I am an overweight American

I am 5’8″ tall and weigh 165 pounds, which puts my BMI at 25. Healthy normal BMI for men is supposed to be under 25, so my doctor tells me I need to lose weight. Or gain half an inch in height. Either way, really.

I reminded him that the body mass index is only a rough estimate of body composition, subject to a number of limitations and shortcomings, and that the estimate of body composition it provides is itself only a rough estimate of health. I told him I can run five miles at a stretch and that I lift weights regularly. He told me I probably ate too many fatty snacks.

Obviously I went to the gym and asked the fitness expert to measure my body-fat percentage. Her machine told me that it’s 18%. She told me 18% is fine. She also said I should fire my doctor because he doesn’t know the difference between BMI and body composition.

I don’t doubt that obesity is a serious problem. And I’m sure I could be in better shape – my body fat percentage was lower a few years ago, when I was in my 20s and single and exercising every day for an hour or more. But a blind adherence to inaccurate numbers is not going to help things.

Davis Square, Home of the Tree-Sweater, Gets Statue-Masks

If you haven’t seen it yet, this picture of one of the statues in Davis Square seems to me like a very good indication of the zeitgeist: On the one hand, we’re all worried. On the other hand, we know our worry is absurd. So, we put silly ineffective masks on statues.

As long as we feel like we’re doing something, it doesn’t matter whether the thing we do is actually effective or even relevant.

Oh, I have some suggestions for you Objectivists out there

There’s a list of ideas on how to “go galt” – that is, truly live out an Objectivist protest against the constricting fabric of society. They say, for example, you should stop taking public transit to liberate yourself from subsidizing collectivist transit.

But that’s just a cop-out. If you want to do it right, you should stop driving on taxpayer-financed roads and obeying taxpayer-financed traffic laws. And definitely don’t use those meddlesome taxpayer-funded ambulances if you crash your car and get injured, or if someone beats you senseless for driving against the light down the sidewalk.

If you avoid using the taxpayer-funded grid to get taxpayer-subsidized electricity from coddled and over-regulated utilities, and switch to wood for heat and candles for lighting, and your house catches fire, be sure to put the fire out yourself rather than relying on your local corrupt taxpayer-funded fire departments.

Foodwise, you should definitely dig your own well and sterilize your own water rather than using the public water authority. And for goodness sake, don’t eat anything made from corn – that’s heavily funded by disgusting socialist subsidies that distort the true force of market pricing. That includes not just corn itself, but also sodas, baked goods, beef, pork, chicken, tilapia, E10 and E85 gasoline, beer, liquor, you name it. And definitely don’t buy any food that’s been transported through the tax-subsidized interstate highway system – only buy local foods carted in by donkey on footpaths.

Meanwhile, be sure to pull your kids out of school. Of course, to properly home-school them in the Galt tradition, you’ll need to teach them only things you already know or can learn without relying on taxpayer-funded curricula, taxpayer-funded libraries, or the taxpayer-funded internet. So, basically, just bible study. Although most of those bibles are produced through religious charities and that Jesus guy seems like he was pretty into helping the poor, so you might want to reconsider that. I guess just read to them from Atlas Shrugged and make them memorize the multiplication tables. I’m sure that will be enough for them to sustain themselves in a new individualist society.

“Shadow Inventory” in the Boston real estate market

Shadow Inventory is the term used to describe properties that would normally be for sale, but for one reason or another are not. Typically that means bank-owned units that the banks just haven’t been trying to list because they can’t move them. But also things like properties people would like to sell – either a property they live in but want to leave, an investment property they’d like to sell, or a home they’re stuck renting out because they moved into a new place and can’t unload the old one.

I don’t know what category the pair of condos at 67 Church in Union Square, Somerville fall into. But they’ve been pulled from the market – both the 3BR asking under 479k and the 1BR asking just shy of 300. I don’t even know if they truly count as shadow inventory or if they’re just unsold.

Either way, over the past few months, I’ve seen several promising homes in that neighborhood go on the market, languish, and then exit without a sale, meaning there’s probably just as many sellers waiting on the sidelines as buyers. In other words, I’m not seeing any signs of turnaround or uptick. And if I’m anything like the rest of the potential first-time buyers the Globe is rooting for, I doubt we’ll see one any time soon.

Look at it this way: I’ve got some money saved up. I’ve been lusting after Boston-area real estate for almost ten years now. I’d be a prime candidate to be swooping in to buy at a discount right now. But frankly, even taking on a yearlong lease seems like a dangerously risky financial move. A 30 year loan? Nobody I know has any confidence they’ll have a job a year from now. Who on earth would make a 30-year promise when they can’t predict with any certainty at all where they’ll be in 12 months?

Bob Reich vs. Nutjobs

I walked past the teabagging party on the Common today. Fox claimed it was about 700, but to me it looked like a lot less, and it also looked like half the folks there were gawking at/mocking the tax protesters.

Bob Reich has the lowdown on reasonable responses to their idiocy. Of course, a reasonable and measured response isn’t exactly going to help when you’re trying to talk to people who don’t know fascism from a kick in the teeth. But hey, take what you can get.

We’re wicked sick and tired of it

Kate says exactly what I was feeling. Puma and the Volvo Ocean Racing series have a Station Domination campaign up in Park Street Station, and it’s all “Habah” and “Stopovah” and “Dance Floah.”

It’s trite. It’s been done. It’s kind of insulting. And it’s definitely counterproductive.

Probably fewer than 20% of the people who walk through that station have a “Boston accent.” Those that do would probably tell you there’s more than one regional accent, and none of the variations is well-represented by just replacing “R” with “AH” in a billboard. Even if they did write it accurately, it’s pretty condescending. You wouldn’t try to reach the urban market with a half-assed parody of hip-hop slang, would you? Wait, don’t answer that. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Boost Mobile).

Most importantly, it’s an ad that just won’t work. It marks the advertiser as an outsider desperate to fit in, as a tourist, as an out-of-towner. You might as well walk the Freedom Trail in khaki shorts, sandals with socks, a tricorner hat and a t-shirt with a lobster on it. That’s definitely not the image Puma wants, but it’s what they’re getting.

Seriously, if you’re going to spend that much money on a media buy, why waste it with an idea that’s so bad on so many different levels?