YaDinghus

That depends on how precise you need the results to be. As I've said, up to a ratio of 3:2 for the major to the minor semiaxis, the error is smaller than 1% for U = pi*(a+b). Since pi appears in both formulae for circumference and area, then A/U = ab/(a+b). This is the most I can offer right now...

I call chicken/egg on primitive tribal violence and eye for an eye. As for your example with the rapist: I would love to see them get buggered by a well-hung volunteer in public, but that's my primitive instinct speaking. Since restitution isn't feasible in extreme cases such as this one, punishment is all that is left to exact Of course I don't want to see a rape victim cross-examined in court and the whole affair dragged up in public. I'd rather see acceptance of a sworn statement from the victim and a specialist report from a medical professional who examined the vicitm. If that doesn't satisfy a jury, then the jury system needs to be revised...

Ok what it looks like to me is that we are coming in from entirely different positions on the subject. For me, an eye for an eye can't be separated from primitive tribal revenge and escalating feuds of violence. Because that is exactly the context I know this principle from, while modern jurisdiction (ideally) focuses on reparation rather than punishment. You on the other hand are arguing from a point of strict mathematical logic where the exact damage is retributed to the purpetrayer of the original damage. It's not that I reject this outright, but it's also an idealized scenario, because either party will always view their own suffering as more significant than that of the counter party by any means possible. That's human psychology. Without a moderating instance the cycle of retribution will keep escalating, because humans are unable to be objective when their own suffering is involved

There is no straightforward method for calculating the circumference of an ellipse from the two semiaxes, so there is also no straightforward method for determining the length of any semi-axis from the area and the circumference. Given the area and the suspected size of the major semiaxis, the small semiaxis would be 16839.3769767847. Wikipedia suggests that at this proportion of the major to the minor semiaxis the circumvmference U = pi*(a+b) yields an error of 1%. So for the current assumed configuration, U should be 136264.322253585, which is more than 1% outside the originally stated circumference For clarity: close, but no cigar

A good insulation would also cut back on AC costs in the summer...

you also have the lambda term in there that Einstein introduced to make the Universe static if k turned out to be different from 0, because he didn't like the idea of an expanding or shrinking universe. Now k is pretty certainly 0, with very small error bars, but it is expanding at an accelerated rate, so it's lambda we're looking at for dark energy and the continued and accelerating expansion of the universe. I've speculated in another thread that even at the Big Bang, the volume of the Universe might have been infinite, but that our observable universe originated from a single point of that big bang. Why shouldn't the isotropic principle extend to the Big Bang?

You call that winter? Yeah... My parents got a new roof two years ago and that greatly reduced their gas consumption in the winter. Where they live it regularly goes below -10°C during the day and can reach -25°C at night.

You know what, I missed the dimensionality of cubic meters. Thanks for catching that... So it's more like 200 W. That's a better ballpark, but it still seems low for winter heating. What's the outside temperature where you're at?

To be fair, we couldn't determine that just by looking out because we are looking back in time. To be sure, we would have to take a snapshot of what we see now and compare it with what we see over the next 14 bn years to see if other parts of the universe developed to be exactly what they are today. Also considering the accelerating expansion of the universe we might never be able to determine that because these regions would recede beyond our cosmic horizon by then...

I'd rather say our resolution of what any particle really is improves with the development of our theories. After all, any better theory won't simply replace but rather incorporate what we already know. After all it has to account for the observations we've already made

Confirmed. Though it says now that Trump said Einstein was an idiot...

So you have a bit less than a pound of air in your house, which cools down from 293 to 290 K over 7200s, so basically you're heating with ca 200mW to keep it at 293K. I must be missing something...

From my own csmping experience I do know that even in the coldest and dampest weather you can get anything dry enough for spark lighting if you've already got a fire going. Keeping it dry enough for prolonged periods I'm not sure, since processing leather requires some advanced technology and logistics, and roughhide isn't particularly good at insulating things from moisture. You could however carve out a wooden container to keep tinderlike stuff dry for a few days, and this should be able with mesolithic tools. The mesolithic period however begins well after the absorption of Neanderthals into the Sapien line (I am loathe to say extinction because of the significant levels of Neanderthal-specific genetic markers in Humans outside of Africa)

Obviously nobody knows if the Universe is a torus. If it isn't, my reasoning applies. If it is, that would be a limiting condition That kind of sounds like Star Trek's depiction of parallel universes which exist in the same space but have different 'quantum phases' so they don't interact with each other - or only gravitationally, which would explain dark matter, if we hadn't discovered galaxies that have a different ratio of light/dark matter, since a reasonable assumption would be that large scale evolution would be the same in gravitationally bound parallel universes https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/dark-matter-goes-missing-in-oddball-galaxy

Ok what I forgot to weave into my argument is the tendency of humans to put their own suffering on a more sensitive scale than that of a stranger. So when three people ambush and kill your cousin who was involved in the murder of one of their relatives, you would go after all three of them to make them pay for their deed (with a few of your tribesmen for good measure). And so the violence spreads. It would have started because someone got killed while they were stealing cattle to which they were clearly entitled from their point of view, and so the killing even though objectively justified because he was defending his families property the thieves would consider it unjustified. Now I am aware that I am mixing the concept of economic reciprocity with justice, but I do this to demonstrate how the eye for an eye justice system results in prolonged feuds cause more deaths than looking at the simple concept in question would produce. regarding politicians I would say they are successfully pandering to their not really bright constituents. I'm not saying that this necessarily makes these politicians smart, but that stupid people will elect politicians who make bad laws. Also, in the USA, there are plenty of judges who are elected and not appointed, so they too pander to an electorate that wants harsh punishment instead of farsighted judgement