The Best Bill Gates Parodies Ever [Bill Gates Retirement Party]

via Gizmodo by Christopher Mascari on 6/25/08

So what does Bill Gates really have to show for his years of hard work? Sure he built a software empire, and yeah he has been known as the richest man alive. But those things aren't as cool as being immortalized on film and in song. Maybe. Either way, he's been cartooned, acted, clayed, and even sung about. So with Bill's retirement only days away, we thought it was only fitting we gave you a mash-up of all these green sweater, glasses wearin' characters.

If you didn't already guess which videos were used above, here's a list. There's The Simpsons, Celebrity Death Match, South Park, 2DTV, Freakazoid and of course Pirates of Silicon Valley.

What about the song you say? Well, it's by a group called, wait for it, Komputer. The song is titled, wait for it, "Bill Gates", and is the third track on their 1997 album The World of Tomorrow. If you can't seem to get the song out of your head, you can buy it on both iTunes and Amazon.com.

At the end of this week Bill Gates will leave his post at Microsoft, but his various TV and film characters will live on forever. Since Ballmer will be taking over, we can only hope that he gets the same treatment, cause a crazy-ass cartoon character of that guy would be hilarious.
Add vids we missed in the comments.
[Bill Gates' Retirement Party on Giz]

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Dog's Head Being Kept Alive via Machine [Science]

Spooky

via Gizmodo by Adam Frucci on 6/25/08

In the unsettling video found after the jump, Soviet scientists in the mid-20th century keep the severed head of a dog alive via an "autojector," a primitive heart and lung machine. The dog reacts to sounds, opens its eyes, eats, licks its lips, and generally looks alive. The video has been debated by experts for years, but now you can be the judge thanks to the wonders/horrors of the internet. So, what say you? Is this poor pooch surviving sans body, or is another Ruskie trick? Either way, I'm sure we can all agree on one thing: holy f'ing shit.

Yikes. To make you feel better, might I suggest revisiting the adorable bionic puppy? [Environmental Graffiti via io9]

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Giz Explains: How the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Will Save the World ...

via Gizmodo by matt buchanan on 6/25/08

Bill Gates is officially "transitioning" from Microsoft this week, but really, he checked out a long time ago. His Big Hairy Vision isn't just modernizing the world anymore—it's saving it. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the world's largest charitable foundation, with a current asset trust endowment of $37.3 billion. Last year, it gave away $2 billion. Its work is divided into three major programs: Global Development, Global Health and United States. It's not your average charity though—and not just because two of its three trustees, Bill and Warren (no last names needed) constantly jockey for the title of world's richest man. It's the smartest. And that's why it just might succeed.

Let's start with the goals of each program. The Global Health program is, no surprise, all about fighting disease, in two ways. One, making vaccines and medicine more readily available. Two, good ol' R&D to develop new vaccines—vaccine development and access takes up half of the Global Health program's money—plus treatments and other higher-tech solutions, the stuff that actually gets Bill excited now.

Global Development has three prongs, with the overarching mission of attacking poverty and hunger: Providing financial aid, spreading internet access as wide as possible, and helping small farmers with crop production and getting food to market.

The U.S. program is all about education, like its $1.37 billion grant to the United Negro College Fund via the Gates Millennium Scholars Program.

The foundation's goals don't sound so much different from anyone else's—they're big, lofty and impossible. What's so brilliant? They're not charging at the world's problems scattering its massive war chest around willy-nilly. They invest in solutions. Take access to clean water (or the lack thereof). The Seattle PI notes in a piece today that the foundation has spent years looking at the problem, but has yet to pump money into a major water project, because simply building pipes won't really crack at the root problem. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, director of the Global Development Program, says in the article that "what we look for is the project has to be scalable, sustainable and catalytic." (Its hardcore focus on vaccines makes total sense from this angle.)

In other words, it plants tons of little techno-seeds and showers them with love and money until they grow to be totally independent and self-sustaining, and doesn't waste its largesse on stuff that's a temporary fix. To keep up the plant metaphor, rather than hoping to grow a single, giant tree of awesome that stretches over all the problems they're trying to fix, they're planting a ton of little, carefully planned and managed trees to make a, um, forest of awesome. It's an approach borrowed from drug companies, which invest in lotsa different drugs simultaneously, not just one miracle drug at a time.

Not that they're cheap—in his person of the year story, Time says that the Gates spent 2005 "giving more money away faster than anyone ever has," It's just that every penny of it is invested with the same sharpness Bill applied to Microsoft in its golden days, so each one works as hard as possible, like the $1.5 billion grant for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

Above and beyond all of that, Bill's philanthropy is nudging other people to chip in. Most famously, Warren Buffet is giving most of his fortune to the Foundation because he believes in its goals and smart, practicable approach to charity. As long as Bill's got the passion—like he did for Microsoft in his past life—then yeah, he just might save the world.

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Build Your Own iPhone Anti-Interference Shield With a Can of Red Bull [DIY]

Awesome!.

via Gizmodo by Sean Fallon on 6/25/08

One of the things that irritates me about iPhone ownership is how my computer speakers buzz whenever the phone gets too close. It wouldn't be that big of a deal except for the fact that my desk is the most logical place to charge my phone. Fortunately, someone has come up with a simple MacGyver-esque solution to this problem using nothing more than a Red Bull can and some double stick tape. The creator warns that it could interfere with your reception, but it shouldn't pose much of a problem. Besides, your desk is probably littered with empty soda cans as it is. Hit the link for the full set of instructions. [Project Page]

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Zoomdoggle.com: Are We Having Fun Yet?

via Daily Bedpost by Em & Lo on 6/25/08

Jake Bronstein once did us a solid by stripping down to his birthday suit, donning a French maid's apron, and serving cocktails at Em's bachelorette party. He didn't know us (he was a friend of a friend), but he's the kind of guy who'll try just about anything for a laugh. So it's no surprise his new project, Zoomdoggle.com, is all about the pursuit of fun for fun's sake.

On the homepage there's the suggestion of adding a "B" and an "R" to the beginning and end, respectively, of the word ONE on a dollar bill. Zoomdoggle's sex writer submits himself to weekly Truth or Dare challenges from readers. And Jake does all sorts of scheming, like getting an average Joe a date with a model and trying to manufacture missed connections. One "doggler" even dressed up as a semi-naked Indian and tried to ambush the Naked Cowboy in Times Square.

Good times, good times.

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Christen Clifford's BabyLove

Sad but true

via Daily Bedpost by Em & Lo on 6/24/08

Photo: Kristin Hoebermann

Before Christen Clifford started talking dirty about her parents' sex life, she was getting everyone's knickers in a twist by talking dirty about being a parent. Yeah, she said "mother" and "sex" in the same sentence. Call the family values brigade! Her show BabyLove is currently Off-Broaday; it's showing Tuesdays and Sundays at 45 Bleecker until July 27. If you're outside NYC, you can catch her musings on the topic at her blog, where she took part in Babeland's Sexy Mama Blog project.

Em & Lo: So tell us about your show...

Christen Clifford: BabyLove is a solo comedy about maternal sexuality: everything from trying to conceive to masturbating while breastfeeding; from the humiliations of postpartum sex to the eroticism of parenthood.

What made you want to write about this topic?

After I had my son Felix, I was confused about my body, my relationship with my husband, and the intimacy I shared with my newborn son. My sexuality was so changed by motherhood. I'm a reader and writer, so I turned to books and didn't find women's sexual experience addressed to my satisfaction.

Why do you think people get so het up about motherhood and sexuality in the same sentence?

Power. The power of procreation and the power of sexuality combined is a pretty strong bomb. Maybe that's why I love being pregnant so much...because I feel truly strong and powerful and creative. I also think that our society is so sexually permissive in so many ways, but still so Puritan. Breasts can be seen on billboards but not in an advertisement for breastfeeding. That's what they are for!

Has the reaction to the show changed now that you're Off-Broadway--are your audiences more easily shocked now than your early downtown-NYC audiences?

I do get more conservative audiences who are shocked by how explicit the show is--but it's not explicitness for its own sake, it's explicit in an attempt to portray sexuality honestly. I do my best to win them over and I usually succeed. I try to set myself up as the extreme example that I hope most people can find a sliver of their own experience in. And everything I talk about in this show is true, and I think audiences, no matter what their background, relate to someone telling the truth.

What's been the most negative reaction to this show?

The most negative reaction was actually when it was published on Nerve.com, some readers wrote in that I should have my son taken away from me, that Protective Services should be called, that my husband should divorce me and get full custody...it was very scary and hurtful and I didn't sleep for days...because I wrote about the intimate physical relationship with my son.

But I get so many more people who say things like, "Thank you for telling it like it is! " or "Now I don't feel so alone and crazy anymore." One woman wrote to me and said that she and husband stayed up all night talking after seeing the show, that they were finally able to talk about how becoming parents had affected their sex life after seeing BabyLove. And they were able to laugh at me and therefore at themselves--I was so moved by this, it really made me feel like I was doing good in the world!

Can you share the story about getting interrupted by the FedEx guy while masturbating...

 Let's just say it proved to me that motherhood and sex didn't go together. [Ed: You can get the unabridged version here.]

 So...what was that you were saying about the eroticism of breastfeeding...

Well, this amazing little being came out of my body and was now eating my body. The fat from my thighs was literally transferring to his thighs. Breastfeeding was the most physically intimate experience I ever had. Plus, it's physics--that small mouth has a lot of suction! It's pleasurable; there is a biological imperative for us to keep the species going.

You say that you found your first pregnancy a super-sexy experience but afterward struggled a bit...so what's the secret to sex after kids?

Oh God, I don't have any answers, it's different for everyone.  Humor. Time. Marriage counseling. Scheduled sex.  Talking. I'm doing my best to not sweat the small stuff, as they say--which is particularly hard when I'm clearly right about everything all the time.

You're pregnant again, right? Has it been the same with this pregnancy? Or is pregnant sex not quite the same when you've already got one kid around?

Yes, I'm in my second trimester (the horny trimester!) and we're putting our son to bed later so we can have alone time in the morning. I'm one of those women who loves being pregnant. The hormones agree with me, I love my changed body, the bigger breasts, all that extra blood flowing. I feel very womanly. And there's a sense of my sexuality being respected and socially sanctioned, which is a strange feeling...it's kind of like having a big hickey that everybody's okay with.

For more information, visit BabyLovethePlay.com.

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