Bill Gates Released Swarm of Mosquitoes on VIPs

Bill gives a talk on world health and education at this year’s TED conference! He says, “There’s no reason only poor people should have the experience [of malaria]” after he set the mosquitoes loose on the crowd of some of the world’s most prominent thinkers. Brilliant.

He then goes on to discuss his foundation’s focus on making great teachers: “Even though I was a college dropout, I had great teachers.”

“How do you make education better? Having great teachers was the key… If the entire US had top quartile teachers, the entire difference between us and Asia would be gone in a year. It’s simple, all we need is the top quartile teachers.”

But how do you shift the culture of teaching to focus on improvement and to be data-driven? Well watch his 20-minute TED talk here:

Picturing Excess

It’s 3 am, and for some reason I cannot fall asleep. Well I suppose it has something to do with the month-long, action-packed, 8,000-mile, cross-country trip that I’m starting tomorrow… first to Sausalito for a BUILD work retreat.

As a parting gift, here’s a fascinating TED talk by artist Chris Jordan, who blends visual art with unimaginable statistics to uncover the excesses and truth in American culture.

1 million plastic cups are used on airline flights every 6 hours and virtually none of them are reused. What? Insane. I’ll definitely be using my travel mug on my flights.

Catch you all in July!