugs to which breastfeeding mothers may be exposed. Among the data included are maternal and infant levels of drugs, possible effects on breastfed infants and on lactation, and alternate drugs to consider."

FuelEconomy.gov

At FuelEconomy.gov you can compare gas mileage, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution ratings and safety information for new and used cars and trucks. The site is by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sacred Destinations

Sacred Destinations is a "catalogue and travel guide to more than 1,500 sacred sites, holy places, pilgrimage destinations, historical sites, religious buildings and religious art around the world."

Virtual Vaudeville

Virtual Vaudeville, from the University of Georgia, offers a 3D simulation of Vaudeville comedian Frank Bush's act and a 3D tour of a Victorian theater. The site is a prototype for a "Live Performance Simulation System," which it says can be used for "simulating live performance events from any historical period."

Worldmapper

Worldmapper is a collection of world maps of countries that are sized, not according to geographic area, but according to variables such as total population, gross domestic product, total births, number of children and elderly, refugees, tourism and more.

Who's Alive and Who's Dead

Is "the site that helps you keep track of which famous people have died and which are still alive!"

Keep up with recent research with Google

Google Scholar recently added a feature that makes it easier to keep up with recent academic research. Just click on the "Recent articles" link now included with the search results: "It's not just a plain sort by date, but rather we try to rank recent papers the way researchers do, by looking at the prominence of the author's and journal's previous papers, how many citations it already has, when it was written, and so on," the Google blog explains.

Jack Shafer: Advice for paranoid reporters

Slate's Jack Shafer offers "Advice for paranoid reporters," or "How to report stories when the government is out to get you."

Dvorak: Don't Blame the Web When Newspapers Die

A few quotes from the PC Magazine columnist's piece:

Local papers have become cookie-cutter products loaded with syndicated material, mostly from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Filling space in the San Francisco Chronicle with New York Times articles saves money, but many people now just get the Times instead. ...

Joseph Pulitzer invented the idea of the journalism school before 1900. These institutions spread over time but didn't really take hold until the 1960s. By 1970, newspapers had begun to decline. Coincidence? ...

I was a paper­boy as a kid. It was good money, and my knocking on doors seeking subscriptions or asking to be paid put a human face on the paper. Circulation grew with the population, but now newspapers must offer free subscriptions to sucker the rubes to renew. These offers come from Mumbai by phone, usually when you're at dinner. The bean counters love it. Some middle-aged man now delivers the paper out of an old Chevy. ...

No sense of humor. Today's papers have no collective sense of humor or fun. This is partly because of the J-schools and the need to be "professional." I haven't seen anyone laugh in a newsroom for decades. This may come from political correctness, or perhaps from some public-guardian ego trip. Maybe too many of the people working daily news beats are just duds. ...

Corporate Alzheimer's

Law.com writes about "Corporate Alzheimer's: Coping With Forgotten File Formats":

What if the file formats in which we save text documents, spreadsheets, charts and presentations -- all that stuff generated by so-called productivity software -- were not supported by future versions of the programs used to create them today, or by some as-yet-unimagined successor products? Could drifting file formats cause a kind of corporate Alzheimer's that threatens our ability to recall contracts, insurance policies, financial records, payroll data and other critical documents?

Web data extractors

Marcus P. Zillman recently updated his report on "Web data extractors." It offers 13 pages "listing many resources both new and existing that will help anyone who is attempting to find information and knowledge research about web data extraction on the Internet."

Unidentified Victims Geographic Index

The Unidentified Victims Geographic Index lists unidentified bodies by state and country.

Free Economic, Demographic & Financial Data

From Freelunch.com.

Gas prices temperature map

GasBuddy.com offers a gas prices temperature map of the U.S. where the hotter the color, the higher the price. Thanks again to Jim Baumgarten for the tip.

Trolling for evidence online

Newsweek writes about how police are making heavy use of MySpace.com:

A growing number of ordinary officers are working a new beat, turning to MySpace—an online network of individuals linked through personalized home pages—to collect clues and crack offline cases. Communication between cops and the two-year-old company has surged this year, with MySpace now contributing to about 150 investigations a month, according to Jason Feffer, its vice president for operations. That's due in large part to the site's size and substance. A searchable, public scrapbook of images, affiliations and written exchanges, it offers detectives raw data on 70 million potential suspects, witnesses or victims

And sometimes they run into their own. Needless to say, it's a resource that shouldn't be overlooked by reporters, either.

Bill Mauldin tribute

"Beyond Willie and Joe" is The Library of Congress' online tribute to the late editorial cartoonist Bill Mauldin.

Health News Review

Health News Review grades health stories "on the ABCs" -- accuracy, balance and completeness. "A multi-disciplinary team of reviewers from journalism, medicine, health services research and public health assesses the quality of the stories using a standardized rating system," the site says. Gelf Magazine writes about it here.

Mapping religious adherents

This Valparaiso University site uses data on religious affiliation from the Glenmary Research Center to produce a series of fascinating maps showing how adherents to various religions are distributed around the United States. Thanks to Jim Baumgarten for the tip.

Legislation databases

Check out the National Conference of State Legislatures online databases if you want to find out what laws states have passed on subjects ranging from historic preservation to environmental justice to ethics.

Senses of Cinema

Senses of Cinema is "an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema":

We are open to a range of critical approaches (auteurist, formalist, psychoanalytic, humanist...) and encourage contributors to experiment with different forms of writing (personal memoir, academic essay, journalistic report, poetic evocation...). We commission and accept articles from academics and journalists, internationally-known authorities and previously unpublished cinephiles alike; our only criteria are that they should shed new light on their subjects, and be informed by a broad knowledge and love of cinema. Likewise, our readership is a genuinely diverse group, bringing together people from a wide range of backgrounds, professions and interests but bound by a single common element: an informed, passionate and serious attitude toward cinema as an art.

The Net for Journalists

The Net for Journalists is "A practical guide to the Internet for journalists in developing countries." It was created by UNESCO, the Thomson Foundation and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association. You can download a PDF of the book.

World History Sources

World History Sources offers "Guides to analyzing particular types of primary sources as part of world history":

Each guide includes an introductory essay, a list of questions to ask when working with a particular type of evidence, interactive quizzes called 'You be the Historian!', an sample analysis of one source, an annotated bibliography, and an annotated list of relevant websites.

This includes guides on how to research using newspapers, maps, official documents and personal accounts. It's from George Mason University's Center for History and New Media.

MedlinePlus: Health Fraud

The MedlinePlus page on health fraud looks thin to me given the vastness of the subject, although it does link to some useful government resources on the subject, such as a 1999 overview from the FDA on "How to Spot Health Fraud." And I see no mention of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

The Men's Bibliography ...

... is "a comprehensive bibliography of writing on men, masculinities, gender, and sexualities."

Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary

Both my kids take piano and both already know far more about music than I ever will (Even the words to Jingle Bells, the Star Spangled Banner and Happy Birthday are beyond me, much less the ability to sing any of them on key). You, however, may be interested in the Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary. A particularly useful feature is it provides audio recordings on how to pronounce musical terms such as "Sackpfeife."

FCC telecommunications company database

The FCC offers an online database of telecommunications companies that provides addresses and telephone numbers, top officers, holding companies and states served. It can be searched by name and state. You can download the data too.

Dashboard Spy

In a car, the dashboard organizes a lot of information in an easy to grasp way. That's why business software makers use the same term. Dashboard Spy is a blog devoted to business dashboards -- highlighting an amazing variety of screenshots from corporate desktops. Newspapers and their Web sites could pick up an idea or two here.

Congressional Pig Book

The Congressional Pig Book, from Citizens Against Government Waste, is an "annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget." It has a searchable "Pork Database" where you can search for 9,963 projects by keyword, state, or appropriations bill.

Artnatomy

Artnatomy is an interactive graphic that lets you explore the relationship between facial anatomy and facial expressions.

Vassar statistical demos and textbook

VassarStats, by a Vassar College psychology professor, hopes to be "a useful and user-friendly tool for performing statistical computation." It offers lots of interactive demos of statistical concepts and useful utilities such as a simple graph maker. There's also an online textbook.

Early Christian Writings

Early Christian Writings calls itself "the most complete collection of documents from the first two centuries with translations and commentary. Includes the New Testament, Apocrypha, Gnostics, and Church Fathers."

Lonely Planet podcasts

Way back when I didn't spend most of my day staring at a computer screen, I was a frequent and satisfied user of Lonely Planet travel guides. Now they are doing podcasts from far-flung places.

Every job must be redefined

Another interesting piece of writing on the future of journalism via The Scoop. This time from the executive editor of the Miami Herald:

Every job in the newsroom -- EVERY JOB -- is going to be redefined to include a web responsibility and, if appropriate, radio. For news gatherers, this means posting everything we can as soon as we can. It means using the web site to its fullest potential for text, audio and video. We'll come to appreciate that MiamiHerald.com is not an appendage of the newsroom; it's a fundamental product of the newsroom.

No more will some people be strictly newspaper staff and others will be strictly on-line or multi-media staff. If you produce news, you'll be expected to produce it as effectively for the electronic reader or listener as you would for the newspaper reader. If you edit or design for the newspaper, you'll learn to edit and design for the web site.

APME: How Web + print + cutbacks can still equal success

The article says:

"Of all the challenges newspaper editors face, perhaps the most difficult is managing the accelerating pace of change, especially amid steady budget cuts.

With print circulation withering and Web traffic growing, journalists who struggled to conquer personal computers, pagination systems and digital cameras are being asked to collect audio, appear in video or file multiple versions of their stories.

Meanwhile, the next person to be laid off could be working just a cubicle away.

Caught in the middle are newsroom managers. Asked to produce more in an environment of shrinking resources, editors must provide comfort and support for others even as they struggle with incredible new demands themselves.

The cutbacks are insane. Our industry should be investing now to assure our success online and in print. But in our world of publicly traded media companies, how can we cut and still succeed?"

Via The Scoop.

Google unveils calendar

Here.

Windows Live Academic

Windows Live now offers Windows Live Academic. which indexes "content related to computer science, physics, electrical engineering, and related subject areas." The site says it lets you search for peer-reviewed journal articles "from journal publishers and articles listed on academic-oriented search sites such as citeseer."

Bush Approval Map

The Bush Approval Map is an animated graphic that uses a "Bush Net Approval Rating Thermometer" to measure which states "love Bush" and which states "hate Bush," and by how much.

Beginner's Guide to Business Research

The Beginner's Guide to Business Research is an "interactive tutorial" that "provides students with hands-on, self-paced instruction on where and how to find the best, most accurate information via the Web when conducting business research. "

Free street lookups

MelissaData, a site I’ve mentioned before that offers lots of free lookups, now has one where you can enter just a street number (without a street) and a ZIP code and get all streets in that ZIP code with that number. Could be handy if you have only a partial or misspelled address. Another lookup returns a list of all street names in a ZIP. You can then drill down to get the street number ranges for those streets. It also links to Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Virtual Earth maps.

Board Tracker

BoardTracker.com is an Internet forum search engine that will send you email or instant messaging alerts when words you're interested in are mentioned. The beta site says it now tracking more than 18 million threads in more than 27,000 forums. Some features, like email alerts, are free -- others, like instant messaging alerts, cost lots of money – like $99.95 a month or $1,000 a year. They’re obviously targeting the corporate market: “Corporate users can arm their sales and marketing staff with BoardTracker accounts to give them essential business intelligence,” the site says.

Capital Punishment Handbook

The Ninth Circuit Capital Punishment Handbook summarizes state and federal laws governing the death penalty.

reddit: what's new online

reddit is "a source for what's new and popular on the web -- personalized for you. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you'll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes."

National Drug Threat Assessments

National Drug Threat Assessments give "policymakers and counterdrug executives a timely, predictive report on the threat of drugs, gangs, and violence. We synthesize the views of local, state, regional, and federal agencies to produce a comprehensive picture of this threat."

NYT's Sector Snapshot

This "Sector Snapshot" graphic by The New York Times packs a tremendous amount of information in a small space. You can quickly compare the stock market performance of companies in different "sectors" -- Energy, Health Care, Industrials, etc. - over different time periods. Media companies, by the way, fall under the category "Consumer Discretionary."

How to Ask Questions The Smart Way

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way is a guide to asking technical questions in online forums “in a way that is likely to get you a satisfactory answer.”

Database of Kentucky translators and interpreters

The Kentucky Finance and Administration Cabinet maintains, in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, a database of interpreters/translators. It includes language spoken, county, whether they will travel, phone numbers and email addresses.

Data mining database archive

The UCI Knowledge Discovery in Databases Archive is a repository of large, complex data sets for doing research in data mining.

Based on the Book

Based on the Book lists more than 1,200 books, novels, short stories and plays that have been made into movies.

Nugget of the Day: Foreign-born population, 1850-2000

• U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born Population of the United States: 1850-1990
  http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/twps0029.html


• U.S. Census, Table DP-2. Profile of Selected Social Characteristics: 2000
  http://censtats.census.gov/data/KY/04021.pdf

ArchiveGrid

ArchiveGrid has descriptions of nearly a million collections from thousands of archives around the world. I did a search on Louisville and found 2,705 archives mentioning that word, including archives at the University of Louisville, the Jefferson County Public Schools, the Filson Club, the Louisville Landmarks Commission and the Louisville Water District. The results give you a description of what’s in each archive and where it’s located. The site says it's free until May 31, and will remain free if it can find more funding.

Charity regulator list

The National Association of State Charity Officials tells you who regulates charities in each state. They also link to the laws governing charities for many of the states. Unfortunately, some of the links, including the one for Kentucky, are now dead.

Federal grant database proposed

This is a database I’d like to see: “Newly introduced legislation in the House would establish a public database on the Internet to track federal grants in an effort to curb questionable practices surrounding the grant process,” Federal Computer Week reports. “According to the General Services Administration, each year the federal government awards approximately $300 billion in grants to roughly 30,000 different organizations across the U.S.,” the article says, quoting one of the sponsors, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

Resources for Economists on the Internet

Resources for Economists on the Internet, sponsored by the American Economic Association, "lists 2,100 resources in 97 sections and sub-sections available on the Internet of interest to academic and practicing economists, and those interested in economics. Almost all resources are also described."

Data on income trends

The Economic Policy Institute ("Research and Ideas for Working People") offers a "state-by-state analysis of income trends." Its state-by-state fact sheets offer information on "income inequality over the past two decades, including the changes in average incomes and income ratios."

State Cancer Profiles

State Cancer Profiles, from the National Cancer Institute, offers graphics and detailed data on cancer death rates, incidence rates, trends and more.

Energy Information Administration Country Analysis Briefs

The Energy Information Administration Web site lets you build custom reports comparing countries on numeous demographic, economic, energy and environmental factors.

How to prepare for an emergency

72hours.org tells you how to prepare for -- and what to do if you're caught in -- an emergency. It's by the San Francisco Office of Emergency Services and covers not just the inevitable earthquake but also fires, severe storms, power outages, acts of terrorism and more.

The death of Vera Nuckols

I just wanted to share an obituary that ran in our newspaper Sunday:

Nuckols, Vera, repeating age 29 many times over, died Friday, March 31, 2006.

She raised her sons, Mike, Pat, Scott, and John, and she now wants to be buried upside down so every man can kiss her ...

Her memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Sunday April 2nd at The Funeral Chapel at Cave Hill Cemetery. Those wishing to attend should meet at 1:45 p.m. at the Grinstead Drive Entrance.

In lieu of flowers, please make contributions to benefit the living.

I think I would have liked Vera.

The evolution of the box score

Given the mean things I've said about baseball in the past, and given that it's the start of another dreary baseball season, it's only fair that I congratulate the commissioner for appointing an investigator to look into the two-decades-old steroid scandal. Besides the obvious eagerness with which the sport is moving to clean up its act, who wouldn't agree that there's no one more likely to conduct a thorough, unbiased investigation than a former U.S. Senator and current director of the Boston Red Sox? God knows, politicians are known for always telling it like it is.

I must also give baseball its props for proving that readers do appreciate numbers, as The New York Times shows in its online graphic on the evolution of the box score. The Times, however, didn't speculate on the box score's future. Here, then, are some enhancements I hope to be seeing soon:

• Inflated earnings per game


• The tedium ratio (cud chewing, tobacco juice spitting and crotch scratching divided by minutes played)


• The George Will/Roger Angell factor (the sum of pseudo-intellectual romanticizing per inning)


• Steroid-induced acne count

I just hope they can make these changes in time for Barry Bonds to break Hank Aaron's home run record. A sweetheart of a man like Bonds deserves every honor he earns.