In the game Magic: The Gathering, there are different types of play, which can be simplified to "you can use (almost) any of the cards you own" vs. "you can use only the cards that have been recently released."  These are called Type I and Type II, respectively.  (Yes, I'm simplifying things a bit.)  Wizards of the Coast now appears to have completely stopped supporting Type I.  It would be easy to see this as a money-grab scheme, and I have certainly thought of it as such before, but when one really, truly thinks about it, one sees that it's the game's great leveler.  A short illustration of what would happen if you set out to construct decks by purchasing cards on eBay, before considering shipping charges:

The cost to assemble, today, using the cheapest editions of cards possible, the Type I deck used by former world champion Olle Rade to defeat me in 1997: $2,435.23.

The cost to assemble my non-tournament-worthy-but-lots-of-fun-to-play Type I deck: $571.49.

The cost to assemble the deck used to win the 2003 U.S. Type II Nationals: $71.89.

That being said, I still only play Type I.  Why?  Because I love the richness of the environment, giving you thousands of cards to choose from rather than hundreds.  Also, I've spent a lot of years and a lot of money building up my collection, and it's a terrible shame to see it all just sit in a closet.

Composer Michael Kamen has died.

Trader Joe's has a Saint-Vivant armagnac in an attractive crooked bottle for $21.99 right now.  I'm no armagnac expert, but this is absolutely delicious stuff.

According to Alex Kraaijeveld on MALTS-L, Tullibardine is set to reopen at the end of this month (click to find Tullibardine bottles.)

I lost my favorite scotch glass in the move this past January.  It's not really a scotch glass.  Not designed to be, anyway.  It's a wine tasting glass from Andrew Murray Vineyards in Santa Barbara County, California, the one that they give you as a souvenir when you pay to taste their wines.  It's copita-shaped, much like the Riedel port glass, but with a slightly shorter, not as bulbous bowl, shorter stem, and narrower base (the big disc of the base is the ugliest thing -- the only ugly thing -- about the Riedel port glass.)  I know we have it somewhere, in some box I haven't yet found.  It's probably hiding with the two Riedel port glasses I'm still missing.

Much sadness abounds.

Scottish salmon, having a particularly hard time climbing a certain waterfall in Perthshire, were given a helping hand by conservationists: they were driven upstream in a van.

The most to-the-point article thus far on the row over Cardhu.  It's unbelievable that Diageo are still sticking to their guns in the face of such immense industry opposition.

For my non-nagging family members, more baby pictures.

Terrance Cottrell was an autistic 8-year-old boy.  His mother was a member of a storefront fringe Christian church called Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith.  Believing the boy to be possessed by evil spirits, the pastor of the church crushed the boy to death during an exorcism service while his mother held his legs down.  While the death was ruled a homicide, the pastor was only charged with (and convicted of) felony child abuse rather than murder, a decision made because the pastor believed he was helping the boy.

Let's hope the producers of the "Girls Gone Wild" series go to jail this time.