Williston ND House for Sale: 2br, 2ba, Bakken shale formation view
It's newly good to live in places like Williston, North Dakota. About one homeowner a day in such places is becoming a millionaire at current oil hyper-prices. They are, of course, the people whose houses sit over the newly economically viable Bakken shale formation.
The number of taxpayers reporting adjusted gross income of more than $1 million in North Dakota rose from 266 in 2005 to 388 in 2006, [tax analyst] Strombeck said. The 2007 numbers won't be known until October, she said.
Bruce Gjovig, director of the University of North Dakota's Center for Innovation, said his informal survey estimates the number of new millionaires in Mountrail County, one of the biggest drilling areas of the Bakken, may be as many as 2,000 — or nearly a third of the county's population — in the next three to five years.
[via AP]








According to the WSJ tonight -- and I can almost not bear to type these irritating words -- Microsoft is messing with Yahoo again. The story says that Microsoft is working at pulling together a consortium of folks who might buy the pieces of a broken-up Yahoo, the search part of which would go to Microsoft. 

The Starbucks boom across the U.S. (and worldwide) has added hugely to the list of public restrooms. With cities building fewer of the things, and even closing some, and with many restaurants making it only slightly less difficult finding them than finding your average absentee hedge fund manager, Starbucks' buildout has been a boon to joggers, tourists, businesspeople and anyone who sometimes, you know, just has to go. 