Wizardry: Rare J.K. Rowling Book Sold For $4 Mil

Amazon.com flexed their check-writing muscle recently buy purchasing one of seven handmade copies of J.K. Rowling's compilation of fairy tales, The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Here's a little bit from Amazon's bragging page.

We're incredibly excited to announce that Amazon has purchased J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard at an auction held by Sotheby’s in London. The book of five wizarding fairy tales, referenced in the last book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is one of only seven handmade copies in existence. The purchase price was £1,950,000, and Ms. Rowling is donating the proceeds to The Children's Voice campaign, a charity she co-founded to help improve the lives of institutionalized children across Europe.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is extensively illustrated and handwritten by the bard herself--all 157 pages of it. It's bound in brown Moroccan leather and embellished with five hand-chased hallmarked sterling silver ornaments and mounted moonstones.

If you take a look at the pictures of the actual book, the cover and illustration designs look pretty morbid, so who knows what the pages hold.

New Monopoly Uses Debit Cards, All Educational Value Lost

I was watching TV today, and a commercial appeared that left me in complete shock.

There was this girl, playing Monopoly with her family, and she was accepting payment for her father's purchase, WITH A DEBIT CARD. That's right. The new Monopoly Electronic Banking Edition gets rid of the paper, and brings in plastic cards that are programmed using a card reader. No more counting stupid money and learning how to be a responsible consumer! Next thing we know, they'll be adding credit cards, and chance cards that read: "Uh oh! Your adjustible rate mortgage on your highest valued property sextupled! You must pawn your game piece to pay it off. Then you must steal your friends game piece. You get caught. Go to jail."

Wow... I don't think they can squeeze that on the card. What fun.