Japanese-born American actress Sakura Kai (aka Setsuko Tsuchiya), co-starring in OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two” for “On The Other Side Of The Universe”), received her FIFTH “Best Actress” award for her multiple roles as lead actress in the JET Progress production of the film, WINNOWING. She has been awarded “Best Actress” by the Stockholm Short Fest, International Film Festival of Saudi Arabia, Keezhadi International Film Festival, Washington Film Awards and Seattle Filmm...

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IT’S my pleasure to introduce the first and newest cast member of OTOSOTU (pronounced “Oh-Toe-So-Two” for “On The Other Side Of The Universe”), JET Progress’ newest film currently in post-production with a mid to late 2024 anticipated release date. OTOSOTU is a science futuring (Sci-Fu) film about the nature of the human soul. Pam Hoffman will be the official Voice of the Imperax Galactic.

Voice acting isn’t new to Pam, having played the voice of Odee, the BG Oil Drop, and provid...

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CALL me weird, but working on adding captions to the JET Progress production of WINNOWING -- https://winnowing.yolasite.com, currently in post-production with an anticipated late 2023/early2024 release, a mental picture actually did pop into my mind of living one's life with closed captions floating just above or below each person's image. Shades of Jim Carrey in THE TRUMAN SHOW! 

Actually, working on captioning for WINNOWING has been another education: First, I've often wondered watching mo...

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SUBSCRIPTIONS are clearly the way the business of humanities is going. I say business, because thus far business has penetrated almost every aspect of our lives. I recall watching business invade medicine when I was in practice, attempting to turn my love of helping others to love of money. Later, I watched the same happen in education, culminating in the private “for profit” colleges and universities, where the love of truth, knowledge and wisdom languished secondary to love of money. I ...

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IT’S my pleasure to announce that I’ve finally accumulated the third SAG/AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) Union Talent Voucher required to graduate from non-union to union actor. Qualifying to join SAG/AFTRA is an important stepping stone in the life of an actor, whether one chooses to exercise the right or not. For me, it represents yet another step in my acting career.

What it’s supposed to represent is recognized acting experience a...

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THAT pivotal question comes in many forms throughout one’s life, like, “Why should I vote for so-and-so?” or “What starting pay do you want?” or “Should I join the military?” or “Is this a good person to date?” or “Isn’t it okay to simply pay myself more?” or “Should I accept the bribe?” It all gets down to how much one believes he or she deserves. Unfortunately, while a specific answer isn’t always simple. the general one, in my opinion, fortunately is, which re...

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LIVING in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, is like living in a suspended, sunny California day forever. At least until tomorrow, when the weatherfolk are predicting a strong bout of cold, thunderstorms, lightening, thunder, torrential rain and even icy hail, the latter God(dess) forbid. I’m trying to imagine icy roads in Honolulu, if only from momentarily road-coating hail. Actually, I can’t imagine it. The nearest thing is snow on the top of the world’s tallest volcano, Mauna Kea, or the unusual...

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WITH all the new discoveries being made as astronomers and cosmologists work together in conjunction with the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, we keep creeping closer, day by day to answering the supreme questions surrounding what our universe is all about, and what came before it. Personally, I love astronomy, and like Gregory Ranlin in William Maltese’s books/screenplays FLICKER 1 — https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984555242 — and FLICKER 2 — https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693875 �...

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AUTHORS like me, Daniel Janik (aka Raymond Gaynor/Gary Martine), used to call them our “readers” in a respectful voice. ACTORS like me, Daniel S. Janik, used to call them our “fans,” treating every fan like royalty with appreciation. POLITICIANS, BUSINESSPERSONS, ADVERTISERS and INFLUENCERS typically call them or at least regard them as minions, with a decidedly derogatory tone, and, unfortunately, that attitude is spreading from business to everything business touches these days. In ...

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PROMISED by Reds and Blues alike for decades, but especially after the COVID “shot across the bow,” updating our nation’s infrastructures has been much hooted, but barely addressed issue that is now beginning to impact all citizens more and more.

Take the internet, for example. The key to doing business in the future is a necessary shift from “in-person crowd sales” at brick and mortar stores, to “individual service via distance online” stores. The problem: the internet. What u...

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HEARD of or experienced Pishing? Or the latest; what I call “swishing” in emailing? I recently was informed that my email had been “hacked,” but following up on this, I discovered someone with an entirely different email address simply had put my name on it their email. And, of course, this was supposedly accompanied by all sorts of nefariousness from within the account, much of it, I suspect phishing. The point is, as unethical, often criminal activity spreads within the email world,...

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I’VE always felt reasonably safe and secure pretty much everywhere I’ve travelled within the USA (avoiding big cities). At least until recently. I’m not feeling so safe and secure these days with the increasingly lax gun laws, especially those that allow carrying a concealed weapon. Having grown up in Alaska when it was still a young, wild territory, I wasn’t unaccustomed to seeing people in town “carryin’,” even having witnessed a shootout once. Strangely, knowing that people w...

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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 ...

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I’VE had the unique experience of watching America transform from a nation of creative manufacturers and traders into a nation ruled almost entirely by business — an industry that neither creates nor produces, bent almost wholly on “making money” typically through management. I watched with horror the businessification, sometimes commercialization, of health care, then food production, then technology, then education, then transportation, now politics. What’s left from which to “t...

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JUSTICE is often portrayed as blindfolded, holding a sword and presumably emotionally detached. Today I would like to conclude my three posts on adjudicating justice with a brief reminder about two of what I consider two of the most important but often ignored aspects of justice: mercy and grace.

According to dictionary.com, grace encompasses courteous goodwill, neither asked for nor deserved, but freely given. Grace is often, in my experience, meted out equally blindfolded. Mercy is compass...

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AS promised, today’s post follows on yesterdays. Talk is cheap as some would point out; action is something else altogether. Still, both come together in Plato’s famous (or infamous) REPUBLIC depending on your point of view. The 10-book “series” is is a Socratic dialogue, on justice, the just city-state, and the just human. According to Wikipedia, Socrates talks with various Athenians and foreigners about the meaning of justice and whether a just man is happier than an unjust one. In ...

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JUSTICE “is a concept on ethics and law that means that people behave in a way that is fair, equal and balanced for everyone,” according to simple.wikipedia.org. On the other hand, legally, justice can be be equally defined as, “n. 1) fairness. 2) moral rightness. 3) a scheme or system of law in which every person receives his/ her/its due from the system, including all rights, both natural and legal” according to Law.com, an online “legal dictionary”. The whole idea of justice ca...

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AT least for another day. Still, I see so many commonalities with the 1938 Nazi Anschluss Österreichs. The Communist Russian desire for re-unification seems based on Putin’s desire to re-incorporate as many Ukrainian “Russians” as possible into a “Greater Russia” reminiscent of the former USSR. Russian civil and military agents appear to be cultivating pro-unification feelings, while seeking to undermine the Ukrainian government. All that’s left is an attempted coup resulting in ...

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OKAY, cheap play on the word “weight,” which everyone seems to want to lose and “wait” which is what most people seem to be doing these days. The Big Question is, “Waiting for what?”

The sense of waiting all one’s life and the Big Question aren’t new. They’ve been haunting people for millennia, causing some of the greatest literary works the world has ever know. Still, there’s something about having to wait for one’s eventual demise that’s…demeaning? Antithetical? I...

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2021 saw continued pressure on publishers of books, and began a whole new era of similar pressure on filmmakers, and it all began with “self-publishing.” That’s not to blame, but simply a strong opinion, leading to an “ethos” of vanity self-publishing be it books or movies. I have always thought of COVID-19 in all it’s various iterations a “shot across the bow” of both. That is, with the loss of many support businesses, the “inflation” of prices coincident with a general d...

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DELIGHTFUL to fly! To soar in luxury above the clouds! To climb aboard and then exit in another part of the world! Gone are those days and what’s more, there’s no likelihood that airlines will ever “get it” and restore the level of excellence we used to know and expect, except for taking money quickly and efficiently, and creating new ways of not giving it back where deserved without a fight. Sorry to say this, but if there was ever an industry hopelessly wedded to “crowd sales” i...

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OR are we? Everyday now I hear, “The pandemic is over!” from another excited individual. Really? With the N. Y. Times reporting 98,00+ new cases and 1,216 reported COVID-related deaths in the USA yesterday, I can’t quite “grok” that the pandemic is over, hooray (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html). And with the World Health Organization reporting 527,295 new cases and close to 8,000 reported COVID-related deaths in the world yesterday, I’m not even sold o...

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RECOVERY is a nice, contemporary catch word, and I’m hearing it more and more these days in every aspect of life. But I fear that the word, re-covery, is being used in its meaning to re-cover [up] what hasn’t yet been fully addressed. Let me explain.

The Great Pandemic, in my opinion, was a shot across our bow, warning us that our current infrastructure system is already way beyond simple update and repair. In the broadest sense, we’ve been called to relook at and largely abandon our o...

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AH, perhaps you’re already wrestling with this title as a metaphor for writing or authorship? Nope. I am an author, but I mean the question quite literally. It’s a contemporary question up there with how come so many drivers ignore the speed limit on freeways, and how come things AI-digital increasingly seem to take more time and effort than human face-to-face? But I digress…

You must admit (if COVID hasn’t damaged your olfactory system) that many foods, but especially fruits, today ...

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I have a theory: Be it romance, love, gender, adventure, drama, science fiction, erotica or sex, t’s been wrapped up in literature and movies for a long time now in the form of gratuitous violence. Darkness, especially in the form of gratuitous violence or overall pessimism in science fiction, isn’t “necessary.” Cities, if they will exist in the future, don’t necessarily have to be foreboding, constantly raining and filled with violent characters. Depending on detailed gratuitous vi...

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WITH all the recurring reports of excessive police violence in the news, I find myself wondering what can possibly be done about it. Awareness of its existence and effects of violence on both the victim and the public are, of course, a first step, given that not all victims are purely innocent, and all police officers aren’t willing perpetrators of violence. But awareness isn’t enough, especially in the field, in the heat of a life-threatening situation quite possibly requiring lethal for...

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RECOGNIZE the refrain from Disney’s version of Lewis Carroll’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND? Actually, in the novel, the White Rabbit said, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” which, I believe, should be the cry of contemporary America and the world.

My newly released Science Future novel, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor, is actually the sequel to the decidedly naughty gay novel, TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2009) by Raymond Gaynor and William Maltese, in which the ...

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It's easy to lose the big picture in the throes of birth, and that, I believe is what's happening to health care reform.  I don't usually wax politic but this situation screams out in need. 

As an educator and physician, I believe we desperately need health care reform, though not, perhaps in the way that we're intent on pursuing it.  You see, there are several "big pictures" that have been lost that are absolutely essential for health care reform to really happen.  The first is to realize, a...
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I'm often asked where in the great scheme of things educational I think our current American system of education falls.  On the surface it seems like an easy question that begs a simple "rank" answer.  Think about it awhile, however, and both the question and any answer that might result become complexly rank.  As an academician, I value clearity, completeness and conciseness, in that order, so, I have decided to take on this "simple" question as the topic of today's entry. 

Hold your nose!  ...
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