Two new studies prove that if HIV-negative people take anti-HIV medication they're substantially less likely to contract the virus that causes AIDS. Don't get too excited, gays: It's only proven for heteros.
TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk'd. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd.
Oh, surely you didn't think Bill Gates would fade away into saintly obscurity after retiring from his day job at Microsoft, did you? Techflash reports he has a new company, a sort of think tank called BGC3. The letters stand, roughly, for "Bill Gates Catalyst". The three? Possibly a reference to the companies he's founded. Microsoft was Gates's first company; Corbis, the photo-licensing agency, his second. (Should we count the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, since it's a nonprofit.) BGC3 will house Gates's intellectual musings, with the resulting innovations to be funneled largely to Microsoft or to his foundation. It sounds a bit like former Microsoft research chief Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures, minus the controversial accumulation of patents.
Jeff Raikes, a Microsoft employee since 1981 and current head of the Office Business Division, will be replacing Patty Stonesifer as the CEO of the $37.3 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Raikes has been close to the First Couple at Microsoft for some time, and has some nonprofit experience through a trusteeship at the University of Nebraska. A sports fan who takes his daughter to University of Washington women's basketball games, Raikes is also part-owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball club. In the announcement, the foundation said it will be doubling the employment rolls. Look for more senior "softies" to move to the charitable organization as a pre-retirement change of pace. But the question remains why the foundation can't, or won't, hire more experience non-profit veterans to manage the fund.(Photo by Steve Jurvetson)
Google.org, Google's for-profit charity, announced all kinds of new initiatives today. The short version: health, climate change, good government. The basic idea, as MarketWatch notes in a video report about the project, is to approach "giving" like a venture capitalist. Thing is, Google's only "investing" about 3 percent as much as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No matter, says Google's Larry Brilliant in this clip.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's efforts to fight AIDS, malaria and measles in Africa is working. Millions of vaccinated children are now safe from malaria and measles. In many parts of the continent, AIDS deaths are no longer on the rise. But now Africa has other problems, thanks to the charity's focused generosity. A recent Los Angeles Times exposé. It's all Bill's fault:
