Considering the unnamable number of solar systems existing in the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, "to your knowledge", is a necessary modifier. The reach of the imagination does so exceed the grasp of the mind.

The lightning stike must have been awesome. Few people experience the 'power' up that close, and live to tell about it. Very impressive, and I am glad you get to tell about it.

Oh, wow, dude! Like I'm pretty sure I remember that place. Yeah! Like, I think I visited it once or twice in the 60s! Cool!
Great place for a take-out diner, man!

Good afternoon, Father Tyme.

I do intend to render a definitive digital painting of the diner one day soon. I believe it was Foiled Goil over at Big Brass Blog who used an early graphic of mine to illustrate the diner:



Since all the capital improvements, though, it seems only right that I should offer a more recent view.

The Dark Wraith will get to work on that in the near future.

Good afternoon, zipperhead.

I will not live to see the time when we get actual views from planets in other solar systems, but I did make it to the time when I saw planets and views from them as no one had before my time.

To that extent, it is pretty cool that I got to see the future I had imagined as a child.

As I had expected, it is awesome.

Unfortunately, it is also turning out to be not so good.

All in all, I wish it had not arrived; but then again, the future will keep coming whether or not I want it to.

The future ensures my own mortality just as certainly as its own inevitability.

I guess that's pretty cool: something that ensures its own success at the expense of guaranteeing the silence of its critics.

We should all be so blessed.

The Dark Wraith still finds it all rather annoying.

The comments to your "You. Were. Warned." post are closed, which was my first choice for the following from Bloomberg:

Obama Lawyers Urge Rejection of Leak Suit Against Cheney, Rove
The Obama administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to revive a lawsuit accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials in the George W. Bush White House of illegally revealing the identity of a CIA agent.

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the government’s top courtroom lawyer, told the justices in a legal filing today that a federal appeals court was right to dismiss the suit by former CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The suit also names former White House political adviser Karl Rove and former Cheney aide I. Lewis Libby.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr[at]bloomberg[dot]net.

Well, if you were the One sitting up there at the cosmic console, orchestrating the buttons as you pleased, would you feel less annoyed?

Actually, if the comment re: annoyance is not intensely understated, you are really not doing too bad at all.

Somehow, I detect a bit of understatement there though. Or maybe I am just projecting.

Understating annoyance annoys the gods, zipperhead.

If they get too annoyed that I am not throwing a hissy-fit, they'll start pitching lightning bolts, which means that they will have failed to attain sublime understatement of annoyance; but if they understate their annoyance at my understatement of annoyance, I shall not know that they are annoyed, which will annoy them, given that they are gods and I, a mortal, should be attuned to their needs and wishes. Their annoyance at my lack of appreciation of their annoyance will most definitely, then, annoy them.

Yes, understatement of annoyance really annoys the gods.

The Dark Wraith has just come to realize that the lightning bolt that struck so close to him last week might very well not have been a random event, after all.

Good Evening, Mr Wraith...
I had full screened your landscape when the Implet wandered by. "What's that?" " A picture Dark Wraith made". "Cool. What was the original?" "There isn't one. He made the whole picture on his computer". "OH WOW. It's great!"
I thought you'd enjoy the feedback. I'm kind of jealous of your lightning encounter, my closest was probably 75-100 feet and the rain and hail had gone sideways an instant before, meaning I didn't get to see it, just flash, BOOM, and suddenly the humongous tree across the steet from the student center wasn't any longer. I was sheltering with another crazy person in a 6x4 alcove by the theatre exit...this stranger and I were enjoying the storm too much to go into the lobby with the other 50 or so folks waiting for a bus. Heh, with all the debris, my bus was 3 hours late, and was only running half it's route until several trees got moved. This was the second wave of this storm that day...the first came in as I was standing atop a metal ladder cleaning the last window above the door to a dorm, while my crew (all of whom pleaded fear of heights which is why the boss(me) was doing this) yelled at me to get down, there was thunder and lighting . I got down just as the skies opened and the storm hit. It quit long enough for us to leave work, and for me to get to the aforementioned bus stop.

Good evening, Wild Clover.

Maybe it's just me, but the storms this Spring have seemed particularly fierce and loud. Not that I don't like thunder and lightning, mind you, but I'm too stupid to stay indoors when there's trouble in the sky. If I hear there's a tornado in the area, I go outside to see where it is. I'm surprised natural selection hasn't taken me out, yet.

See if Implet would like an autographed print of that picture. In a few months, I'll be selling prints of some of my better works, but it's alway nice to lead into it with a few promo copies for those who appreciate the art.

Send me a message if he wants one, and I'll get it in the mail tomorrow.

The Dark Wraith should start preparing the initial work now, anyway, for the big poster sale this Summer.

~Dark Wraith - 05/20/09 at 16:38:28

Re: Your diner (...when you come to the "why" in the road!)

A companion photo perhaps for yours, DW, and the beginnings of a fine essay:

Humanity at a Crossroads

Humans have tinkered with the natural world since we appeared on the evolutionary stage. Our days may be numbered: As the home team, Nature bats last.
The evidence is gaining increasing clarity: We've reached a crossroads unlike any other in human history. One path leads to despair for Homo industrialis. The other leads to extinction, for Homo sapiens and the millions of species we are taking with us into the abyss. I'll take door number one.

Fortunately, the former path gives us one final chance to rescue humanity. And I'm not considering merely our own species. Consider, for example, these definitions from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1: the quality or state of being humane (i.e., marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals)

2a: the quality or state of being human b: plural: human attributes or qualities

3: plural: the branches of learning (as philosophy, arts, or languages) that investigate human constructs and concerns as opposed to natural processes (as in physics or chemistry) and social relations (as in anthropology or economics)

4: the human race: the totality of human beings

Sure, that fourth definition matters. We're selfish creatures, after all, interested primarily in persistence. Unfortunately for our species, we're really, truly interested in persistence of our own selfish selves, and not so much interested in our own species. Ergo, the self-induced, greed-inspired, utterly human, generally predictable (but specifically chaotic) predicaments in which we are currently marinating.

As a society, we will not willingly halt the industrial economy. We would much rather reduce the planet to a lifeless pile of rubble than diminish -- much less halt -- economic growth. But, soon enough, we'll run out of options and the industrial economy will take its last breath, thereby giving us our final, slim hope for averting extinction within the next few decades.