At a certain point, I realized that from another perspective, the big divide seems to be between those who see continuous distributions as just an abstraction of a world that is inherently finite vs those who see finite steps as the approximation of an inherently continuous and infinitely divisible reality.

Since I’m someone who sees math as a way to tell internally-consistent stories that may or may not represent reality, I tend to have a certain exasperation with what seems to be the need of most engineers to anchor everything in Euclidean topography.

But it’s my spouse who had to help our kids with high school math. A parent who thinks non Euclidean geometry is fun is not helpful at that point.

The reason WHO frames common risk factors and common chronic diseases is because persons with these risks, conditions and diseases often end up with more than one of these diseases.

e.g., WHO now considers obesity a disease in itself, but obesity is also a biological risk factor for cancer and diabetes.

There are a lot of interrelationships in the risks.

More, with these conditions, they are also more vulnerable to infectious diseases.

It’s important though to keep in mind that, as I note in another reply, these kinds of studies aren’t just about informing individuals’ choices.

They’re not about ‘blaming’ or ‘shaming’ individuals choices.

They are about understanding what are the underlying determinants of health and risk factors that are shaping health outcomes.

Back to the study in question, and the OP’s remark that they were surprised that people were eating that much processed meat daily…

If the protein sources that are most available and affordable are the most unhealthy, preprocessed ones, then consumers will buy and consume more of these than healthier ones.

And their preferences and consumption habits will be shaped by these experiences.

And that will affect overall health and life expectancy of the population.

I would argue that this is missing the point - and so, in fact, is the article reporting on the study.

What is important to keep in mind is that the benefit of this research is not primarily about ‘telling’ or ‘informing’ individuals so that they can make different food consumption decisions.

It’s more about how food environments are shaped to encourage healthy or unhealthy choices.

If eating that much processed meat daily or weekly increases cancer risks, what’s driving or nudging people towards that.

Is it barriers to availability, accessibility or affordability of healthier and palatable choices?

My point is that raising risks of getting hit by a car, or other accidental causes of injury and death beyond the individual’s control, is a deflection.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada.

Full stop.

No one single risk factor is responsible for that. Building the evidence base to be able to both inform individual behaviour but also to inform food safety regulations is important.

Cancer is the leading cause of premature mortality and morbidity (death and disability) in Canada.

So, an accumulation of small risks, and avoidance of risks, have significant benefits at both the individual and population levels.

The general population needs to be aware that unhealthy eating is impacting their lives and quality of life.

Let’s stick to the peer reviewed science and evidence consensus.

WHO established the four behavioural common risk factors for the four major chronic noncommunicable diseases decades ago.

The kind of research synthesis in this article is about continuing to build the evidence on relative and absolute risks, and in some cases look at how these differences impact different populations more or less due to intersecting determinants.

Common risk factors

• unhealthy diet
• physical inactivity
• tobacco use
• harmful use of alcohol
• air pollution added more recently

Major chronic noncommunicable diseases

• cancer
• cardiovascular diseases
• diabetes
• chronic respiratory diseases

And yet, you’ll see many people posting elsewhere on social media that it shouldn’t be relevant.

Can’t imagine trying to share a life with someone who didn’t share my values, but there seems to be a contingent that think that other things should be more important.

I would argue that a lot of the computational based problem solving , from middle school through early undergraduate years, focused on topics historically oriented to boys’ interests, aren’t a good measure of innate math talent either.

But those have historically left a lot of female students behind.

Male or female, most students are really looking to get through math requirements with plug-and-chug replication of algorithms to get to an answer - not genuine problem solving or abstraction. However, being able to reproduce an answer on a very slightly different problem, or just one with different numbers to plug in, does very little towards using mathematical as a means to model problems independently and find solutions.

I saw him at a con in the late 80s.

By way of concession, when responding not so enthusiastically to questions from the audience about the shenanigans Shatner and Nimoy got up to in order to blow off steam during long shooting days, Doohan said that since he’d been in real combat in WW2, he had a different approach to work and not a lot in common with them.

He doesn’t want to hear because he is known for blurting things out to media and fans…

Came here to say this! THE WHITE BELTS!

If they’re in primary school, start them off on Odd Squad.

It’s a madcap Canadian TVO Kids (TV Ontario) public broadcaster educational math show that was made with partner funding from PBS in the United States, and is now available online in many other countries.

The creators and writers clearly knew and referenced Star Trek.

‘The Trouble with Centigurps’ ’ episode is a straight up Tribble Trouble homage with skip counting.

Here’s a season one Odd Squad trailer.

Ok, what I’m seeing in this picture is Coneheads.

All of which begs the question “How is it that Jeff Goldblum has not yet appeared in the Star Trek franchise”

And this is why Discovery and other new shows are only getting 5 seasons.

Contracts are for 7 calendar years not seven seasons.

With problems launching new shows, COVID-related slowdowns and a writers strike, Discovery managed to produce 5 seasons in 7 years.

The colours are unrepentantly psychedelic 70s fashionable and so are a few of the plots.

It’s always a good time to do a watch through of TAS.

No worries, Dan Jeannotte has it covered.

I’m not attributing anything here. You’re arguably the one clinging to your head canon.

I’m an older person who was around to hear other OG fans complain about this ‘alternate universe/timeline for TNG’ theory in the late 1980s. And to see how the Great Bird himself responded.

Roddenberry went on the record saying that the timeline had to adjust to always keep the show’s future as a possible future for the audience. He defended the shift in the timing of WW3.

Goldsman, who has been a fan longer than almost any of his detractors, would have heard this more than I did. Goldsman organized one of the very first clubs and fanzines as a preteen, and attended the first ever convention in New York City.

Roddenberry himself was adamant that Star Trek’s history had to remain a possible history for viewers. So, the dates can slip as long as the major events don’t.

That is why he put WW3 later than implied by TOS, delaying it to the mid 21st century in the TNG pilot ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ even though that led to a contingent of TOS fans insisting that it ‘had to be a separate universe from the one of the original series.’

While writers never explicitly resolved this onscreen during the Berman Era shows, preferring to weasel with offscreen head canon in interviews saying that perhaps the Eugenics Wars were covert and going on unknown in the 90s, the new shows have dealt with this problem head on by acknowledging that temporal incursions do affect the timing of major events without making it a separate timeline.

SNW and Prodigy have been able to make this clear onscreen in canon with the expert help of the franchise’s excellent physicist science advisor Dr. Erin Macdonald. (She did her PhD with the team in Scotland that got the Noble prize just a couple of years later. She’s truly on top of modern theoretical physics.)

Glad to have you. You should be warned though that this crew has already sucked in meme-lookers into watch the show and becoming fans.

As I was sucked in by the kid across the hall with a colour tv back in 1965, I can attest to the risk of wondering “What’s that pointy-eared guy doing with his hand on that monster?”