Bond Trading At TED, the new-media version of a Mafia wedding, you rub elbows with the dons and capos of the Internet world and become an instant member of the family. [1]

The weather, though, from San Francisco down the coast to Monterrey, where TED is held, turned bad, and it suddenly started to look like Brockman's dinner might be short a few billionaires.

It used to be the millionaires' dinner, but in the enthusiasm of the bull market, Brockman upped it a thousandfold (certainly, among the guests, there were a lot of millionaires -- maybe everyone). Of course, the point is not the billionaires per se but the good fellowship that the idea of proximity to billionaires engenders. Does that fellowship disappear just because some billionaires don't want to take a chance on the weather?