A side-effect of the solar eclipse

Today I put forward a groundbreaking scientific theory.

The major sources of gravity for the Earth (apart from the Earth itself) are:
1 - The moon, and;
2 - The sun.

The sun and the moon are strangely linked (in human imagination) - for example, the moon is about 400 times smaller than the sun, but because it is 400 times nearer, they appear to us to be around the same size.  And they need to appear to us to be around the same size, otherwise you wouldn't get the awesome "diamond ring" eclipse pictures like the below:

By kubotake [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Now, we are all well aware of the effects of the moon on the oceans of the Earth - the gravity from the moon causes tides that occur every day, dragging uncounted tons of water backwards and forwards like a ridiculously over the top bidet.

So today, when the sun and the moon were aligned, did their combined pull of gravity have an unexpected effect on bodies of water on the Earth?

Well, one of my colleagues today mentioned that the water closets at work were unusually active today, and my theory is that, because two-thirds of the typical human body is made up of water, the eclipse caused people to egest.  Indeed, studies have shown that gravity has a very real effect upon gastric emptying.

I look forward to being offered Fellowship of the Royal Society as a result of this amazing discovery.  In the meantime, however, it's back to reading more Bill Bryson.

Cloned - coming soon!

Tomorrow I should have a new video up on YouTube, introducing my evil twin Joel.  I've been playing around with my new camcorder, and after a lot of mucking around, firstly with various freeware video editors (none of which I found were up to the task - sorry!) and then with a trial version of Adobe After Effects CS4 I've succeeded in cloning myself.  It's a bit of a new departure for me, I do have a tendency to go for the quick solution but I've had to learn some new stuff and be patient to get this done, and I think it's good overall.

A taster of what is to come!

The actual quality of the video isn't fantastic, do be aware, but the cloning effect itself is pretty good and it isn't too obvious where the join is.  I hope to improve with my future ones as I learn how to work the camcorder and the software.

Anyway it's going to take about 3 hours to upload to YouTube so I'm going to do it when I go to bed, I'll post the link tomorrow.  Or if you can't wait, check out my YouTube channel in the morning.

Birth of the Federation update - the Federation and the Cardassians were a bit silly and declared war on me.  Since then I've crushed both the Klingon and Federation fleets (admittedly losing almost all of one of my fleets in the process, but the ships that did survive are now very experienced in combat and therefore even deadlier and tougher to kill) and given the Cardassians a bloody nose.  The Klingon homeworld is under my control and I'm finishing them off before I turn my full attention to the Feds and Cardies.  Long live the Ferengi Alliance!