Update: Sorry for the lack of activity

Apologies for the lack of activity, but the feeling of fresher's week has carried on quite a bit. And I haven't really had much to tell you. However, my professor got back today, and I managed to find him in his office earlier. Apparently* the dark sun has been shown to give the same rates of water evaporation as the old one did. This may be due to a spike in the radiation levels at some higher-than visible wavelength, or maybe a lower one. Studies are under way to pinpoint the issue.

No news from africa, although I hear there's a student in a friends History class whose family are african, so I'm gonna see if any of their contacts know anything. It's not simple.



*Although, given the subject matter, he may be lying

Intriguing. And happy anyway.

Apparently my astronomy lecture tomorrow morning is cancelled because my professor has been called to a discussion with government officials on the Dark Sun issue. I was chatting to him about it earlier this week, and he mentioned that the stars do seem to be dimmer on some frequencies, in some cases. It sounds like Earth-shielding, but not a simple sort. I look forward to learning more.

Anyway, I'm happy not to have a 9am lecture :-D

Sorry for the lack of updates.

My apologies for the lack of updates since I started this place, it's just that once fresher's week started I came to a realisation: You're not meant to put childish things behind you until AFTER fresher's week.

So I went on a hiatus, and my lack of internet access at home meant I didn't post at all. Anyway, enough about me; well not quite, there is the fact that my physics textbook is a new edition, almost 2000 pages long AND with an online section too, but on to the Dark Sun news.

Not really much to tell that you won't have seen on the other news media. Except this: The news on Africa is downplaying things, something fucked is up with the diseases down there. If you're not in an infected area, flee like fuck. If you're near an infected area, I suggest killing yourself, do not try to run, you might just kill us all. I highly doubt that whatever is going on there is natural, but I also find the ideas of things like Lycanthropy being involved somewhat unlikely. Most likely, the Powers That Be (or a subset) decided that as the Earth can't support us all anymore; so they're getting rid of the people they don't value.

I guess I should be thankful that the powers that do this value the educated and free. But I still think it's a really bad move.

I'm going to Bristol

Your loyal blog-writer is making his way to university.

It's odd, apparently Bristol's normally one of the last places to take students up, but this year it's earlier for some reason. Not a Dark-Sun reason though, the sun didn't darken until after this was sorted out.

Still, this oddity may mean I don't get internet access again for slightly longer than would otherwise be the case. Don't worry though, I'll be back and posting more info ASAP.

High coastal winds with you guys too? Yeah, thought so.

You may have noticed, if you're near the coast, that the news is reporting high winds right at the coast. I know this because it's not just your coast like they're implying, it's EVERY coast.

This is due to the somewhat noticeable temperature drop over the past few days. As the sea is still warm, the air above it is warmer than above land, causing high winds on the coasts.
Whether the problem is gonna get better or worse, I don't know yet, but it's been causing some problems. Not many examples on gale-force-winds AFAIK, but then, who'd be reporting them?

This post (כ) Kingreaper: Too busy preparing to go (and partying like it's the end of the world) to fully analyse.

What should we be afraid of?

You know, looking into the sort of cooling we should be expecting from the decrease in incident light from the sun has got me caught up in a spiral of anxiety. There are far too many potential problems from this change in the sun to really deal with, and we have no idea what else about the world may change at instant.

No wonder the media are being a voice of calm.* Excited people, they buy newspapers. Angry people, they make news. But people who realise that this may indicate the sun is about to go supernova,** they kill the messenger. Well, maybe not deliberately, but riots aren't good for business, and if the world doesn't end the news companies would rather still be in business.***

If the sun doesn't go nova, we've got crop failures worldwide, of course. Not just due to decreasing sunlight, but have you noticed how clear the skies have been the past two days? Evaporation is powered by sunlight. And hell, no-one seems to know how fast the temperatures should be changing, but when the icecaps start moving outwards, we're sure gonna know about it.

Renovating the sahara desert has never been more important.

I'm not looking forward to the riots when the common people actually realise this shit.


*You didn't think there was something weird about that? Seriously, it's never happened before.
**Yeah, I know, our sun would only go nova, but most people don't even know what a nova is, let alone the difference between it and a supernova.
***Sometimes companies look a little too like living things for my liking. I mean, do you look after your skin cells? Would you really like to be one of the cells of some corporate hyperorganism?
I think this whole thing is bringing out my inner paranoiac.

Shouldn't The Dark Sun be cooling us?

I don't know if you've noticed, but while it's certainly been reasonably brisk, we don't seem to be freezing quite yet. Given the decrease in light levels, shouldn't we be cooling down rather more than this?