July 31st, 2023 Mark O'Brien
In 2013, the United Nations published a paper called, Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security. Since then, as climate-change hysteria has escalated and people have started talking, writing, and worrying about things like cow farts, meatless diets, and how climate change would kill cows, pigs, and sheep anyway, even if they didn’t […]
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July 24th, 2023 Mark O'Brien
I received an email last week. I don’t imagine I was its sole recipient. It was from Quest Diagnostics. The subject line was, “Last chance to shop our summer sale.” Summer sale? Wait! Medical testing is now a retail operation? Yep. The body of the email said this: Our summer sale ends soon. Regular testing […]
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July 17th, 2023 Mark O'Brien
On last week’s Friendship Bench, Eric Zabiegalski led us in a fascinating exploration of what it means to — as is the title of his book — Unthink. During the conversation, Eric mentioned Iain McGilchrist’s notion of betweenness; that is, McGilchrist’s contention that we need to live between the increasingly over-dominant left hemispheres of our […]
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July 10th, 2023 Mark O'Brien
On Thursday, June 14th of this year, I attended the CBIA 2023 Energy & Environment Conference. The EPA, Connecticut’s Department of Energy, NGOs, public utilities, law firms, environmental consulting firms, and other private enterprises were represented. Four themes were prevalent throughout: Green (without being defined) is good. Fossil fuels (without being defined) are bad. The […]
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July 3rd, 2023 Mark O'Brien
Your friend and mine, Dennis Pitocco, sent me this photo of a watering hole near where he and his wife, Ali, live in Tampa, Florida: People who think Irish pubs and grills are a dime a dozen are most likely correct. But they probably don’t know why there are so many or why they’re called […]
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June 26th, 2023 Mark O'Brien
I read a press release the other day saying W.C. Fields had been appointed President Biden’s Chief of Staff. When asked what his specific advice was for the President, Mr. Fields said, “Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.” As it turns out, that seems to have been translated into […]
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June 19th, 2023 Mark O'Brien
Why don’t people just call me? I’ll never understand. I wonder that quite often when something that would have been evident to a blindman wearing a blindfold is presented as something revelatory or epiphanic. The latest case in point is a piece from LinkedIn news called, “When office brainstorms go bust”. Here’s the gist: It […]
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June 15th, 2023 Mark O'Brien
A popular expression says, “Everybody’s got a story.” I’m luckier than most, I have many. This is a collection of them. It’s necessarily incomplete because I’m still on the planet. As long as that remains true, I’ll always have more stories. I hope you enjoy these. CLICK HERE TO GRAB YOUR PERSONAL COPY Originally Published […]
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June 12th, 2023 Mark O'Brien
In the Friendship Bench conversation that took place on Thursday, June 1st, JoAnna Baanana and Kamla Dasrath facilitated an engaging discussion of astrology. During the session, Roger Martin asked how it was that the placement of the sun, the moon, and other celestial bodies at the moments of our births could influence the human beings […]
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June 5th, 2023 Mark O'Brien
Author’s Note: In digging through my archives recently, as I recounted here, I came across another piece I’d written many moons ago. My sons were born in 1983 and 1986, respectively. The elder was going to basketball camp every summer, starting at age nine. The younger started playing soccer before the age of nine and […]
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