The cold is almost gone. The weekend almost here. What have we learned this week?

• Needle to Buttock Update: best line so far on the Mitchell Report:

  His reputation is in tatters. We need to hear from him immediately, not his attorney.

  That is Roger Clemens being discussed.
• Copyright Bamboozlement Update: the usual suspects of the "I want what I don't own and pay for" crowd has apparently geared up again. Change your locks! They'll be coming for your sofa next - because, you know, they would put it to better use than you would.
• Update: Blackwater blogs. I am not sure what to make of this project of sometimes commentmaker Rob but it is interesting.
• I believe the word is "mistakes."
• Here is a list of the ten dumbest clauses in baseball players' contracts. I like Oswalt's bulldozer the best.
• The beer blog photo contest's deadline is almost here. There have been great entries and a host of prizes are up for grabs on Monday.
• Gordo eco-spammed me with a mass mail of a post that starts out like this:

  Right now, a major UN summit in Bali has just a few days left to hammer out an agreement on stopping catastrophic climate change. But instead of helping out, Canada is actually sabotaging the talks! On Saturday, experts gave us the global "fossil" award for being the worst country in the world on climate change.

  Good B-movie graphics on the link-to page (pale men in turtlenecks are always evil) but I have my panic focused on magnetic pole reversal and not global warming. Magnetic pole reversal kicks global warming's butt as a cause for freaking out.
• By the way, I wonder what will turn out to be wrong with this guy now the Jay's have signed him.
• This is an odd Federal government. They make you think they are going to do one thing and then they do stuff like this:

  This week, the government quietly adopted a regulation to reimburse any passport fees incurred by evacuees. The move was taken because "it is in the public interest to do so," the regulation notes. The order "grants those Canadians who were evacuated from Lebanon during the period beginning on July 20, 2006, and ending on Aug. 21, 2006, remission of the fee paid or payable, and any interest payable on that fee, for emergency passports," said a notice in the Canada Gazette on Wednesday.

  Well, At least the guy who has checked the Canada Gazette for the Globe every Wednesday for the last 37 years got a story out of it.