... what a damn weird way to regulate an industry.

Almost like it was designed to fail.

In your spectrum, then, "agnostic" is? (I'd guess "another word for atheist", but I could be wrong, so...)

Perhaps I should have said "definitions" rather than "mileage".

From my agnostic perspective (your mileage may vary) I consider atheists to be as much creatures of faith as their theistic opponents:

Theism: I believe there is a God, even though I can't prove it scientifically.
Atheism: I believe there is no God, even though I can't prove it scientifically.
Agnosticism: I don't know, I have no proof.

http://www.urbandictionary.com...

You can, it's just that the compass will involve a lot more than just a magnetised needle and a marked circle.

... please explain to me how discussing the vicissitudes of natural versus social law does not involve the historical (and ongoing) hypocrisy of men conflating the tangible with the intangible for their own selfish purposes, or how your comment involving "the next time" has nothing to do with a problem of simultaneity.

"He who receives ideas from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me" - also Thomas Jefferson

Your acreage of land, unlike an idea, cannot exist simultaneously in the minds of many. Please do not conflate the qualities of the tangible and the intangible.

"The first sound most audiences associate with a fast departure like that is a squealing tire."

Something you should think about: as a child, the first sound I associated with a fast departure was a squealing tire because I first saw a fast departure on TV. Ironically, it might even have been the Dukes of Hazard.

Seriously, I grew up in a place where the most exciting real thing to happen on anything approaching a regular basis was the weekend ice cream van (which certainly was not "fast"). Car chases, explosions, gunfire, etcetera - I only ever saw those on TV.

How much of your audience expects these sound effects your profession puts in because your profession was the primary or only source they had?

I suspect Geoffrey Landis knows that sound and light travel at different speeds. :)

Mind you, not just because of his background, but because that was the emphasis of his post - that it is almost ubiquitous in the TV and film industries to edit the sound feed to "properly" match the visible scene, to the point where even "documentary" and "news" media (e.g. "60 Minutes") do it as a matter of course.

Take this prank involving an "UltraHD" screen for example, where both the visible scene and the accompanying audio are faked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Assuming the screen really is that good, how many random people do you think you'd have to test that prank on before you found even a single person who would go, "hey that's miles away, I shouldn't be hearing the sounds at the same time as the visible effects"?

How much of our willingness to believe in simultaneity is natural instinct/experience and how much is because TV and film have trained us to expect it?

It means we should be worried and taking precautions, because we still don't know what we're doing with the only biosphere we've got.

edit: to "make it illegal to volunteer the recording to a third party" append "without the second party's consent".

Why did you interpret the GP as objecting to the rule of law? I interpreted the GP as objecting to the rule of tyranny.

Here's my "better idea": instead of making it illegal to record the second party without their consent, make it illegal to volunteer the recording to a third party.

Because that's what we're _really_ objecting to, isn't it? I mean, every human on earth already carries a device that records everything they see and hear for later review anyway. Does it truly matter whether they have another? And what are you going to do when medical technology reaches the point where that existing device (1) can be patched to give everyone's device the same eidetic capability that an existing percentage of the population already has and (2) can be downloaded?

Hmm. Did you add in the externalised cost of taxes covering the percentage of Walmart staff being paid so little that they qualify for government-issued food stamps?

Well, it's nice to know we've avoided Oligarchy via Democracy by getting Oligarchy via Republic. :p

Whoosh (and no, that's not just the sound of a Tesla as it goes past you, AC).

"Tesla" was not the key part of GP's post. "110mph" was the key part. There's a reason most places have legal speed limits considerably below 110 MPH, regardless of what car you're driving: the human body's resilience to rapid deceleration.

For example, even if you had a "perfect" car, with "perfect" frame, seat, safety harness, crumple zone, etc? Hitting an unyielding wall at 110 MPH with an eight-foot zone between front bumper and driver would induce an average deceleration of just over 50 gravities for just under a second - so just the deceleration alone is more than enough to injure a perfectly healthy adult human (if the driver is looking forward at the time, starting with their capillaries bursting and their eyeballs filling with blood).

Replace the "perfect" car with a typical car and its typical safety features? Outlook not so good.

For those curious about the math, {acceleration} equals {initial velocity squared minus final velocity squared} divided by {twice the distance traveled}, while {time} equals the square root of {distance traveled times two divided by the acceleration}.