On my second day as a Yale freshman, I awoke with a slight hangover from the impromptu “Welcome Us” party our entryway threw the night before. I staggered into the common bathroom shared by the 3 rooms on my floor. My next-door neighbor Tod (pronounced ‘Todd’) was brushing his teeth. Another man was finishing a…
Last Friday I had some surgery to relieve the symptoms of Dupuytren’s contracture. My father had the same operation late in his life, too. It turns out to be a genetic condition afflicting primarily males of northern European descent. That means I have probably passed this along to my sons, and, less likely, to my…
Rt. 49 runs north and south along the west slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, at about 3000 feet elevation. Further east are serious mountains. To the west are foothills descending to California’s huge Central Valley. It was along this route where gold was discovered in 1848, triggering the Gold Rush and the…
I was recently introduced to the concept of a “Quake book” — a book that changed the way you looked at things in a profound and persistant way. As one blogger characterized his concept derived from a conversation between polymath Tyler Cowen and Ryan Holiday … Every once in a while, I stumble across something…
Simplification is a watchword for my 2016. When writing for customers, clients and even shareholders, I’ll keep George Orwell’s six simple guidelines for writers to follow, as specified in Politics and the English language: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use…
As we move Illumai from a luxury-fasion brand to a brand presenting consumers with a radically new cleansing technology and model, I’m learning more and more about the human microbiome. Our founder, Michael Zasloff, MD, PhD, has been studying the self-healing properties of skin for over 20 years, and a key element of Illumai’s benefit to…
