Ombailamos

the trouble with BMI

A new miniseries has come out on HBO, and I do not get HBO so I am not watching this thing, but it has to do with obesity in America. The work was controversial before it even aired, with various fat-acceptance promoters and fat apologists jumping to the conclusion that the series would be just another "fat people are gross and lazy" lowest-common-denominator denunciation of the people, rather than the problem.

The real issue is, of course, that America DOES have an obesity problem; and that problem has to be addressed by the people who share it. Which is everybody, because we all share the costs of a population that's overweight and unhealthy.

I'm not going to call it an "epidemic" because IMO that particular term ought to be reserved for communicable diseases, and obesity is neither communicable nor a disease: it is the physical consequence of a behavioral disorder. 

So there is no vaccine for it, and all the government propaganda and subsidies in the world will not solve the ultimate dilemma: which is that the American way of life makes it much too easy to get fat.

I would be the first to say I get it. I work full time, I have to fit meal planning, shopping, cooking, and exercise in around the edges just like everybody else.

Unlike many, however, I've deliberately shaped my life so that my entire working day does not consume my entire waking day. I pay high rent so that I can live close to my employment. That high rent buys me 2-4 hours a day that many of my co-workers spend in their cars.

I also get that losing weight is a damn sight harder than maintaining weight.

I have never gone over 150 pounds and am currently around 135. According to the Body Mass Index graph, that puts me squarely into the "normal" range. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index Also according to the graph, if I did edge over 150 pounds I would officially be into the "overweight" range.

The trouble with BMI is that body mass does not equate to body fat. I could be the same 135 pounds, or less, and still have too much body fat. Or I could be 150 pounds or more, with 10% body fat - if I were a champion bodybuilder.

And because of this, the fat-acceptance people and the fat apologists like to claim that BMI is a useless measurement and that BMI has nothing to do with health and that Will Smith would be obese according to the BMI graph (he wouldn't, by the way) and a bunch of other bullshit.

The designers and users of the BMI method said right from the start, BMI is a useful measure for populations and is not an ideal tool for making diagnosis of individuals.

Going back to the example. Let's say I am still 5 foot 6 and 135 pounds, but I do no exercise whatever. My body mass would therefore be much less evenly distributed between bone, muscle, organ meat, and fat: my body fat would likely be 35-40%, versus the 20-25% it probably is now. (I don't actually know, because the most accurate way to get this measurement is an expensive test.)

At 5 foot 6, by the BMI graph, at 115 pounds I would be considered "underweight." At that weight, my body mass would be distributed between bone, organ meat, and a little bit of muscle - just enough to get me out of bed, basically. The only way for me to sustain that weight and be nominally healthy would be for me to do hours of cardio a day and eat, more or less constantly, a very low-calorie, high-protein diet. If I got to 115 pounds just by dieting and did no exercise, I would be a very sick puppy.

On the other end of the scale, I tip over into "overweight" at 150 pounds. In my opinion this is an understatement.

The reality is, most 5 foot 6 inch women who weigh 150 pounds are carrying 15-25 pounds of pure fat on top of whatever muscle they have. This isn't a value judgement. It's simply a fact.

So the apologists and the acceptance people can bark all they want about how BMI is a poor measure. If that's all you look at, it IS a poor measure. It is only one of the numbers everyone should be looking at. The failure of BMI to serve as an individualized diagnosis - something it was never intended to do - is irrelevant in its application to our obese population.

fun with casting: a project for Daniel Radcliffe

My tolerant readers have probably noticed that I talk about books quite a bit. I am engaged in an ongoing (several years now) draw-down of my library. A huge chunk of it was purged, en masse, several years ago and since then I have been nibbling away at it. Reason being, books were taking over our living space.

As much as I love books, I no longer want to live in a library. I want that space available to serve other activities.

Part of the project is assessing various collections. I've collected mystery fiction for a long time and have had full sets of various authors' work. A good number of these have now hit the road - mostly, actually, they've been given to the BH Public Library.

Many of these departed pre-Kindle, so as far as I knew I was really saying goodbye forever! Since the project started, of course, masses of literature has become available in e-formats. Some authors are no longer with us, and their heirs are apparently unconcerned with future sales ... just a note, y'all, you can undoubtedly sell more of these if you negotiate an e-book contract. Just saying.

So ANYWAY, the point I was getting to today is that there is a short series (too short, in my opinion) by Will Thomas featuring a private investigator, Cyrus Barker, and his youthful assistant Thomas Llewelyn. The book titles, for your convenience, are:

• Some Danger Involved;
• To Kingdom Come;
• The Limehouse Text;
• The Hellfire Conspiracy; and
• The Black Hand.

One element of great interest to me is that Mr. Thomas features a different immigrant community in each book. One book, for example, features the Chinese and one features Jewish immigrants.

Because the books are set in Victorian London and revolve around a private investigator, they have an intrinsic appeal for this fan of Sherlock Holmes. The central characters use methods that would be quite familiar to other such fans, and in fact Cyrus Barker seems (to me) to be a clear inspiration for Guy Ritchie's new cinema interpretation of Holmes.

These books, however, would stand quite nicely on their own. And I think Liam Neeson should play Barker, and Daniel Radcliffe should play Llewelyn.

They are physically perfect for the parts, both good actors, and both I think would shine in these characters. Moreover, Mr. Neeson is prime "franchise" material and we already know Mr. Radcliffe can handle a long-term commitment.

I don't know if Mr. Thomas ran out of ideas or if his publisher just didn't want to support the series or what. I could read a lot more of these books before I got tired of the characters, and I would REALLY love to see a movie (or TV - I'm not picky) adaptation.

So if any producers out there know Mr. Radcliffe or Mr. Neeson and would like to jump on the enduring popularity of the Victorian mystery, you know, I would love to write a script for you.

link of the week: on creativity

http://happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2012/05/7-tips-i-use-to-spark-my-creativity/

This is a great short piece on ways to jump-start the creative mind. There are a lot of characteristics or personality traits that I do not share with Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project - but a lot that I do share. So I pay attention, especially when she is writing about something that concerns me as directly as creativity.

I wonder sometimes if a lot of people realize just how much creativity they employ on a daily basis. It takes creativity, for example, to come up with a meal plan for the week. It takes creativity to decorate a room. It takes creativity to hook up electronic gadgets in a car, or organize a garden, or do Sudoku, or design an exercise plan, or compose an instructive e-mail.

The employment of skills, when it is on your own time and potentiated by your own motivation, is explicitly creative. And this leads me to an interesting tangent.

Not long ago a small study was released that looked at fitness levels and self-reported exercise time among a population of New York City hotel housekeepers. Many of the housekeepers reported no formal exercise time, and these workers typically were measurably less fit than those who did report intentional exercise.

However, some weeks after a single counseling session in which workers were instructed to view their daily work as exercise, almost every one of the workers had an improved fitness level - without adding intentional exercise at all. In short, simply recognizing the activity as exercise somehow potentiated fitness gains.

I believe the same principle applies to creativity. If you recognize what you are doing as a creative act, I believe that engages deeper levels of the brain. A typical task may seem rote and routine, but consciously noticing the skills in use calls up further resources.

I try to employ this technique regularly. It may be one of the reasons I have so many ideas all the time. My varied interests, in and of themselves, are not necessarily causing me to generate ideas. It is the tasks involved in these interests, and my intentional recognition of the skills and talents required to do various tasks, that unlocks the creative flow.

I'm not a genius by any definition. I think my various successes and achievements, minor though they may be, are entirely due to mindfulness. It is a part of my yoga, and it is the technique that I believe (and hope) will see me into old age with most of my faculties intact.

The best thing about it is that it costs nothing and takes next-to-no time. And there is no downside. If you are feeling stifled or dull, it may be worth a try.

creative business

The latest issue of "Fast Company" has a long story on Steve Jobs, by Brent Schlender, a journalist who interviewed Mr. Jobs many times over a period of 25 years. Some fascinating stuff, even for those of us who are not particularly fascinated by the tech industry and have no intention of buying additional Apple products. (Though I must confess, the iPod is great.) Among the many thought-provoking quotes from previously-unpublished interviews:

"... my training has been in doing things that take a long time. ...I have been trained to think in units of time that are measured in several years. With what I've chosen to do with my life, you know, even a small thing takes a few years. To do anything of magnitude takes at least five years, more likely seven or eight. Rightfully or wrongfully, that's how I think." - Steve Jobs, 1995

What I find particularly profound in this is that popular media rarely looks at the time and patience and thought that are required to produce innovation - or to produce great work of any kind.

We see the annual release of new lovely gadgets and the popular assumption is that they are springing from the assembly lines after a few weeks of discussion and a couple of technical drawings, when in fact each one is the product of years of development.

Personal projects work the same way. Most writers, for example, don't sit down without an idea in their heads and spin a tale requiring no editing that is ready to go to press in a week. Most writers, from all my reading on the subject, are like me: they do research, they read, they obsess about things, they write outlines, they try out storylines and dialogue, they write a draft, they edit and edit and edit sometimes for years, and sometimes all of this only begins after years of letting an idea slowly germinate.

On the micro level in our culture, everything is about instant gratification and getting-there-fast and cutting one's losses if things don't work out right away. But really ACCOMPLISHING anything noteworthy - anything of magnitude, in Mr. Jobs' words - takes time.

One doesn't learn to dance well in a month, or even a year. One doesn't master a new language in a couple of weeks. And especially for those of us who work full-time, because anything else we do has to fit around the edges of our working life, the timeline for achievement can be extended indefinitely.

It is always the case that, in order to work on Thing 1 with any degree of attention and care, we have to push Thing 2 into a corner. We only have one brain apiece. We have to give it the time to work.

DWTS Season 15: preliminary skirmishes

The dance-geek blogosphere is beginning to buzz over the announcement that the fall season of Dancing with the Stars will feature an "All-Star" cast. So of course, I have to add MY buzz.

I think this is a great idea, and possibly a couple of seasons overdue; there have been three celebrities in every final, after all, and only one winner. So as of next Tuesday, there are fourteen champions and 28 bitter also-rans.

One could easily just take every second-place finisher and have that as the first All-Star cast; or every third-place finisher; or a combination of 2nd and 3rd place contestants.

One could also, of course, try to get the first dozen champions back to duke it out. I wouldn't choose that, though. My feeling is that any given champion has probably already shown us the best he or she could do.

My personal All-Star cast would include some finalists, but as a dance geek, I would have to cast ONLY people who have already established they can dance well. This actually does limit the selection a bit, as not all finalists were great dancers by any means. I would also cast only people who had a good attitude. I would cast:

• Jerry Rice - with Karina Smirnoff
• Gilles Marini - with Anna Trebunskaya
• Lance Bass - with Chelsie Hightower
• Mario Lopez - with Peta Murgatroyd
• Chris Jericho - with Elena Grinenko
• Joey Fatone - with Cheryl Burke
• Albert Reed - with Lacey Schwimmer
• Melissa Rycroft - with Jonathan Roberts
• Stacy Keibler - with Maksym Chmerkovskiy
• Mel B - with Ryan de Lillo
• Sabrina Bryan - with Louis van Amstel
• Mya - with Tristan McManus
• Brandy - with Tony Dovolani

I would give each contestant a new partner, as well - no going back to the old partner (suggestions above). I would reserve the pro dancers who have already won more than once for group choreography and general coaching. And I would change some of the rules, because these are no longer ballroom novices.

First, I would change the dances to be performed as duets.

• For the Latin dances, I would keep International-style Rumba, Cha-cha, and Samba, add American-style Mambo and East Coast Swing, and remove Salsa, Paso Doble, and Jive.
• For the ballroom dances, I would keep American-style waltz and foxtrot, plus International-style tango and quickstep, removing Viennese Waltz, which has inspired the most expletives while watching this show, since 80% of the time the producers select music that is 100% wrong.
• I would reserve the Argentine Tango for a special episode in which all contestants performed that dance - say, week three. It would not be included as a "ballroom" dance.

I would also permit lifts right off the bat. Again, these aren't novices - they've been through the process before and we are, theoretically, casting people who are fit enough to do lifts. So, let 'em! My stipulation would be that each dance has to contain at least 50% syllabus material, and beyond that let them go nuts.

Then, I would change the dance schedule so that e.g., all male celebrities do a cha-cha in week one while all females do a quickstep, then switch for week two. Everyone would get to dance twice before there's an elimination, but two would be eliminated at the end of week 2. And at this point everyone would have done all the same dances, so the voters - who are getting slightly less clueless about how to evaluate the dancing - can compare apples to apples.

I would bring back Latin Night and Ballroom Night to circumvent the recurrent issue of a snappy cha-cha or sexy samba smacking down a lyrical waltz. And I would get rid of the "storytelling" dances. UGH.

I would add "team dances" when there are ten, eight, and six couples remaining in the competition - for teams of five, four, and three - and I'd have them do Jive, Paso Doble, and Viennese Waltz in team routines, with short solos.

At the five-couple quarterfinal everyone would do two full original dances, at the four-couple semifinal everyone would do three - reprises of their cha-cha and quickstep routines, and a Freestyle.

You may notice that "my" cast favors the male celebrities. My ulterior motive for this is that the show is good for ballroom dancing in a lot of ways, but first and foremost - in my opinion, which is the only one that counts (here) - by making it OKAY for men to dance.

So anyway. That was a lot of fun and while I'm sure the producers will not take ANY of my suggestions, I am already looking forward to the All-Star season.

making friends with the neighbors

Illicit feeding in North Carolina. Chickadee, some kind of woodpecker, Grosbeak, and you really should know what the fourth critter is!

when TV transcends itself

Recap of the "Castle" season finale, with comments from very, very happy fans.  http://tvline.com/2012/05/07/castle-season-4-finale-post-mortem-recap/#more-327048

I like this show a lot.  I've even gone so far as to buy the DVD collections of the series, because you never know, the day may come when I don't have satellite TV anymore, and while I am certain it will be syndicated, I like all the people involved so much that I relish the special features.

"Castle" has so much great mystery source material behind it - I see everything from "The Thin Man" to J.D. Robb's Eve Dallas series - that, if there ARE any mystery readers out there who do not watch, I would like to smack them.  Just a bit.

Here are some things I like about the lead character. 

Rick Castle: the rich guy, with the actress mother, who made his fortune as a mystery writer.  That is, I think, a unique character as the protagonist of a TV series.  What are his defining qualities? 

• He is smart.  He does his research.  He is capable. 
• This is not the funny sidekick who has to be rescued all the time - he's made real contributions to solving various cases, through the expertise he's accrued from research for his books.  He is also quite acute psychologically: he doesn't misunderstand people very often, and he communicates well. 
• As expertly played by Nathan Fillion, charm and wit are the FIRST things we see in Castle, closely followed by intelligence, imagination, and a willingness to say what other people might be thinking but are afraid will sound goofy. 
• He's brave.  He goes into situations that scare him in order to support his team.  And he takes the notion of "team" quite seriously, always respectful toward his official counterparts. 
• He's consistently kind, patient, and generous with his sometimes flighty mother and is an involved, loving, and insightful parent.  These are not characteristics many male TV characters share. 
• And finally, while assertive, Castle is not bossy: he treats his partnership with Beckett as just that - a partnership. 

So, there's my little appreciation of a great TV character.  I'm glad the show runners finally brought the Castle-Beckett romance to a consummation.  That relationship was not one of those that is confected by writers merely to add something for the characters to do when they are not fighting crime; it was built quite naturally over time, and the characters have been so consistently engaging that fans like me wanted it to work. 

Beckett has been a less engaging character in part because of the through-story's structural limitations: the underlying conflict storyline of her mother's murder, which will clearly be a big part of season 5, established character conflicts that pretty much precluded Beckett's being open to a real relationship.  The push-back has been almost entirely from her side.  But thanks to good writing, she has never come off as an irrational harpy. 

I am quite interested to see what the writers do with the team now.  With Beckett off the force (at least temporarily - unless she decides to fight crime as a lawyer, I can't really see her staying out of the street side of law enforcement), Esposito suspended, Castle giving a crap primarily to the extent that he can work with Kate, and Ryan left all alone, there are lots of possibilities for extralegal investigations, operations, and complications. 

I am hoping for a nice juicy pair of episodes dealing with the "second couple" of Ryan & Esposito.  Those two good actors have had a lot of different stuff to play, but mostly in small bites.  I'd like to see a storyline that puts them front and center.

 

house finch on lantern, Riverside

garden envy is a great motivator

And, since there is no commandment that "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's garden," I shall continue to indulge.

Our vacation in North Carolina was almost enough to make me want to move back East. So much water! So much green!! But ... also, lots of bugs and lots of want-to-stay-inside weather. And state-constitutional amendments based on religion, which really piss me off. So, I'll stay here in sunny CA ... though it was a bit sad flying in over our gray & brown city.

Spent several hours and quite a few bucks working on my patio garden over the weekend. I had at least one old plant that I knew I would be getting rid of, although I didn't anticipate just what a chore it would be: A potted palm, about four feet high.

It took me a half hour of wrestling, digging, and chopping to cut loose the tree and another fifteen minutes to get the completely root-filled dirt block out of the planter. But after dragging the corpse out to the alley dumpster, I had room to assemble my new collection of flowering, hummingbird-friendly plants.

The first necessity was new shelving for the rack at the far end of the patio. The way we had it set up, it supported a single layer of plants. I wanted to use two shelves, and that meant putting the top shelf higher. And I needed new actual surfaces, because the particle board that originally came with the thing had long since dissolved and what I had was a trashy assortment of scavenged bits of questionable structural integrity.

After a lot of Googling, I abandoned the notion of buying prefab shelves and just took myself to the lumberyard to have some plywood cut to size. Mr. P helped me reconfigure the rails and then the plywood went on top. And then I could load the shelves!

Another necessity was cutting back my big ficus and re-shaping my little one. The rule I follow is, cut off no more than 20% of the plant if you want it to recover quickly and thrive. The little ficus barely needed any cutting; my goal is to keep it at its present height and let it umbrella out a bit, so I just had to take a little off the top.

The big ficus did end up losing the full 20%. It needs to be re-potted, but I don't want to go to a bigger container: so the entire tree needs to stay the same height it is now, and I will eventually reduce its spread. But once it's recovered from the amputations, the re-potting process has to start.

To do that, I'll need a really big washtub type thing. Once I (and my minions) get the tree out of its current pot, it will go in the washtub to soak in water for at least a week before I trim the roots. I'll add all fresh new Miracle Gro (organic) to the pot before putting the tree back.

It's kind of like doing a bonsai, is my understanding, just with a full-size plant. Although full-size is a joke with a ficus, which can get 60 or more feet high.

A full count of the life on my 150 square foot patio:

• One 5-foot ficus tree
• One 3-foot ficus tree
• One 4-foot money tree sharing tenancy with a peace lily (they seem to get along together very well) and a yellow begonia
• One jade plant
• One yellow cymbidium orchid that needs to be divided and repotted (it has bloomed twice but I suspect it is sulking now)
• Three sets of spider plants, two in a 2-tier planter and one in a separate container
• One dracaena container, with two different small plants
• Another dracaena container, with a single multi-stemmed 4-foot plant
• One Japanese maple, 3-foot size
• One jasmine plant, which I attempt to keep in a shrubby state
• One mostly-white trailing philodendron
• Two chinaberry plants
• One foxtail
• One glass bowl full of money tree cuttings, probably soon to go the way of the palm tree (the way that money tree tries to grow, I will never run out of cuttings)
• Three Astilbe, which I prefer to call "horse feathers," with green foliage and a pink flower (soon)
• Three Coral Bells with a pink flower and maroon foliage
• Two honeysuckle fuschias, with sunset pink flowers and green/maroon foliage
• Three double-ruffle begonias with a scarlet flower and maroon foliage

This seems like A Lot, doesn't it? But our patio constitutes the entirety of our "view," and this is the only green space we really have. There is room to walk through it, and that's good enough for me.

cullasaja falls, NC