It's National Science Fiction Day! Who Knew?

I am getting a "new" (to me) truck. 2014 Silverado crew cab, fancy paint, back- camera, etc. Big V-8 gasoline hog. Ball hitch.

Swimmin' pool, movie stars. Der der der der di di der der der da di di di der. (The Beverly Hillbilly song plays in the background.)

Sounds like fictional news to me. I really am getting the truck, finally.

You can have a swimming pool in the bed of this baby. Enjoy! Post a picture when you get it home so we'll know it's fact and not scifi.

This photo was in the seller's driveway. I have not taken pictures again in my driveway yet, but I can attest it is there with new license plates on.

Good-looking truck -- and the right color for Texas. Reflects sun ...

Is anyone else missing notifications of new posts? I got zero notifications yesterday. Odd.

He could always post an image of a truck culled from a site,,,

Coursin he could post a picture of him toolin past the Lubbock city limit sign, that way when we passed him going the other way , we could wave and say hey,,

We bought our oldest adopted son a 4 door Dodge Ram 1500 when he turned 16. He and his buddies did exactly that one hot night. Great time, no problem. Except, for some reason they didn't dump the water and he tried to drive it home full.

A nice officer explained to him that was NOT a good idea and convinced him to dump the water out before driving any farther.

No citation, just advice.

What does being adopted have to do with the story related? I certainly congratulate you on adopting, but what is the point of calling him your 'adopted' son if adoption doesn't play into the story?

Seems like referring to your son as simply your 'son' without reference to adoption would be better in most cases where adoption is not specifically being discussed.

Why do feel the need to rail on Lyn for using the word "adopted" as an adjective?

I might decide to use the word "bastard" some time in reference to a file: a hard steel object used to wear out all manner of other objects.

No railing.

I especially like Apollo 13 because I was involved in a small way with the space effort.

Contact? OK, but it left me wanting some kind of explanation that never came.

WarGames is just fun to watch.

I've just mowed the grass, so I can't claim to be snowbound.

I was going to mow my grass but I can't find it. I also don't think my lawn mower will start easy while it's 3 degrees f. out.

It's the price I pay for living in the desert.

I have a friend who lives in Hawaii. She sent pictures of their clear skies and great weather just today. No air pollution there, ever.

Hey, it's the desert. You aren't supposed to have grass, just rocks and pebbles.

We actually got as cold as 7 degrees F yesterday morning. Had very light snow flurries when it got warm enough to snow. No accumulation, and the roads are all clear.

VFR flying weather. VFR weather minimums for the classes of airspace:

Those regulations are clear as mud to a flat-lander like me, but to a real pilot, you live by those words.

Why are statute miles used when you are in the air

And

Air miles are used when you are on the ground ?

actually nautical miles are used in the air when at sea, if that helps make it more confusing?

Air miles won't get you anywhere at all, they exist only in a computer somewhere.

The mile is an English unit of length of linear measure equal to 5,280 feet, or 1,760 yards, and standardized as exactly 1,609.344 meters by international agreement in 1959. Wikipedia

(statute mile is a mile)

A Nautical Mile is 1/60th of a degree or one minute of latitude. Be sure you know what distance measurement is being used on the charts you are working with. There are four common measures of distance used on charts:

• Nautical miles are used on ocean and coastal waters.
• Statute miles are used for inland areas such as the Intracoastal Waterway and the Great Lakes.
• Yards are often used to define distances of a mile or less.
• Meters are being seen increasingly on U.S. charts and are used almost exclusively on Canadian and other charts of the world.

And from Alan Richard - "As a point of interest, Florida boating and marine fisheries laws still express distance in leagues, as in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A marine league is three nautical miles."

Capt. Matt (Boat Safe).

My question: How can a nautical mile under that definition be consistent from the equator to the poles? I see a problem in the definition.

1 nautical mile =6,076.11549 feet

1 nautical mile = 1852.00000135 meters

400 knots in an airplane is only 460.3 mph (yes Mildred that is fast)

60,000 miles under the sea???

Yes, SE, that is a long way. It is more than two trips around the Earth. It refers to how far she (Nautilus) can travel while submerged, not how deep. Not even Challenger Deep is that far.

Well I just watched the Time Machine a few days ago, that's a good one, and I might watch the Terminator, again, the future that haunts our nightmares....Why does science fiction always portray a disastrous future? ...makes for a good story I guess,,,,,The Day the Earth Stood Still, is a good one...at least man always seems to prevail in the end of these yarns....One of my favorites from the other side of the pond is Red Dwarf, which I have on DVD...the early Dr Who episodes were good....Maybe I'll look for something new and surprise myself....

Have you seen "The Arrival"? Best scifi flick I have seen in awhile.

I liked "Passengers" also.

I got the cliffs notes version...spoiler alert!

After seeing the segment with the circle that had various parts of it (thickened), and that it could represent single letters and whole words, I realized that a whole language could be generated from a single circle, with a multitude of of combinations of a relatively few (kinds of thickenings). Even in the (non-religious sense), it seems like an elegant alternative, and yet, not that attractive, in comparison to the simple spoken word... But still mathematically interesting...

Flight to Mars ( 1951 )

I'm glad when well-done lesser-known movies get some attention, like 'Pi', one of my favorite sci-fi movies - though it barely qualifies as sci-fi I think.

Two movies I'd like to recommend are 'Tucker: The Man and his Dream' (1988), and 'John Carter' (2012).

Tucker is not a sci-fi movie, but a biopic about Preston Tucker, the car designer. It's one of the few really well done movies that reflects how engineering actually gets done, and makes it entertaining.

'John Carter' is considered a flop. It did poorly at the box office, and only comes in around 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I think it hasn't done well mainly because it is actually a well-done sci-fi movie, and it stays very true to the Edgar Rice Burroughs books. It is a bit long-ish, and there are a few times where familiarity with the books might have helped, but among the people I know who like science fiction the movie was very well received.

By the way, I met Isaac Asimov once and had a chance to talk with him a bit. He was a very cordial guy. Very friendly. The kind of guy you'd enjoy having over for dinner.

He was one of 3 well-known science fiction writers I've met. I also met Ray Bradbury and James P Hogan.

Sadly, all three are now gone.

Wow! Tell us more! How did you get to meet these three? What were they like in person?

Asimov was as good a story teller in person as he was in his books and articles. He mostly told stories about his own life and career. As I said, he was extremely friendly, very approachable, and very cordial. For all his notoriety he came across as very humble. This was on an eclipse cruise many years ago.

I met Bradbury at a book signing. It was rather disappointing, to be honest. He was quite old by then and had become quite obese; perhaps he had a disease. The person directing the book signing kept rushing people and didn't allow much time to chat. Bradbury wouldn't sign any special dedications in the books. He just signed his signature, not even a 'To (whomever)'.

I met James P Hogan twice. Once at a sci-fi convention in Tampa, the only one I ever went to, the other time at a book signing in Atlanta. He told some great stories about crazy things that happened at other conventions he'd attended. He was also very friendly, with a huge smile that made his eyes twinkle, like a 6 foot 2 inch leprechaun. He had an accent, Irish, but rounded off a bit from living in England and in the US. When I handed him the book to sign, he asked who he should sign it to. I said, 'Oh - just sign it' -- but just then a loud truck went by. He thought I said 'Simon', so he wrote 'To Simon --James P Hogan'. When I saw that I was mortified but then I smiled, realizing what happened, and explained. So he added some more words, and the inscription then read, 'Not to Simon, but to a great fan -- James P Hogan'. I said the new inscription was even better, because now it had a memorable story to go with it.

That Hogan story is priceless! Much better than a plain old "To Usbport."

Then perhaps you should pick up the torch! I never had the opportunity to meet them or Heinlein. Too bad.

In ''John Carter'', I did not think the lead actress was well-cast for the part, and should have been better cast in more of a villainess role... Overall, tho, I did like the movie, even tho the concept of having a self-sentent duplicate of John Carter to be (telegraphed) between Earth and Mars to be almost too much of a stretch of logic to accept, but I have no trouble one being beamed (around) because there is only one character getting beamed at any one time...

Have space suit, will travel, in search of Robert Heinlein?...