Poor Melinda, Bill won't let her have an iPhone.

The new Vogue has an interview called "Gates of Heaven" with Melinda Gates. I found it somewhat amusing, but kind of shitty on Bill's part, that he won't allow her or the kids - Jennifer, 13, Rory, 10 and Phoebe, 7 - to enjoy Apple products. I guess she won't be downloading the new U2 album No Line on the Horizon released today from iTunes, either.

“There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household,” Gates tells me. “But iPods and iPhones are two things we don’t get for our kids.” Harsh, perhaps, but understandable. After all, it’s hard to walk around tethered to merchandise made by your father’s most famous competitor. Still, Gates acknowledges the inevitable lure of forbidden fruit. “Every now and then I look at my friends and say, ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t mind having that iPhone.’”

Bill Gates unleashes hungry mosquitoes at TED conference

(pic: TED / James Duncan Davidson)

This is so great. Bill Gates, who's retired from software and has since turned his attention to other matters, was speaking at the TED conference. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is an organization that has this annual conference in Long Beach during which, according to TED's website, "now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)."

One of Bill's passions is to stop malaria (the other is to improve our dismal educational system). He and his wife's foundation has spent over a billion dollars fighting the disease, but perhaps he didn't think that the audience was taking it seriously enough. So he opens a jar of mosquitoes and says, "Not only poor people should experience this."

Who'd have thought Gates had such a great sense of humor? He should have his own "Punk'd" show. I can't wait to see the video of his TEDTalk, which is supposed to be online in 24 hours. Check here to see if it is.

I went to the Gates Foundation website, specifically the section about malaria, and found out that 800,000 people die from malaria each year. In Africa, 2,000 kids die from it each day. Jesus! His foundation is working to develop malaria drugs, a vaccine, to improve mosquito control, to develop public awareness, and ultimately to eradicate the disease.