...The Thinking Fan's Guide To Baseball is looking like a very good read.

It has been years since I read Shoeless Joe Jackson or The Natural. In my pre-winter planning, I am thinking of taking on sports books, fiction and non-fiction. Any recommendations?  •  Later: Picked up the 2004 edition of The Thinking Fan's Guide To Baseball.

In a move that will muddle the legally muddled, Yahoo has announced that it is setting up a digital library on the web that actually considers and respects copyright:  •  “Yahoo is taking on Google with its own digital archive of books, audio and video. As part of the Open Content Alliance, Yahoo …

It used to be "what's good for GM is good for America" but now it seems "what's good for Google is good for the world":  •  “Google has a grand plan of "organizing the world's information and making it more universally accessible and useful". It hopes to pump $200m (£110m) into creating a digital …

Is anyone surprised that former PM Brian Mulroney had a habit of speaking rudely - or often merely firmly - about people and events? Apparently he is:  •  “Brian Mulroney feels "devastated" and "betrayed" and regrets talking candidly to Peter C. Newman, a spokesman said yesterday after the …

It is a funny thing in the Canadian character that we love to be mentioned, to be thanked as a nation. It is good to do something good, for sure - but sometimes I think we would get all gooey over being over-praised for a smallish thing than be proud in an achievement despite no much notice being …

I am surprised by the interest I am apparently sustaining in reading Saul Cornell's book The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828.  •  One thing I am learning a bit about is whig republicanism, a movement that probably (if I knew anything) can be dated …

Also on the weekend, I finished Origins of the Bill of Rights by Leonard W. Levy, first published in 1999, which I had been dipping into a chapter here or there when not reading about baseball or beer. I would recommend it to anyone interested in discussing the nature of rights whether in the US …

There are days - often called Monday - when you wake up wondering why you wrote that two years ago, what you are going to say at the seminar and why you never followed up on that dream you had at 21 to mow Fenway. Then...you find out the noisy neighbours have moved out and that what you wrote is …