Straight Dope Message Board

[Arnold Winkelried]

USEFUL REFERENCE SITES
Judicious use of the following reference sites may answer a number of questions raised before posting to GQ:

The Straight Dope
The Straight Dope Archive: The One Perfect Source of All Knowledge (searchable)
SDMB Search: Search previous Straight Dope MB threads

Search Engines
Google: The de facto standard in search engines
Yahoo: The Internet organized by categories
dmoz Open Directory: Human-edited Internet directory which removes the chaff

General Information and Reference
Internet Search Tutorial: How to find information on the Internet
Reference Desk: Links to multiple reference sites
Library Spot: More links to more reference sites
Internet Public Library: Reference center laid out like a library
Librarian's Index to the Internet: Another library reference center
Britannica Online: A complete online encyclopedia
Information Please: Online encyclopedia and almanac
Notes and Queries: General Q&A of a wide range of topics
Internet FAQ Consortium: Links to Usenet FAQs of all types

Urban Legends
Snopes: Comprehensive searchable list of urban legends
Urban Legends: alt.folklore.urban and urban legend archive

English Words, Language, and Literature
Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus: Word spelling, usage, and origins
alt.usage.english FAQ: info on usage and word origins
Pseudodictionary: Slang and colloquialisms
Origin of English Sayings: Where English idioms and sayings come from (url updated 11/19/2006 tomndebb)
Word Oddities and Trivia: All sorts of odd and interesting word facts
Puzzle Depot: Anagrams, puzzles, and wordplay
Anagram Engine: Create anagrams, solve crosswords, etc.
Searchable Plays of Shakespeare: Search the works of the Bard
Quotations Page: Searchable quotations
Project Gutenburg: Complete texts of non-copyrighted books
Bibliomania: Free online literature
Babelfish translations: Back-and-forth translations among major world languages

Medicine and Health
Centers for Disease Control: Public health news and statistics
WebMD: Info on health and diseases
Go Ask Alice: Medical information and advice
PubMed Medline: Medical journals database

Science and Technology
The Last Word: Questions and answers on everyday science phenomena
Ask a Scientist: Search real answers to real science questions
How Stuff Works: Find out how all sorts of gadgets and processes really work
Mad Science Network: Online labs, science Q&A, and science info
Conversion of Units: Automatic unit converter
International System of Units: Introduction and information on SI units
Physical Constants: Numerous physical constant values & uncertainty
Web Elements: All about the elements
Bad Science: Debunking scientific fallacies
Bad Astronomy: Debunking astronomical fallacies
Heavens Above: Satellites and star charts
Hubble Telescope: Pictures from Hubble
Animal Diversity Web: All about animals

Mathematics
Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics: Tons of information all about mathematics
The Pi-Search Page: Search for a string in Pi + links to download billions of digits
The Integrator: Online integrator from the makers of Mathematica
Numbers in Over 4500 Languages: Count in any language you want
Online Calculators: Not just for mathematics: calculations in numerous subject areas

Entertainment
Internet Movie Database: Everything you wanted to know about the movies
Ultimate Band List: Search for all kinds of music
Big Cartoon Database: Searchable database of cartoons
Simpsons FAQ: FAQ of alt.tv.simpsons
Television Without Pity: Irreverent reviews of popular US television shows
The Baseball Archive: Stats and history of baseball

Religion
Catholic Encyclopedia: Information on Catholic teachings
Judaism 101: Information on Judaism
King James Bible: Searchable KJV Bible
Online Bibles: Links to multiple Bible versions

Skepticism and Debate
Skeptic's Dictionary: Pseudoscience and the paranormal
Talk Origins Archive: Evolution v. Creation Science
Quackwatch: Guide to health frauds
Logic and Fallacies: Intro to arguments and logical fallacies

Government, Politics, and Law
Gov Spot: Links to hundreds of government entities
Vote Smart: Find out information about USA elected officials
UK Government Online: Links to all British government sites
Federal Government Central Directory: statistics gathered by USA government
US National Archives: Archives and records from all branches of the US government
Statistical Abstract of the US: USA Population census
Internet Guide to Law and Politics: Informative and current law-related Internet resources
Find Law: Law and legal resources

Places and Maps
CIA World Fact Book: Information on numerous countries
Find a Grave: Find graves for all sorts of people
Map Quest: Maps from all over
Terraserver: USGS satellite imagery and topographical maps

_{List of links thanks to Alphagene, Arnold Winkelried, Colibri, UncleBeer, flowbark, Crusoe, cainxinth, and zut.}

[Muad'Dib]

Wow! What a great list of resources.

[Cisco]

That is indeed an incredible list of resources and hopefully this thread will be around for myself and others to reference for years to come but I have to ask - What's the General Question here?




:.D&R::

[manhattan]

Hey, hey! Don't be mucking this one up like happened with the last one.

We'll leave this thread open for a bit to take new suggestions for reference sites, report problems (if any) with the current list, etc. Then we'll lock it up and leave it sticky until we get around to updating it.

Thank you Zut, for pulling all this stuff together for us. All of GQdom is grateful for your efforts in this regard.

[deathawk]

Excellent resource list.

I do recommend adding the
Microsoft Help & Support Home Page

Excellent work [b]Zut[/]!

[Kyla]

Here's a good site I found about Islam: Islamicity's Understanding Islam and Muslims

On Buddhism: Buddhanet.net

And Hindusim: Hindunet.org

[Kyla]

Oy. Could one of the mods fix my link, por favor?

[Morbo]

How about a link to http://www.boardreader.com?

Maybe we could steer some people over there to do their searching on old threads, saving bandwidth over here. You can even use their cache so you won't load the trheads directly from the SDMB servers once you find them...

[SpoilerVirgin]

One more for the Religion category:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/

Great for answering basic questions about the beliefs of numerous religions.

[zut]

When I went through this list above, I thought that the two biggest holes were in non-Christian religions (helpfully filled in already by Kyla and SpoilerVirgin) and computer-related answer sites. deathawk has a start on the latter, but it seems to me that we could use more.

[Morbo]

Originally posted by zut
When I went through this list above, I thought that the two biggest holes were in non-Christian religions (helpfully filled in already by Kyla and SpoilerVirgin) and computer-related answer sites. deathawk has a start on the latter, but it seems to me that we could use more.

Well, http://www.macfixit.com is an excellent Mac resource. For OS X, http://www.macosxhints.com is invaluable. (Especially the "OS X Guidebook" which you can download as a PDF file)

[Blackeyes]

Religioustolerance.org?

[Blackeyes]

religioustolerance.org

[Lsura]

Education reference (may be linked through one of the library sites above):


ERIC

[deathawk]

Tech sites you want? Tech sites you get!
Mainly Windows related.

General Help:
As noted above: Microsoft Support Homepage

Hardware Guides:
Tom's Hardware - Which includes both reviews of current hardware & FAQ's.
AnandTech - more of the same

Virus & Security issues:
Sophos Virus Database - An Excellent database of virus definitions, symptoms, etc.
Symantec (Norton) Virus Database - another excellent Virus DB
Vmyths.com - an excellent source to debunk virus myths
CERT - The granddaddy of all security threat sites.

[tomndebb]

Excellent list!
Additions to consider (go ahead, edit that post to insert them and delete this post ) :


English Words, Language, and Literature
The (Random House) Word Maven Word Origins
The Word Detective More Word Origins
Encyclopedia Mythica A compendium of mythology and legends from all the world's cultures
Labyrinth Library Georgetown U's links to Medieval Latin, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish & Iberian Texts

General Information and Reference
MegaConverter2 Convert units of measure: Imperial, Metric, Ancient, Astronomical, Kitchen, Finance, Fraction-to-decimal, and much more
The Calendar Zone Comprehensive categorized calendar catalog currently containing countless correlating connections & calzone recipes!
ANYDAY: Today in History Births, Deaths, Holidays, and events associated with each day of the year

Government, Politics, and Law
(U.S.) State and Local Government on the Net Links to most State and Local (by state) web sites, with additional Federal and Multi-state sites

[Arnold Winkelried]

Is there an online Koran better than this one?
http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/

[Popup]

Two more sites that I find that I link to in many of my replies:

The Calendar FAQ: Lots of information on any conceivable way of keeping track of time. (For those pesky easter questions and leap seconds).
WorldWideWords: Plenty of information on the English language, seen from a British viewpoint.

On an almost related subject: I think this forum should be renamed Great Questions.

[femtosecond]

I suggest www.randi.org for the skepticism section ; It's "Project Gutenberg" ; Duplicate http in the Simpsons FAQ link.

Ahoy-hoy! Look what I found there: http://www.snpp.com/guides/lisa-3.html#3.3.10

Jason Hancock further adds that according to Cecil Adams' book More of the Straight Dope (1988) it was common to say this when answering the phone and was replaced by "Hello" as the time progressed.

[Algernon]

This suggestion may run counter to the intent to list reference sites directly, but I have found that I use RefDesk nearly daily. It is a meta-reference site with links to the kinds of sites being compiled here.

[malaka]

I've had many medical questions answered on Healthboards.com. And I second the suggestion to add Randi.org to the skepticism section.

Great list! Thanks!

[Arnold Winkelried]

Algernon, let's try and limit the suggested additions to sites that are not already in the original list.

[Colibri]

I posted a couple of these in ATMB, but I will re-post them here.

Popular Culture:

Yesterdayland features TV, movies, fashion, toys, and other aspects of pop culture from the 1950s on. It's a great resource for questions such as, "What was this cartoon I vaguely remember from when I was 6?"

Science:

eNature.com features an online field guide to many plants and animals.

Dinosauria On-line has a lot of info on dinosaurs and other extinct critters.

U.S. Geological Service has a ton of geographical information about the U.S., including a national atlas.

The Nine Planets is a good resource for information on the solar system.

Ask the Astronomer has answers to 3000+ questions in Astronomy.

[Algernon]

Sorry Arnold. I looked to see if it was there, honest, but obviously I didn't look close enough. Even searching after reading your admonishment I didn't see it right away. Turns out the link was grayed out... as was my brain.

[Colibri]

Here's another nice medical site:

eMedicine

[yabob]

The subject matter is hardly of Earth shattering importance, but another site that has an enormous amount of depth to its data is the "flags of the world" site:

http://www.fotw.ca/flags/
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/

(the site is mirrored many places)

[yabob]

Also, I would reccomend the Idocs HTML guide:

http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/

I find it to be very well organized for looking up specific HTML behavior or syntax. We seem to get a fair smattering of HTML questions here, most of which could be answered by this reference.

[ultrafilter]

We should also compile a list of fitness, exercise, and diet sites, as those subjects seem to come up fairly often.

Here are a handful to get us started:

• http://www.exrx.net
• http://www.stumptuous.com/weights.html
• http://www.weightrainer.com
• http://www.supplementwatch.com
• http://www.beyondveg.com

I'm not a runner, so I'll leave the collection of those sites to actual runners.

[ultrafilter]

Ask Dr. Math is also a good reference site for math-related stuff.

[Jonathan Chance]

I suppose you're not interested in a listing of squished penny locations, right? I'm so discriminated against.

But for baseball...

www.baseball-reference.com

That is, without a doubt, the great stat site of the world.

[Daoloth]

Historical Atlas of the 20th Century

[Alto]

Can I add:

the Perseus site

for Classical Greek and Latin Literature, and

this Dictionary page

which has dictionaries (of varying quality) for about 260 languages?

Also, FYI the Encyclopedia Britannica site is no longer free to use. You just get a snippet of the article, after which you have to pay to get the full thing.

[samclem]

Both of tomndebb's great word sites
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/inde...ph_arc&fn=word and http://www.word-detective.com/backidx.html
are already summarized in http://alt-usage-english.org/fast_faq.shtml. That site also gives an index to http://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm, http://www.wordorigins.org/index.htm, and a few others.

[Pythagras]

Another quotation page, though less substantiated than the quotation page in the OP: the quotes are submitted I believe, so before you use them in any scholarly/publication sense, you might want to double check them, but their are many many quotes here:

http://www.brainyquote.com

[Derleth]

http://www.xenu.net/ -- To balance the pro-Scientology bias of Religioustolerance.org

http://www.linux.org/ -- Information about an OS that is becoming more and more popular around these parts.

[Crusoe]

I have a few more that I'd like to add.

• WhatIs.com: glossary of computing-related acronyms and terms
• FILExt: for "what kind of file is this?" questions
• Full list of startups: for identifying programs running on PCs
  
• All Music Guide: database of artists, albums and songs
  
• Federation of American Scientists: modern military equipment and topics
  
• Understanding Telecommunications: understand telecommunications and the internet
  
• Guardian Unlimited Politics: information on British politicians & parties
• A to Z of the Houses of Parliament: how British politics works
  
• VisitBritain: official travel, accommodation and other information for visitors

[Derleth]

http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/ -- A great general computer reference with plenty of information about hacker culture.

[ultrafilter]

http://www.rad.washington.edu/atlas/ - the Upper Extremity Muscle Atlas

http://www.rad.washington.edu/atlas2/ - the Lower Extremity Muscle Atlas

[ultrafilter]

http://planetmath.org/ -- looks like a pretty good math site.

[yabob]

Forbes maintains a number of interesting lists of richest people, best paid CEO's, largest private companies, etc:

http://www.forbes.com/lists/

[xash]

English Words, Language, and Literature

http://www.dictionary.com

[SpoilerVirgin]

The Forbes link reminded me...for all those people who ask about college or graduate school: U.S. News College Directory and Rankings

[critter42]

Computer link:

A really comprehensive list of different programs that run during Windows start up and if they're needed or not (Windows OSes):

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup...artup_full.htm

It's got over 1900 startup programs listed, along with notes and comments on almost all of them.

When I'm troubleshooting software issues, this is without a doubt my most used site.

critter42

[barbitu8]

This I find helpful on exercise and nutrition stuff. Dr. Mirkin knows his stuff.

However, I doubt if listing links is going to help much. No one bothers to do their own research anymore. A year or two ago, many similar links were given.

[js_africanus]

www.spellcheck.net

Also check their references under "Math & Units" and "Language". (I should probably do that more.)

[KidCharlemagne]

Movie reviews: www.rottentomatoes.com
Game reviews: www.gamerankings.com

[Bad Hat]

AMG is my favorite online music resource.

[Crusoe]

Is anyone actually reading this thread? In this page along two of the sites already listed on the first page have been mentioned again.

[Crusoe]

Alone, not along. Sorry.

[femtosecond]

Here. I thought having all the code in one easy-to-quote post is one step towards sorting the new links. (Can you tell I wanted to try out that HTML editor? )

Microsoft Help & Support Home Page

Here's a good site I found about Islam: Islamicity's Understanding Islam and Muslims
On Buddhism: Buddhanet.net
And Hindusim: Hindunet.org

How about a link to http://www.boardreader.com

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ Great for answering basic questions about the beliefs of numerous religions.

Well, http://www.macfixit.com is an excellent Mac resource. For OS X, http://www.macosxhints.com is invaluable. (Especially the "OS X Guidebook" which you can download as a PDF file)

Education reference (may be linked through one of the library sites above): ERIC

Hardware Guides:
Tom's Hardware - Which includes both reviews of current hardware & FAQ's.
AnandTech - more of the same
Virus & Security issues:
Sophos Virus Database - An Excellent database of virus definitions, symptoms, etc.
Symantec (Norton) Virus Database - another excellent Virus DB
Vmyths.com - an excellent source to debunk virus myths
CERT - The granddaddy of all security threat sites.

English Words, Language, and Literature
The (Random House) Word Maven Word Origins
The Word Detective More Word Origins
Encyclopedia Mythica A compendium of mythology and legends from all the world's cultures
Labyrinth Library Georgetown U's links to Medieval Latin, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish & Iberian Texts

General Information and Reference
MegaConverter2 Convert units of measure: Imperial, Metric, Ancient, Astronomical, Kitchen, Finance, Fraction-to-decimal, and much more
The Calendar Zone Comprehensive categorized calendar catalog currently containing countless correlating connections & calzone recipes!
ANYDAY: Today in History Births, Deaths, Holidays, and events associated with each day of the year

Government, Politics, and Law
(U.S.) State and Local Government on the Net Links to most State and Local (by state) web sites, with additional Federal and Multi-state sites

Is there an online Koran better than this one? http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/

The Calendar FAQ: Lots of information on any conceivable way of keeping track of time. (For those pesky easter questions and leap seconds).
WorldWideWords: Plenty of information on the English language, seen from a British viewpoint.

I suggest www.randi.org for the skepticism section ; It's "Project Gutenberg" ; Duplicate http in the Simpsons FAQ link.

I've had many medical questions answered on Healthboards.com. And I second the suggestion to add Randi.org to the skepticism section.

Popular Culture:
Yesterdaylandfeatures TV, movies, fashion, toys, and other aspects of pop culturefrom the 1950s on. It's a great resource for questions such as, "Whatwas this cartoon I vaguely remember from when I was 6?"
Science:
eNature.com features an online field guide to many plants and animals.
Dinosauria On-line has a lot of info on dinosaurs and other extinct critters.
U.S. Geological Service has a ton of geographical information about the U.S., including a national atlas.
The Nine Planets is a good resource for information on the solar system.
Ask the Astronomer has answers to 3000+ questions in Astronomy.

Here's another nice medical site: eMedicine

The subject matter is hardly of Earth shattering importance, butanother site that has an enormous amount of depth to its data is the"flags of the world" site:
http://www.fotw.ca/flags/ http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags (the site is mirrored many places)

Also, I would reccomend the Idocs HTML guide: http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/
I find it to be very well organized for looking up specific HTMLbehavior or syntax. We seem to get a fair smattering of HTML questionshere, most of which could be answered by this reference.

We should also compile a list of fitness, exercise, and diet sites, as those subjects seem to come up fairly often.
http://www.exrx.net
http://www.stumptuous.com/weights.html
http://www.weightrainer.com
http://www.supplementwatch.com
http://www.beyondveg.com

Ask Dr. Math is also a good reference site for math-related stuff.

But for baseball... www.baseball-reference.com That is, without a doubt, the great stat site of the world.

Historical Atlas of the 20th Century

the Perseus site for Classical Greek and Latin Literature, and
this Dictionary page which has dictionaries (of varying quality) for about 260 languages?
Also, FYI the Encyclopedia Britannica site is no longer free to use.You just get a snippet of the article, after which you have to pay toget the full thing.

Both of tomndebb's great word sites
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/ind...lph_arc&fn=word and http://www.word-detective.com/backidx.html
are already summarized in http://alt-usage-english.org/fast_faq.shtml. That site also gives an index to http://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm, http://www.wordorigins.org/index.htm, and a few others.

Another quotation page, though less substantiated than the quotationpage in the OP: the quotes are submitted I believe, so before you usethem in any scholarly/publication sense, you might want to double checkthem, but their are many many quotes here:
http://www.brainyquote.com

http://www.xenu.net/ -- To balance the pro-Scientology bias of Religioustolerance.org
http://www.linux.org/ -- Information about an OS that is becoming more and more popular around these parts.

WhatIs.com: glossary of computing-related acronyms and terms
FILExt: for "what kind of file is this?" questions
Full list of startups: for identifying programs running on PCs
All Music Guide: database of artists, albums and songs
Federation of American Scientists: modern military equipment and topics
Understanding Telecommunications: understand telecommunications and the internet
Guardian Unlimited Politics: information on British politicians & parties
A to Z of the Houses of Parliament: how British politics works
VisitBritain: official travel, accommodation and other information for visitors

http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/ -- A great general computer reference with plenty of information about hacker culture.

http://www.rad.washington.edu/atlas/ - the Upper Extremity Muscle Atlas
http://www.rad.washington.edu/atlas2/ - the Lower Extremity Muscle Atlas

http://planetmath.org/ -- looks like a pretty good math site.

Forbes maintains a number of interesting lists of richest people, best paid CEO's, largest private companies, etc: http://www.forbes.com/lists/

English Words, Language, and Literature
http://www.dictionary.com

The Forbes link reminded me...for all those people who ask about college or graduate school: U.S. News College Directory and Rankings

Pacman's Portal for Windows' start up programs
A really comprehensive list of different programs that run during Windows start up and if they're needed or not (Windows OSes):
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startu...tartup_full.htm

This I find helpful on exercise and nutrition stuff. Dr. Mirkin knows his stuff.

spellcheck www.spellcheck.net
Also check their references under "Math & Units" and "Language". (I should probably do that more.)

Movie reviews: www.rottentomatoes.com
Game reviews: www.gamerankings.com

AMG is my favorite online music resource.