"Each week the editors of Slate, one of the first and best on-line literary magazines, ask a different person to keep a diary. The Slate Diaries is a selection of some of the best of those diaries."

Bill Gates is more than the world's most successful capitalist; he's also the world's biggest philanthropist.

Gates has approached philanthropy the same way he revolutionized computer software: with a fierce ambition to change the rules of the game. That's why at the 2008 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates advocated a creative capitalism in which big corporations, the distinguishing feature of the modern global economy, integrate doing good into their way of doing business.

This controversial new idea is discussed and debated by the more...