The Brunch Table

The New York Times put out a list of the 30 all-time richest Americans, with capsule biographies and inflation-adjusted fortune stats. Their cute Flash presentation was giving me a headache, though, so I copied out the info by hand:

1. John Rockefeller – $192 billion – oil
2. Cornelius Vanderbilt – $143 billion – steamboats -> railroads
3. John Astor – $116 billion – fur -> real estate
4. Stephen Girard – $83 billion – smuggling -> banking
5. Bill Gates – $82 billion – software
6. Andrew Carnegie – $74 billion – steel
7. A. T. Stewart – $70 billion – retail
8. Frederick Weyerhauser – $68 billion – lumber
9. Jay Gould – $67 billion – stocks
10. Stephen van Rensselaer – $64 billion – real estate
11. Marshall Field – $61 billion – retail -> real estate
12. Henry Ford – $54 billion – cars
13. Sam Walton – $53 billion – retail -> outsourcing
14. Andrew Mellon – $48 billion – banking -> aluminum, oil
15. Richard Mellon – $48 billion – banking -> aluminum, oil
16. Warren Buffett – $46 billion – stocks
17. James Fair – $45 billion – mining -> real estate
18. William Weightman – $44 billion – pharmaceuticals
19. Moses Taylor – $44 billion – banking
20. Russell Sage – $43 billion – organized crime -> stocks
21. John Blair – $43 billion – mining -> railroads
22. Edward Harriman – $39 billion – stocks -> railroads
23. Henry Rogers – $39 billion – oil
24. J. P. Morgan – $38 billion – banking -> politics
25. Oliver Payne – $37 billion – oil
26. Henry Frick – $36 billion – steel
27. George Pullman – $34 billion – traincars
28. Collis Huntington – $33 billion – retail -> railroads
29. Peter Widener – $32 billion – railroads
30. James Flood – $31 billion – mining

By the way, Huntington, WV is named for Collis Huntington. And Oliver Hazard Payne easily takes the prize for best name.

Thanks to Craigslist and the willingness of my friend Lillian to act as a scout, I’ve managed to conduct a successful apartment hunt in Toronto from all the way over here. Take a look (these are Lillian’s pictures)…!

[ This was left in "drafts" too long, and got scooped. ]

Now you can learn the grim truth about everybody’s favorite bucket-loving seal. Non-fiction, I swear.

Minazo was forced to perform various stunts before audience at each mealtime, such as holding a bucket with one flipper, bending back like a prawn, and standing still while a keeper jumped and clung on him. The hard work made him exhausted and might have caused his early death.

The iPhone is the most sci-fi artifact I’ve ever owned, even if Safari is Crashy McCrasherson. (For those of you with my old number, subtract 202-424-0331 to get my new one.)