August 7th, 2023
Mark O'Brien
I have a theory. Most of my theories are now buried, layers deep, in the Great Trash Heap of Failed Ideas. But this one seems to possess some merit, to have legs as we say in the marketing biz. Try it on: Ignorance breeds fear, which breeds hatred, which breeds abuse, violence, and sometimes death. […]
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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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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 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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May 29th, 2023
Mark O'Brien
As I’ve written previously, I have a very difficult time separating hate from ignorance. I take hate to be a subset or a symptom of ignorance. Ignorance can scale, of course. It can be as small as one Hibernophobe burning down my house. It can be as large as one power-mongering lunatic attempting to create […]
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May 22nd, 2023
Mark O'Brien
After seeing the phrase, toxic narcissism, for about the two-millionth time, I did a search on signs of a narcissist. Since the browser I use is Brave, and since Brave doesn’t use Google, I don’t know how many hits I got. But I did learn this: Depending on the source you choose, there are between […]
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