I'm pretty sure I first encountered the chef obsession with cutting tape from the phenomenal cover letter that David Zilber sent to Noma back in 2014. (The hutzpah of his letter got him an interview and later a job at one of the best restaurants in the world, and he would go on to set …
Core Values Redux: Adventure
This post is part of an ongoing challenge to go through James Clear's list of Core Values and take a week to reflect on each one. This actually marks the fourth time that I've written about Adventure is some form. I first mentioned how it is interestingly tied to January 14th and India, when I …

Googrilla Warfare
At the beginning of the year, I decided to turn my lethargy around and get back in shape. I used some of the habit tips I had picked up and added Dry January as the fuel to get my started. To date, I have continued my initial successes and gone to the gym at least …
Core Values Redux: Achievement
This post is part of an ongoing challenge to go through James Clear's list of Core Values and take a week to reflect on each one. I feel like this has been high on the Core Values for me most of my life. As a kid, I was good at certain things and was praised …
How to Make a Negroni: Thoughts on our relationship with technology
One of the two times I have forgotten my phone in the last decade, I was at a bar and ordered a negroni. The bartender wasn't sure how to make one (surely a sign I should have gone to another bar), and I couldn't look it up. I had looked it up many times before, …
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Core Values Redux: A 57-week meditation exercise
I am no stranger to writing about Core Values on this blog. Back during my 30 Days of Blogging Challenge, I wrote about how I went through James Clear's list of Core Values, ultimately coming up with a list of five that were either very important in my life or that I wanted to increase …
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February 2022 – Progress Update
This is the third in a series of two other posts about trying to make some changes in my life as we changed over into 2022. While the first talked about how I think about habits and the second described one of the tools I was using, Dry January, this last one is about some …

Dry January
I previously wrote about trying to get back on track starting in 2022, and one of the tools that I used seems to have become quite popular over the last few years: Dry January. While there are people every year that decide to forgo alcohol in the month after the holidays, I imagine that the …
Habits as stretching
As with most of the world, I hoped and sought to turn things around as we moved into 2022. The last few years have been...well unlike any that most of us living have ever experienced. I know that many have been much more profoundly impacted by the pandemic in emotional, psychological, and personal ways than …
Bad Blood, Elizabeth Holmes, and Why Biology Is Harder Than Silicon Valley Thinks
I can't remember when I first heard about Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, but there rarely goes by a month when I haven't thought about them since. I'm not alone: the tale has gripped many and been spun into a book, a documentary, and at least two podcasts. Although, having spent the better part …
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