So, when did Bill Gates get so active? My Kabbalah teacher from my "Rules of Engagement" class -- AKA: Spiritual tips to land a man for Bridgett Jones-like females -- says (more as a matter of personal opinion than Kabbalistic teaching) that it's Melinda behind the shift. Women are more in touch with the 99% reality -- the "real reality" of life, not just the illusion of the 1% we see everyday.

Maybe. It looks like Bono had something to do with it too, though. I found this article in Time Magazine, December 26, 2005


He's changing the world twice," says Bono of Bill. "And the second act for Bill Gates may be the one that history regards more."

For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are TIME's Persons of the Year.

And now here's what I love about Bono -- He has the passion. He has the facts. He has the ambition. He makes big things happen even in the face of no agreement -- Gates almost declined the meeting. Here's an excerpt from the Time article:

"World health is immensely complicated," says Gates, recalling that first encounter in 2002. "It doesn't really boil down to a 'Let's be nice' analysis. So I thought a meeting wouldn't be all that valuable."

It took about three minutes with Bono for Gates to change his mind. Bill and his wife Melinda, another computer nerd turned poverty warrior, love facts and data with a tenderness most people reserve for their children, and Bono was hurling metrics across the table as fast as they could keep up. "He was every bit the geek that we are," says Gates Foundation chief Patty Stonesifer, who helped broker that first summit. "He just happens to be a geek who is a fantastic musician."

Makes me proud to be a geek!