In a Financial Times article today, Unilever CEO Paul Polman said this, about how he's reshaping his company:

“If there’s a lot of wind, even the turkeys can fly. If there’s no wind, only the eagle can fly. I know what I want to be.”

A windbag, who makes his own.

Nelson Algren wrote short stories and two great novels set in the 1930s and 1940s in the Chicago neighborhood that I live in. The Man With the Golden Arm is the most famous of the novels.

But how has it taken me so long to read Never Come Morning, which contains passages like this description of his young, poor 17-year-old protagonist, Bruno "Lefty" Bicek:

If you read anything better than that today pass it along.

I imagine Bill Gates is frustrated. He's one of the richest people in the world, but he doesn't have what he needs to solve AIDS and malaria in Africa single-handedly. He needs to recruit some of the other rich people he hangs out with, all of whom no doubt think it's great what you're doing in Africa, Bill.

He knows if he could unglaze some of those eyeballs, he could solve the problem.

And now the economy's going to shit, and it's harder than ever to get people to focus on something that's happening to poor people across an ocean.

So while speaking today to an elite audience at the exclusive TED conference in California, Gates unscrewed the lid off a glass bottle and said, "Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. I brought some. Here, let them roam
around. There is no reason only  poor people should be infected."

According to an account on USA Today's blog, "While he quickly reassured the group they were not carrying the
disease … the organizer of the conference said it
was an 'amazing moment' that provided the crowd with 'food for thought.'"

The last time I had an "amazing moment" like that, they had to clean it up with a flat shovel.

Ballsy, Bill.