Gates sets TED a-buzzing (and a-swatting)

Bill Gates certainly knows how to get one's attention when he wants to. According to a FOX News report, he did so at the latest TED conference by unleashing a jar full of mosquitoes on the crowd.

At the tech conference to discuss the Gates Foundation's progress on efforts to halt malaria, Gates spoke for a bit, then grabbed a jar full of mosquitoes, which are the transmission vector for the debilitating disease. Saying, "Here, I'll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected," Gates opened the jar and shook out the flying insects, doubtless making those in the first few rows feel much less pleased with their seating picks than they had earlier in the day.

The Gates Foundation announced in September that it had awarded $168.7 million to the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which is working to inoculate at-risk populations against the disease. Those populations do not include the TED crowd; after letting them stew for a good minute, Gates announced that those particular mosquitoes in that particular jar were not malaria carriers.