BMI

Body-Mass Index - as it is popularly used - is nothing but a psuedo-science.

1. It has no accounting in order to distinguish muscle from fat. According to this forumla, having muscle is equal to having extra fat.

2. Its origins are in the nineteenth century. Fine. But, it hasn't adjusted for the change in nutrition OR in what we view as obese. Remember, until really about the 1960s and the model "Twiggy" - a little fat was a sign of beauty.

3. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health switched from using a BMI of 27.8 to 25 for determining if a person is overweight. That moved at least 30 million Americans to being overweight by this standard. Don't get me wrong, I do believe we have a weight problem in this country, but we also have a problem in how we measure it.

4. My best friend is center average according to the BMI scale (measured by a 3rd party). He is ~5 foot 10 inches, 125 lbs and has a 28 inch waist. Most people who meet him try to give him a sandwich because he's too skinny, but according to this chart, he's absolute perfection. And no, of course people don't give him food, although they quite often mention that he should eat more.

And I'm so sick of everyone touting it as the final truth on weight! There are way more factors involved than dividing weight by height (and then multiplying by 705).

I'm also not a fan of trying to stick everyone in a "one-size-fits-all" standard. I'm sorry, people and real life are far more complicated. That's why I was an anthropology major. And no, you can't simplify this sh**.

Namesake

My good friend was surfing online today looking at baby names. She's due in less than a month and they threw out the name they'd decided and were trying to come up with something else. I'm just letting her ramble while trying to get some of my work done. A sentence she said hits a button and my brain automatically hits replay.

"Irish and Klingon are very similar, at least the way I try to pronounce them."

I just thought you'd enjoy that too.

what type of tree would be you be?

I was required to attend a touchy-feely seminar for work. If this tells you the attitude I had toward it:

promotion of this question: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
me: An aspen.
Why?
me: Because it has 'ass' in it.

And that, my friends, is a Dalton Reed original.

bucket o' blood

at the doctor's office this morning... new place for me, never been there before. So, I'm waiting in the little exam room and I hear this through the door:

(casual male voice): If the bucket of blood gets full, just dump it out.

My first thought: Er... how big of a bucket?
My second thought: Do these windows open at all?

No context. No followup. No further comments. Just a bucket of blood.