De I+D con_Don Bill Gates...

Bill Gates is trying to improve sex.

Through the Grand Challenges grant program, Bill and his wife Melinda's foundation is offering up $100K to whichever researcher can propose the best new condom. But not just some over-hyped sheath rendered with whatever newfangled take on bubble wrap the brands are hawking nowadays. No, the grand rallying question is right there, on the foundation's website: "What if we could develop [a condom] that was preferred to no condom?" A condom that makes sex — all sex — better. 

Despite what seems like cause for mutual excitement and celebration — better sex, everyone! — some misanthropes, as the wonderful Amanda Hess has pointed out, have opted to instead sneer, "Creeps: You don't have to try to convince your partner that the pull-out method works just as good anymore!" Or open their argument about how "as a product, the condom is almost exclusively great," with the line, "Men are idiots." 

We're well aware true gentlemen do not populate every bedroom. But this doesn't apply only to scum. This is about pleasure and safety — for everyone involved. As our sex columnist Stacey Grenrock Woods wrote in 2009 (and it remains true), "Condoms, no matter how they boast, aren't for anyone's pleasure, only the prevention of pain." And all the self-purported innovating brands have failed to master the appropriate anatomy.  (Más)