Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
1952 was the height of the hey day of the comics -- mostly horror and true crime, that the congressional investigations fueled by outrage stoked by Seduction of the Innocent -- that would soon shut down as the Comic Code Authority came to be and half of the comic publications vanished by 1956.
But here's some sweet jail breakers...
LOW POWER MODE: I sometimes put the blog in what I call LOW POWER MODE. If you see this note, the blog is operating like a sleeping computer, maintaining static memory, but making no new computations. If I am in low power mode, it's because I do not have time to do much that's inventive, original, or even substantive on the blog. This means I am posting straight shares, limited content posts, reprints, often something qualifying for the THAT ONE THING category and other easy to make posts to keep me daily. That's the deal. Thanks for reading.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1911.30 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1610 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
An anonymous reader shares a report:Astronomers think our home galaxy -- the Milky Way -- is practically bursting with black holes, with estimates of up to 100 million of the invisible beasts hiding across the galactic neighborhood. It was generally assumed these black holes could reach a mass of up to 20 times that of the sun, but the discovery of a "monster" black hole, with about 70 times the mass of the sun, has surprised Chinese astronomers. In a new study, published in the journal Nature on Nov. 27, a research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences peered across the galaxy with the Large sky Area Multi-Object fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (Lamost), based at Xinglong Observatory in China. Black holes don't emit light, so astronomers have to get crafty when they go hunting for them.
Usually, this involves looking for signs a black hole is feasting on a nearby star or the gas and dust that swirls around them. If the black hole isn't feasting and if it isn't surrounded by bright gas and dust, it becomes a little trickier to locate. But, using Lamost, the team examined the movement of stars across the sky, searching for those that seemed to be orbiting an invisible object. Follow-up observations with telescopes in Spain and the US helped the researchers discover a star about eight times bigger than the sun. Intriguingly, it was orbiting a "dark companion": The monster black hole, dubbed LB-1. "Black holes of such mass should not even exist in our galaxy, according to most of the current models of stellar evolution," said Liu Jifeng, astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of China and first author of the study, in a press release. "LB-1 is twice as massive as what we thought possible. Now theorists will have to take up the challenge of explaining its formation."
Space News - is Planet X a black hole? And those Russian rocket explosions... and more...
Planetary Radio gives you an hour-long podcast on solar system news!Especially glimpses of the weird and wonderful projects we’re funding at NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC). Plus a tribute to Alexei Leonov. Matt Kaplan is a terrific and engaging host…. and the projects truly are worth your tax dollars! (Well, most of them ;-)
Separately, at the recent Starship Conference in San Diego, Matt Kaplan, the Voice of the Planetary Society, interviewed me for Planetary Radio.
Need more Brin-blather about what might be going on out there? Let’s move out from the mere solar system. “Should we be revealing ourselves to the cosmos? What if the first aliens to discover us do so thanks to our own transmissions, and, more disturbingly, what if those aliens are less than benevolent?” On StarTalk All-Stars, astrobiologist and host David Grinspoon also tackles METI, or “Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” With co-host Chuck Nice, Dr. FunkySpoon invited David Brin, the Hugo award-winning science fiction author, scientist and NASA consultant who was on the committee that drew up the protocols for what to do if we do make contact with aliens.
You’ll learn why the “barn door excuse” – that we’ve already sent out radio and television transmissions that may have sealed our fate – is scientifically incorrect, but why new plans to send planetary radar focused beams into space would pump up the volume exponentially. We discuss whether the general public has the right to determine whether we broadcast our presence to the universe, or whether a “scientific elite” gets to decide humanity’s fate.
One proposed theory explaining the "Fermi Paradox" is that civilizations reach a "competence limit," especially if they do what elites always do in feudal-oligarchic-despotic societies -- crush the corrective light of criticism. Want a daunting example? Here's an interesting dissection of the kinds of "nuclear rocket that Russians may have been testing in Archangelsk, before that recent, horrific explosion. And yes, such desperation plus incompetence combinations are really scary.
A new paper suggests the gravitational pull that we’ve long associated with a missing Planet X could come from a primordial black hole – a type of small singularity that scientists have theorised formed during the Big Bang. "We advocate that rather than just looking for it in visible light, maybe look for it in gamma rays. Or cosmic rays." Or else maybe the distortion of background stars? Or Hawking Radiation? On average, the mysterious body is calculated to orbit the Sun 20 times farther than Neptune, every 10,000 to 20,000 years, versus Pluto's 248 years. Far-out!
Another possibility…. A wormhole gateway? For alien lurkers? Or waiting for us, as in the Expanse
More mundane (slightly.) Scientists have discovered what could be the largest neutron star on record. Starting at around 1.4 solar masses, more recent measurements have revealed increasingly huge examples. This one is estimated at 2.14x solar mass and 20 km across. Once a star reaches 2.17 times the mass of the sun, that star is doomed to collapse into a black hole. This suggests that J0740+6620 is "really pushing that" limit, providing an amazing laboratory for gravity radiation and stellar evolution, plus the possibility of something dramatic.
The second verified interstellar visitor object is more active than ‘Oumuamua. It’s cometary activity will be visible for months, allowing analysis of many elemental/chemical traits. Astronomers will attempt to compare C/2019 Q4's shape to the (arguably) cigar-like structure (or even odder) of 'Oumuamua, which looked different from anything we've yet seen in our solar system. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, expected to come online next year, should be able to spot large numbers of interstellar objects as they fly through our solar system.
The mass of the proposed superheavy gravitino lies in the region of the Planck mass—that is, around a hundred millionth of a kilogram. That’s immense. In comparison, protons and neutrons—the building blocks of the atomic nucleus—are around ten quintillion (ten million trillion) times lighter. Their large mass means that these particles could only occur in very dilute form in the universe – “one actually wouldn't need very many of them to explain the dark matter content in the universe and in our galaxy—one particle per 10,000 cubic kilometres would be sufficient.” This has another effect. It means these particles needn’t be invisible to EM interactions… they could interact with light and matter relatively normally and still not have been detected till now.
If so, interplanetary space contains them sparsely but everywhere. Might 4.6 billion years of collisions with Earth left ‘tracks’ in old rocks? (Much as my gravity laser beans do, in Earth?) Might these present obstacles to fast ships, and hence help to explain the Fermi Paradox?
And finally... Though almost desperately fluffy, the “In Search of” shows can be amusing and occasionally interesting. Here’s one about aliens where I go along…
Heh! NIAC has even funded some Mach Effect studies. I think just to keep a reputation for openmindedness that keeps the better minds hanging around.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1911.29 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1609 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1191 (SoD #1745) - "EAT ME" - Best Thanksgiving Song of all Time - HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2019!!
I am thankful for all of you, the world, the universe, massive black holes, pie, Paul Weller, teaching cool ideas in colleges and universities, writing by me and by you, comic books, family, my dogs, did I mention pie, the Detroit Lions, and Christina Ricci.
Thank you universe.
Now for some Thanksgiving gravy followed by Cards Against Humanity. Did I mention the pie?
LAST YEAR AND ALL THE YEARS BEFORE....... Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1132 - Thanksgiving 2018 (and 2015-2017)
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1132 - Thanksgiving 2018 (and 2015-2017)
Hi Mom,
This one is full of gratitude and thanks, but also mindful of the genocide caused by the colonialism, imperialism, and "manifest destiny" of American HIStory. Also, I am clearly biased as I am reading A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
But I am also remembering you, Mom, and all the great feasts you made and how much you loved Thanksgiving. My wife loves it, too, and always cooks up a storm. Our turkey, which was not supposed to be frozen, was a little frozen, so we're cooking for eight hours. We'll see how that goes.
At least the Lions game is on nationally.
So, here. Mom, I continue my tradition of sharing the previous HEY MOM Thanksgiving posts.
Smaller table this year, but that's okay.
I have some work to do because I took off most of yesterday to be with Ivan (photo below).
I am missing you, today, Mom.
Enjoy the content. I am going to have some SCOTCH WHISKEY!
GO LIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE REPRINTS! I shared these next three before but they are worth sharing again
I love this song and video. I am just going to keep sharing it OVER AND OVER AND OVER!!
THE REPRINT BLOGS!
TITLES ARE LINKS TO ORIGINAL POSTS............
from Left: Piper, me, Liesel, Elizabeth, Rob, Will, Ivan, Adam, and Molly. John is taking the photo
Hi Mom, So we had a grand Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. I am a bit late posting this because, you know, as usual, grades.
The dinner was fantastic, due to the fantastic cooking of my wife, Liesel (turkey, stuffing, everything), Piper (pies, bread), Elizabeth (vegies), and Rob (mashed potatoes).
And we had such a large table with family and friends visiting. Ivan was visiting from Kalamazoo with his close friend and bandmate Will Moss. Adam's sister (Molly Hermiz formerly Kemp) and brother-in-law (John Hermiz) were visiting from San Diego. And then, our local family Liesel's step-father Robert (Rob) Allen and his wife Elizabeth were in attendance from nearby Brush Prairie.
As you can see, Mom, there was plenty of wine. The turkey was delicious and amazingly fed all these people with leftovers. There was also stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry, asparagus, a Brussels sprouts mixture with walnuts, mashed potatoes, cranberry, bread (Piper), and three pies: pumpkin (by Liesel), cherry/raspberry and apple (Piper). We also had a large salmon filet for John who does not eat other meats.
We put the dogs in a kennel for the day and night just to make it a bit easier on all of us to cook, clean up, and have great dinner conversation without post-potty-outside dog cleaning or walking. We managed to get Rob discussing his PhD, Elizabeth joined in with her experiences (defending her PhD in Spanish) while discussing John's PhD work at UC San Diego. We all had a lengthy music discussion listing favorite songs and albums.
After dinner and some of the clean up (the rest happened Friday), we played some games from the Jack Box company (You Don't Know Jack etc.).
It's been a great week with these guests, members of our extended family. Will and Ivan played a lot of music. There was plenty of laughter and affection shared among everyone. The dogs were well loved, also, with John as well as Will and Ivan taking them for walks to spell me from those daily chores.
I am thankful for these people being in my life. Look at Piper in this picture below. She is beaming with happiness and joy. It's so great having her here with us. The look on Liesel's face shows how happy she is as well. In fact, doesn't everyone look pretty happy? And we haven't even eaten yet when those photos were taken.
I even carved the turkey (see photos below as I needed to photograph the carcass), and I really have no idea what I am doing in turkey carving.
My wife has made this new house a wonderful home, and I am so very grateful for that home and for these wonderful people and this shared meal.
I do wish you could have been here, Mom. I am sure you would have been impressed.
from Left: Liesel, Elizabeth, Rob, Will, Ivan, Adam, John, Molly, and Piper. I am taking the photo.
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- Days ago = 873 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1711.24 - 10:10
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #870 - Thanksgiving 2016 and 2015 - again
Hi Mom,
Post within a post within a post.
Kind of like mirrors reflecting each other.
A chain of Thanksgiving posts.
The 2016 post re-posted the 2015 post, and now I am posting the 2017 post as those posts.
So, that's three Thanksgiving days without you, Mom.
That doesn't seem right. But for the first time in my life, I was not with Dad or Lori either. But that's okay. There was lost of family here.
I don't have the picture Liesel took of our Thanksgiving this year, and I did not take pictures.
Below is last year's Thanksgiving post, which I am managing to get posted exactly a week later, so I am catching up, though it may not seem that way.
I made mashed potatoes and an Asian slaw and ramen salad.
A week later, I am still eating up leftovers.
I peeled potatoes "yesterday" (the day before Thanksgiving) while annoying Satchel by singing along to Bruce Springsteen that was playing loudly on the stereo.
I could make this a really long entry. I am thinking a lot about you today.
The picture up top is from our first Thanksgiving in the St.Antoine house. The picture to the left of this text is from last year.
I am thankful for you, Mom. I am thankful for everything you gave me, taught me, showed me, and for your love, your appreciation, your show of pride, so much.
We enjoyed many Thanksgiving days together, and you were generally tolerant of my desire to keep football on TV.
I am thankful for my parents, my sister, my brother-in-law, my wife, my kids, my dog, my cat, so many things, people, and blessings.
I am thinking about how lucky I am, how grateful I am to the universe, to my wife, to you and Dad, Mom.
I wish you were here to kiss and show you how thankful I am.
I am missing you a lot this year.
I just want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.
And, no, I am not celebrating colonization and mass genocide. This holiday can also be just about family no matter what the original event.
I wish you were here, Mom.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 144 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1511.26 - 10:49
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- Days ago = 508 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1611.24 - 10:10
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- Days ago = 872 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1711.23 - 10:10
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
1. The List. I had forgotten that I promised to keep a tally. I may not include it every day, but I will share it at list once a week.
2. ALL THE ALBUMS: For the month, I am going to restrict myself to one song from one album at a time. By album, I mean the main, studio albums, not live albums or compilations or soundtracks. So far, each song came from a different album of the twenty-six albums in his career. This will be an interesting restriction given the songs I have selected so far. Once I have posted one song for each album, then I can return to previous albums and/or different versions of songs I have already posted. However, I am not restricting myself just to songs Bowie WROTE as today's song, come to find out, which I did not know, is not written by Bowie.
3. ONE PICTURE; ONE VIDEO (mostly): I will stick to the one video thing, but one picture? Yesterday, I posted two pictures. I will try to keep it simple, but there are SO MANY pictures.
4. BRIEF: This is one of the longer posts as I am sharing rules and the list. Mainly, I keep it brief.
THE DAILY BOWIE LIST
The Daily Bowie #0 - "Space Oddity" - SPACE ODDITY - 1969
The Daily Bowie #1 - "Ashes to Ashes" - SCARY MONSTERS - 1980
The Daily Bowie #2 - "Cat People" - LET'S DANCE - 1983
The Daily Bowie #3 - "Sons of the Silent Age" - HEROES - 1977
The Daily Bowie #4 - "Running Gun Blues" - THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD - 1970
The Daily Bowie #5 - "Sound and Vision" - LOW - 1977
The Daily Bowie #6 - "Fill Your Heart" - HUNKY DORY -1971
"FILL YOUR HEART"
"Fill Your Heart" is a song written by Biff Rose and Paul Williams and performed here by David Bowie. It is from the album Hunky Dory in the year 1971.
"Things that happened in the past only happened in your Mind..."
So, each morning, I run the list of things for which I am grateful. I am not always listing musical artists, like Suzanne Vega, because I focus mostly on my family and community. Though from time to time, musical artists will drift into my consciousness, and I will thank the universe for them, infuse the positive energy of my love into the fabric of the cosmos, because, after all, we are all connected.
LAST WORD ON THE GRATITUDE THING: I got the idea for the gratitude prayer (meditation, list, incantation, catalogue, rumination, reflection, or whatever you want to call it) from a movie called The Secret. I am not quite promoting the movie as a "true" exposure of an actual science. In fact, many of the stories in the film are a bit fatuous. However, I like watching it. I showed it to a class (my second viewing) about a month ago, and the idea of the daily gratitude thing struck me. In the movie, one of the interviewees (I forget which one and it's not important) explained how he had a rock in his pocket. At night, he would set it on his dresser with the other contents of his pockets. The next morning, he would retrieve it and remember to list the things for which he was grateful as a daily routine, like a prayer. He had a visitor from South Africa and told the man about his rock and gratitude practice. The man called it a "gratitude rock." After returning to South Africa, he wrote his American friend and asked for some gratitude rocks to be sent to him because one of his children was very sick, and he did not have the money to seek medical care for the child. The interviewee balked at sending "gratitude rocks" because, after all, "they are just rocks," he said. But he found three nice rocks and sent them to his South African friend. Months later, the South African wrote back. The rocks worked! His son was healed and recovered. They paid for his medical treatment by selling a hundred gratitude rocks. People believed in the power of the gratitude rocks.
I found this story inspirational. I do not use a rock, but every day, I make my gratitude list. I send energy into the universe. I focus on the positive and try to limit or dismiss the negative.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1911.28 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27 and 1907.04) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. Dropped "Talk to you tomorrow, Mom" in the sign off on 1907.04. Should have done it sooner as this feature is no longer daily.
In this issue, the star is - DOCTOR DOOM! Witness the life of Marvel's most monumental menace! Plus: classic tales featuring Torch and Toro, Namor, the Captain America of the 1950s, and more!
When the trickster known as Diablo appears before Doctor Doom offering an allegiance, Doom is presented with a face from his past that will make him question everything he is, was and could have been.
Dane Whitman is harboring doubts about his super-hero identity, Black Knight. After encountering the spirit of Sir Percy of Scandia, Whitman realizes that he may be a worthy possessor of the title after all.
Dane Whitman is harboring doubts about his super-hero identity, Black Knight. After encountering the spirit of Sir Percy of Scandia, Whitman realizes that he may be a worthy possessor of the title after all.
LOW POWER MODE: I sometimes put the blog in what I call LOW POWER MODE. If you see this note, the blog is operating like a sleeping computer, maintaining static memory, but making no new computations. If I am in low power mode, it's because I do not have time to do much that's inventive, original, or even substantive on the blog. This means I am posting straight shares, limited content posts, reprints, often something qualifying for the THAT ONE THING category and other easy to make posts to keep me daily. That's the deal. Thanks for reading.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1911.27 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1607 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
Frank Giacoia
Larry Lieber
Roy Thomas
Sam Rosen
Stan Lee
Vince Colletta
Howard Purcell
John Romita