WordPress suggests writing timeless and accessible content here. Timeless? On a blog?  To paraphrase John Donne: To-morrow what will I say? Will I say that now I am not just that person which I was?

I will say that my brain works best when it’s connecting things à la James Burke. A recent example: how performance artist Ze Frank connects to the economic concept of Opportunity Cost through marshmallows.

Ze Frank’s FILDI (feed it oranges) is a characteristic we have since childhood  – have an opportunity, act on it. In the Stanford delayed-gratification studies, children (feed them marshmallows) were observed on their ability to master their FILDI. The ability to delay gratification presumes a capacity (even an unconscious one) to consider the opportunity cost of taking one action vs. another. Taking us back to the FILDI’s lets’ do it. 

Is it odd? Sure. But in my UI/UX designs, I’ve used weather infographic sites to inform designs on accounts receivable dashboards, subway delay diagrams based on social media check-in data for ideas on a network operations monitor, and quest-type games as inspiration for a truly patient-friendly scheduling and financial clearance process. Following these connections affords a different perspective than jumping too quickly to a solution.

Speaking of connections, what connects this blog’s name to me? Years back when voice recognition software was new, a coworker testing a program for medical transcription trained it by reading off random emails from his inbox. My name came out as ‘melon knees’. Being older now, I seem to have grown into it.