two profiles worth a read

Here's a rather belated profile on chef Homaro Cantu, founder of the now-defunct Moto in Chicago's meat-packing district. Cantu was a ferocious innovator in love with molecular gastronomy and the use of science in food tech to try to solve global problems like world hunger. I used to watch his show, "Future Food" (which also featured his faithful sidekick Ben Roche), with fascination. Alas, Cantu committed suicide by hanging himself back in April of 2015, possibly because of financial pressure. I was saddened at the news of his death, but for what it's worth, many clips of Cantu are available on YouTube. Here's one showing him making "cigar sandwiches."

And here's a Time Magazine article (I know, I know—MSM) on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, currently a transformative figure in the Middle East who seems, at least, to be embracing a vision of modernity that might lift Saudi Arabia out of a seventh-century mentality and place it on the road to becoming a global economic power that relies less on oil production and more on technological innovation. Salman has given women the right to drive—and to drive unaccompanied by a male chaperone, already a radical change for the women of that country. Time's article is right to note, however, that Salman is still a dangerous autocrat who locks up journalists and other critics at will, so it's difficult to know the extent to which one can trust the man.