It’s Vaudeville I’m talking about. How about you? Vaudeville was where tomorrow’s stars teethed. Wikipedia says it’s “a mixture of specialty acts such as burlesque comedy and song and dance” to which I’ll add, mostly on a live stage. What better way to hone one’s skills than playing every different weekend at a different town. A hard life no doubt, but one that I’ve always wanted to experience. Nowadays, it is no film rather than the live stage, and storytelling with “spec...

IT’S hard to comment about about something that appears like “ghost” marketing (marketing an “unavailable” product), though this new approach to seems to be popping up more and more these days. You know the basic story: A product or service fails “due to COVID,” and whether the failing is real or not, public response results in a rush of demand, creating a sales boom, often with the product being offered at higher price. Clever, if, in fact, it’s all true. But whether true or ...

BLOODSPORT is the term for events of spectacle involving violence to the point of bloodletting. While violence and bloodletting are probably as old as humanity, they are said to have became a spectacle with the ancient pre-Roman Etruscans in or around 600 BCE — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi7673 and http://thespectaclesofapuleius.weebly.com/gladiatorial-combats.html#.YrSwcy-B3Fc — and later the Greek Olympics begun in 770 BCE — https://olympics.com/ioc/faq/history-and-or...

NOW there’s an interesting, amazingly paradoxical word (I nearly wrote “world,” thank you, Dr. Freud for that Freudian slip). To say someone is “in-sane” would logically be the opposite of saying he or she is “insane.” But what is sanity, and who’s to say what it actually means. The online Oxford Languages dictionary defines sanity as “the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner,” the key words being “normal” and “rational.” Think for a moment a...

WHAT’S the difference between Chow Mein and Chop Suey? Gotcha there, didn’t I? So, in my world:

According to TheSpruceEats, Chow Mein, (in Mandarin “ch’ao mien” which means “stir-fried noodles”) is the more authentic of the two, having originated in Northern China. If it doesn’t contain something stir-fried along with boiled noodles, it’s not Chow Mein — https://www.thespruceeats.com/chop-suey-and-chow-mein-4077054. “Chow mein is an established recipe where noodles are ...

YES, that’s an intended paraphrase of the adage, “What are little boys made of? What are little boys made of? Snips, snails And puppy-dogs’ tails That’s what little boys are made of” In case you’re wondering, other stanzas concern girls, babies, young men, young women, sailors, soldiers, nurses, fathers, mothers, old men, old women, and all folks are made of [sic]. But, hey, while the world waxes non-binary, I still catch myself thinking in terms of male and female. Forgive me. It...

ACCORDING to Wikipedia, the common European adder or common viper, is a venomous snake that is extremely widespread and can be found throughout most of central and eastern Europe and as far as East Asia, so you can see that we’re not talking mathematics here. What we’re talking is talk. Conversation. Discussion. Dialog. Debate. In short, viperous praddle, intentionally so.

I’m not talking propaganda or prepared speeches, public or private. I’m talking more of intentional gossip that ...

HAVING posted yesterday on the “solution” to a cupboard-“bare” market, in the process suggesting that the “market” and by extension, our economy (at least from a “market” perspective) is run by gamblers, I’ve come to wonder who’s in charge of it all: the economy, government, the world? Or is there no one at all sitting in the drivers seat?

I’ve always held that the key to anything human, is balance and qualified cooperation. The framers of our Constitution called it “...

THIS past month, the biggest issue for me as a “fixed income consumer,” has been inflation and mal-distribution. In today’s news there was a suggestion that the “solution” is to invest more in the stock market. Personally, I’m not inclined to such. Let me explain:

The “market” (meaning “Stock Market”), in my opinion, is becoming frenzied and chaotic, having enjoyed and recently exited an unparalleled Bull market, now entering “Bear” market territory, a cutesy way of s...

IN a recent BBC News article, Google engineer Blake Lemoine is stated to have claimed that one of the firm’s artificial intelligence (AI) systems called Lamba might have its own feelings and says its “wants” should be respected — https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61784011 — which seems to have created quite a buzz. Mr Lemoine published a conversation he and a collaborator at the firm had with Lamda, to support his claims.

Brian Gabriel, a spokesperson for the firm, wrote in a sta...

YESTERDAY, I received some exciting good news! I’m posting today as Daniel S. Janik, the actor, rather than my usual Raymond Gaynor, author, though we’re one and the same. I’m looking forward to appearing in the upcoming K. Simmons Production, six-part, made-for-television series FINDING KATE. I’ll be appearing in Episode One as myself with a possible short speaking role in a later episode. But what’s particularly exciting for me is that Setsuko Tsuchiya, my performance and competit...

EVERYONE has a few. It’s the part of life where we sometimes regret, but almost always learn from our mistakes. But in tune with the last couple days’ posts, I’m talking about something the same yet totally different: Regrettable experiences with AIs. Anything from wanting to strangle the voice-to-text AI inside a cell phone, to being angry well beyond normal with the computerized car or home system that simply refuses to budge, to the mobile bank AI that refuses to recognize you, to �...

YESTERDAY, I posted about THE “GHOST” WITHIN THE GHOST, that is, artificial intelligence (AI) slowly penetrating everything we think of as “real.” Today, I’d like to talk about the ghost that is even now supersonically self-developing within AI. Ultimately this question comes down to can AI create and implement its own programs?

According to STXNext, Microsoft and Cambridge University researchers have developed artificial intelligence that can write code and called it DeepCoder. Th...

IN my Amazon-genre-bestseller, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor — https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859, now available in printed, digital and “free” audiobook format, I describe an encounter between the male and female protagonists in which one, while going to work, sends a “proxy self” to the other who has just awakened back at their domicile. Eh? What’s a “proxy self” you ask? Think of sending a loved one a greeting card, greeting message by phone, or text...

I’M increasingly confronted these days with the presented need to either “believe/accept” or “not believe/reject” things (and, of course, to “show” my commitment by committing money). As a university-trained individual, I “know” that the “either-or” scenario is one of many Logical Fallacies. Still, I’m human and sometimes catch myself falling for this all-too-easy fallacy. It’s so much easier when things are black and white, rather than all shades of color including ...

THERE seems to me to be four big factors suddenly at interplay with regard to food these days. First, however, it’s important to place this post within context: People all over the world are suddenly experiencing pre-war instability and uncertainness. Those who lived through WWII (and they are a rapidly dwindling minority) often say our contemporary world “feels” just like pre-World War II but “on steroids.” In the meantime, the world’s population continues a 45-degree growth curv...