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Speaking on stage yesterday at the TED 2014 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Bill and Melinda Gates gave a revealing answer to a question about how they're raising their kids with respect to money, reports Wired. The couple has enough money to make each of their three children billionaires if they should want to do so, but as they answered, that's not the plan at all. "We want to strike a balance so they have the freedom to do anything, but not sort of a lot of money showered on them so that they can go out and do nothing,"...

Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, revealed in a recent interview that his family goes to a Catholic church and that religious morality inspires a lot of his charity work. He also shared his personal thoughts on God and the biggest issues facing the world today. "The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's...

It is funny–in both the ha-ha and ironical senses–that those who often scream most loudly against the “death panel” meme often follow, sotto voce, ”But we need death panels.” The fact is that most of those in the technocratic classes want to medically discriminate against those who are seen as health care “takers” or perceived to have a lower quality of life. They’re just not sure how to get from “here” to “there,” and retain popular support. (Hint: They can’t.) billgatesNow in a Rolling Stone interview, Bill Gates joins the chorus. He says–like bioethicist Daniel Callahan–that we have to be...

The SAT college entrance exam will no longer require a written essay or penalize students for wrong answers, part of a major overhaul announced Wednesday.

UPDATE: Nazi scientists worked on ways to use malaria-carrying mosquitoes as a weapon, according to researchers. Until now, experts have disputed whether Germany was working on biological warfare during World War II. Dr Klaus Reinhardt, who led the study, told The Local that he came across documents at Dachau's Entomology Institute which suggested that “biological weapons [using mosquitoes] could have been developed as an offensive, not defensive, weapon”. Until now, it had been generally thought by experts that the Nazis only intended ever to use biological weapons defensively. By 1944 the institute had decided on a specific breed of mosquito...

The Washington Post recently published a quixotic editorial maintaining that the left has no deep-pocketed financiers like the right does in the much written about and thoroughly maligned Koch brothers. In its editorial, the paper laments that Democrat groups have no one like the Kochs. For the Post, Reid Wilson wrote that for "Democratic professionals who actually run campaigns, the thing that frustrates them most about the Koch brothers network is that there’s no real equivalent on their side."

Microsoft is an insanely profitable company standing on the edge of disaster. It desperately needs new thinking. With word that 22-year Microsoft veteran Satya Nadella is likely the new CEO, attention turns to the leadership of the company's board of directors. It will have two former CEOs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. So new thinking is unlikely to come from them. In fact, Gates has a track record of huge strategic errors that have cost the company years of progress in market share. Here's why he should be the one to go: 1. Gates' world was: Go slow. Microsoft needs...

Al Gore pops his head up at Davos…say, how’d he get there? A fossil fueled flight?…to make a racist pronouncement (via Climate Depot). Stopping overpopulation is one way the dangers of climate change can be mitigated, according to two of the most prominent believers in global warming. Former Vice President Al Gore and Microsoft founder Bill Gates (how did Gates get to Davos? Anyone think he flew commercial?) said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that contraception is a key in controlling the proliferation of unusual weather they say is endangering the world. “Depressing the rate of child mortality,...

arguing that "secular" businesses should not be exempt from the mandate. The 19 senators planned to file a brief before the court, which is still weeks away from considering the closely watched case. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who planned to make her case on the Senate floor, adamantly defended the Obama administration's side. "What's at stake in this case before the Supreme Court is whether a CEO's personal beliefs can trump a woman's right to access free or low-cost contraception under the Affordable Care Act," she said in prepared remarks.

Billionaire and former tech mogul Bill Gates predicts that there will be almost no poor countries left in the world by 2035. Almost all nations will be either lower-middle income or wealthier, and most will have surpassed the 35 countries that are currently defined by the World Bank as low-income, Gates says in his annual letter for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

When the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation offered Pittsburgh Public Schools $40 million, it was a godsend to the cash-strapped school system. But to the American Federation of Teachers, the city's teachers union, and AFT President Randi Weingarten, the idea that school funding might be tied to improving children's education was anathema. The grant had to go. The Gates foundation's criteria were straightforward: The school district and teachers needed to agree on a method to evaluate classroom performance and to hold teachers accountable for their performance. The union and the district agreed on a metric, but now the AFT and...

Should the nation’s minimum wage be raised, as Democrats from President Obama on down are insisting? “Well, jobs are a great thing,” Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday. “So you have to be a bit careful: If you raise the minimum wage, you’re encouraging labor substitution, and you’re going to go buy machines and automate things—or cause jobs to appear outside of that jurisdiction. “And so within certain limits, you know, it does cause job destruction. If you really start pushing it, then you’re just making a huge tradeoff.” …

The other day I saw “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” which I thoroughly enjoyed. In it, the wizard Gandalf laments the growth of the “Power of the Shadow” and how the forces of good had been blind to its resurgence. That same week, Organizing for Action (President Obama’s political army) tweeted “On one side: Shadowy groups spending millions to obscure the facts.” I realized there was a connection between the two. OFA is right, the power of shadowy groups grows, and dark money spreads across our body politic. Yet many have been blind to the destructive power these groups...

Bill Gates tried to get hedge fund founder Robert W. Wilson, who committed suicide over the weekend, to join his giving pledge. Wilson, who gave away hundreds of millions of dollars of his personal fortune on his own, politely told Gates he wanted to “stay far away” from his effort.

Dr. Diane Harper was a leading expert responsible for the Phase II and Phase III safety and effectiveness studies which secured the approval of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccines, Gardasil™ and Cervarix™. Dr. Harper also authored many of the published, scholarly papers about the vaccines. She is now the latest in a long string of experts who are pressing the red alert button on the devastating consequences and irrelevancy of these vaccines. Dr. Harper made her surprising confession at the 4th International Converence on Vaccination which took place in Reston, Virginia. Her speech, which was originally intended to promote...

Quoting from an argument advanced by moral philosopher Peter Singer; he questions why anyone would donate money to build a new wing for a museum rather than spend it on preventing illnesses that can lead to blindness. "The moral equivalent is, we're going to take 1 per cent of the people who visit this [museum] and blind them," he says. "Are they willing, because it has the new wing, to take that risk? Hmm, maybe this blinding thing is slightly barbaric." Article: An exclusive interview with Bill Gates Financial Times November 1, 2013 Bill Gates more or less took the...

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have "contributed $25,000 apiece" to Washington's Initiative 594, which would effectively ban private gun sales in the state. The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR) is pushing the initiative, claiming it "makes sure anyone buying a gun in Washington State passes the same background check, no matter where where they buy the gun and no matter whom they buy it from."

Perhaps because he wants to divert attention from the slow-motion train wreck of Obamacare, the President is signalling that he will renew his efforts to throw more people into the unemployment line. Needless to say, that’s not how the White House would describe the President’s proposal to increase the minimum wage, but that’s one of the main results when the government criminalizes certain employment contracts between consenting adults. To be blunt, if a worker happens to have poor work skills, a less-than-impressive employment record, or some other indicator of low productivity that makes them worth, say, $7.50 per hour, then...

On Tuesday a ballot measure to raise income taxes on Coloradans to raise funds for increased education spending failed. In fact, the measure, Amendment 66, didn’t just fail–it went down in flames. The measure was defeated by a 32 percent margin. This major defeat was in spite of the fact that the measure’s backers outspent the opponents by a large margin, raising $10 million to support the initiative, including a $1 million each from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bill and Melinda Gates. Amendment 66 would have eliminated Colorado’s flat rate income tax of 4.63 percent in favor of...

This whiteboard animation shows what happened when Hitler lied to get elected and people don't care or pay attention to the lies of their leaders, until they do care...and at that point, it is too late. Parts of this video are narrated by a man who served as a German soldier and a German woman who lived right by the railroad tracks the cattle trains ran on that carried the Jews to their deaths. Based on Andy Andrews' book, How Do You Kill 11 Million People? Produced by www.thedrawshop.com This is real, don't be fooled. This is happening.