At the Conference of Berlin in 1884, Belgium's King Leopold II was given his "piece of the African cake," the rights to the Congo, from which he duly extracted a fortune, exporting rubber to European and American markets hungry for everything from tires to condoms.
Now, in his living room, it is hard to square the Dan Klores yammering excuses for the video he's about to play with the man whose poise and gall have allowed him to extract a pleasant fortune from the vanities of the famous and the appetites of the media.
We bought hot little cakes flavored with green tea, and Orlando got his fortune told in the temple, shaking a box until a stick fell out, then matching the number on that stick to a little drawer and extracting a paper fortune, complete with English translation.
They serve as a loser's Greek chorus, suddenly making their way among the horsey set and waiting for fate to extract a price for their good fortune.
Eventually Cherry extracted a receipt.
"She wanted to make a fortune, to extract herself from her milieu, to become someone, just like a man, and not depend on anyone — without knowing how she could do it.
The dairy industry has spent a fortune on extracting more and more milk from cows, but very little on understanding just what this white liquid is or how it works.
And therein lies the real point of the Harper Collins / Gawker lawsuit: by publishing unauthorised extracts from Palin's book, Gawker has seriously damaged the publisher's ability to earn a fortune from selling those extracts to others.
SALT LAKE CITY — Generations ago, industrialists and financiers extracted fortunes from the copper and gold mines dug into the canyons near here.
