I am not a Magic geek but I have been roped into many a game when my nephew comes to visit. He has the most Magic cards I've ever seen in one place.

Liberty City Police Face Allegations Of Incompetence, Brutality:

Since the surge in crime, which began on April 28 at midnight, more than 830,000 civilians have been murdered—nearly one-tenth of Liberty City's total population. In addition, 35,000 vehicles have been reported stolen, many of which were then driven illegally over sidewalks and pedestrian walkways before plunging into the nearby Humboldt River. And according to startling figures released by local community action group Citizens for a Safer City, drug trafficking has become rampant and prostitution has increased by 800 percent.

The police respond!

"We are only equipped to pursue a suspect within a small radius on a very basic half-centimeter radar screen," the officer said. "If we were allowed to seek criminals who escaped this radius for more than 15 seconds, our results would improve dramatically."

I am not a Magic geek but I have been roped into many a game when my nephew comes to visit. He has the most Magic cards I've ever seen in one place.

I wouldn't consider myself a Magic Geek. I only have the set because I am a completist who had time on her hands and needed distraction.

I started playing when I lived in France and played with my sister a decent amount. And then my nephew, who couldn't yet read, but had memorized the cards by watching us.

Someone once asked my sister if she was worried that the WCN (world's cutest nephew) was into Magic. She responded with "How cool can he think it is, he learned watching his Mom and his Aunt."

Although maybe it is a gateway drug, as I'm sure what he is most excited about with his upcoming visit is playing WoW on my housemate's account.

I started playing Magic with the first edition, and quit about the time the Arabians started coming out. Too many choices! No longer fun.

By that point we had something like 2000 cards.

During that period of my life I was teaching high school, and giving Magic cards away as performance rewards.

I picked it up again later, when my boss was a two-time national M:TG champ. He mandated that me and another guy would sit down and get our asses handed to us every day at lunch.

Pete

Like I said, I picked up most of my knowledge from science magazines and the like, but I am told that Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End has a good depiction of AR...

CaBil, it wasn't just AR, but all the other terms you were using too. I've used wikipedia to look up a few since then, so some of them were not particularly useful beginners' guides...

Anything you are still uncertain about?

Oh plenty, but I will do more digging when I have time, and pose questions as and when.

Okay, one, do you have a simple explanation of Cloud Computing?

Linked just because I thought it was very cute: a seven-year-old gets his first taste of D&D. [link]

That's incredibly sweet, BT. Also, cute to watch a board full o' guys flailing around in obvious need of a phrase to correspond to "OMG MY OVARIES!!"