The inventory & innovation of time pieces

"the sands of time were collected into a glass in older times to preserve the very seconds. the smarter celtic warriors put time when they pierce their eyes at the sun . they smartly placed the triangle there and called it the sun dial. the chinese had the innovative comfort of using buckets and water droplets. today, we actually just take time for granted and look at a piece of kinetic gear to realize time wasted." ~ D. Brandon C

There's this news that I was reading via Yahoo! News and it does seems to be quite true and makes sense.

Are Ghosts afraid of Hi-Def? Let's check it out in this article:

Why Ghosts Are Spooked by HD Camera

"Paranormal Activity 3," the latest in a series of successful low-budget horror films about amateur ghost hunters, opens on Friday (Oct. 21). The first film, released in 2007, was a surprise indie hit around the world.

The films are shot in a "found footage" style, in which the audience is treated to footage supposedly taken in real life from home videos and security cameras. This technique, often involving handheld cameras and actors talking to the camera operator, has been around for years but was widely popularized in the 1999 film "The Blair Witch Project."

The grainy, low-budget look of the films is no accident; it was done partly because the films actually are low-budget, and partly for added "realism." The fact that the low-quality picture skips and jitters adds to the suspense, and Horror Filmmaking 101 teaches that a dark, partly obscured monster is much scarier than one that's seen clearly in bright light.

It's been an effective technique in the first two films, scaring up hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. And it's also true in real-life ghost hunting: Virtually all of the "evidence" for ghosts appears in the form of brief, ambiguous anomalies recorded with low-quality cameras (or good-quality cameras sabotaged by low-light conditions).

People have long reported weird, ghostly and paranormal activity, but perhaps the biggest mystery is why the evidence — especially the photographic evidence — hasn't improved. Are ghosts afraid of high-definition cameras?

The idea that amateur ghost hunters wandering in the dark with crummy video cameras are going to uncover genuine evidence of a spirit realm unknown to science seems absurd. Nonetheless, the SyFy show "Ghost Hunters" has been wildly popular for years — it was recently picked up for an eighth season — despite the fact that the team has never found scientific evidence for ghosts. The show is, of course, entertainment television instead of real investigation, but what about the hundreds of amateur ghost-hunting groups around the world inspired by the show?

If ghosts exist, you would expect the photographic and video evidence for them should improve dramatically as more and more people look for them with better and better equipment. There are more people actively trying to document paranormal activity than ever. And, thanks to smartphones, at no time in history have so many people had high-quality cameras on hand virtually all the time. Today there's no excuse for anyone to capture grainy photos or video images of anything, whether it's your aunt in a horrid floral hat, Bigfoot in the woods, or paranormal activity in your hallway. And yet that is so often the quality of the footage that makes the rounds on the internet. [Mythical Creatures: Beasts That Don't Really Exist (or Do They?)]

This past weekend, Apple sold 4 million iPhone 4S units, each of them equipped with a built-in high definition 1080p camera featuring state-of-the-art optics, image stabilization, automatic lighting adjustment and other features that rival cameras used by Hollywood videographers only a few years ago. Perhaps one of those iPhone users will finally record some clear evidence of ghosts.

High definition provides more image information, which helps identify things often mistaken for ghosts, such as random shadows, unnoticed reflections and video artifacts. With those ghost impostors more easily dismissed, any real ghostly images should be sharper and clearer than ever before. The age of amateurs posting questionable video evidence of the paranormal should be coming to an end. Professional ghost hunters, however, might well continue using cameras that produce low-quality images. After all, that's where the ghosts appear.

This story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.

How the Wrestling Ring Collapsed

Well, some of you may have watched WWE Vengeance and I was shocked to see the ring imploded. Yeah, I actually see stuff like that cause I monitor the media and study about their designs, story lines, plots etc.

Here's an interesting article from the WWE.Com Exclusive which explains the impact of that match.

A phenomenal lesson in ring physics

By: Joey Styles October 27, 2011

Tags: Vengeance 2011, Mark Henry, Big Show

At Vengeance, the gargantuan WorldHeavyweight Championship Match between The World’s Strongest Man, Mark Henry and The World’s Largest Athlete, Big Show ended in a shocking no contest when the ring collapsed as the result of the 412-pound champion superplexing the 485-pound challenger. (PHOTOS)

Exactly how much force does it take to collapse a WWE ring that has contained some of the most colossal collisions in the history of hand-to-hand combat? We don’t have a physics department here at WWE.com so we were forced to seek elsewhere for answers. Luckily, members of the WWE Universe come from all walks of life and we found a physics professor who is also a proud WWE fan.

Dr. Matthew Cathey of Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C. was kind enough to take time from grading exams to provide WWE.com with these calculations:

Mark Henry and Big Show weigh a combined 897 pounds. Assuming their combined center of gravity fell six feet, their combined mass hit the mat at about 20 feet per second, or a bit over 13 miles per hour. That impact created a release of kinetic energy of 7253 Joules, which is equivalent to:

• Rey Mysterio (175 pounds) leaping onto his opponent from the top of steel cage hitting 30 feet, seven inches high, approximately twice as high as his SmackDown debut

• The detonation of approx. two grams of the explosive, trinitrotoluene (TNT).

• The energy at the muzzle of four rounds fired from an M16 rifle (WWE.com double-checked this fact with our friends at NationalGuard.com).

01:20

I think it took a little (bad) luck to break the ring. Different parts of the ring would handle that stress differently, as the shock waves created by the impact would be propagated differently. Notice how the opposite ring post is the first to collapse; that’s exactly the opposite of what you would expect.  It was also not instantaneous. It took a split second to collapse. That’s the really fascinating aspect thing about of this incident.  Again, this is speculation, but I think the energy imparted into the ring by the impact bounced around for a second, seeking a way to get dissipated (it usually does this mainly by oscillations in the ring surface doing work by lifting the Superstars and Divas an inch or two; you can see them bounce after a big impact), but the energy was too much for the corner that collapsed.

This was my first thought:Bad luck similar to this caused the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to collapse in 1940.  The wind that took it down was well within specifications that bridge was built to withstand but the angle and speed of the wind created a resonance that caused the energy which was trying to dissipate to actually reinforce itself and destroy the structure.
It’s the same phenomenon that causes a crystal glass to shatter when a soprano hits exactly the right note.

After entering Professor Cathey’s studious scientific explanation into my personal proprietary intellectual to extreme language translator, I offer this reaction to the structural subsidence: “OH MY GOD!”