Clippings

The Doctor is in...in the future

Fast Company demonstrates an unexpected benefit of the Affordable Care Act—as primary care physicians begin to see more patients and respond to the need to emphasize well being and deemphasize fee-for-service treatment, they will have to reimagine their offices. ("Doctors will need to start thinking like merchants and in terms of squeezing profitability out of every square foot. As architects and designers who view "space" as a tool to solve problems and make life better and more interesting, we reimagined the doctor's office as a cross between a vibrant retail space and serious medical office building") The illustrations that accompany this article are stunning; the ideas generated are brilliant. On one hand I'm disappointed that my concept of medical care is rooted so firmly in current practice; on the other I can't wait for ideas like this to be realized.

A Tasty (?) Conjunction

I saw this Karl Middlebrooks piece on durian at Medium yesterday, The Cake That Should Not Be. His discussion of the fruit was not exactly tempting.

Everything I’ve heard about this fruit is that it smells awful. So awful, in fact, that in some places in Southeast Asia, you can’t bring them on public transportation or into restaurants and bars.

Still, people eat it. I was surprised to see a confirming piece in The New York Times today, A Love Letter to a Smelly Fruit. The accompanying video is too good to miss.

I Iove that Thomas Fuller compares the breeding of durian fruit to the breeding of flavorless hothouse tomatoes, and that he convincingly manages to work a William Blake quotation into an appreciation of a fruit that still seems unattractive to me: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.