+5.4 (∆ -1)

It hit me sometime when I was putting on my climbing harness at Pipeworks—I had already been at my own gym earlier in the day. And now I was at another gym? Seriously? Who am I?

+6.4 (∆ -0.8)

Tough month for me, I'll admit. These last few pounds have been challenging... I think I'll have to measure every calorie I ingest to whittle away to the finish line. If the minimum daily calorie intake for men is 1800, then I'll have to count everything which goes into my body. Due to visitors in town, and the flu that hit our house pretty badly, it's been impossible to get to the gym to do any workouts for about two weeks—right now, the only possibility to lose weight is to eat less.

Along those lines, I read a fascinating article on NPR about how a common measurement for weight—the Body Mass Index—is categorically obsolete. Since I've been using BMI as a central tool to gauge my progress (+0 is my weight calculated from a normal BMI), of course I was very interested in reading the article.

It usually takes a lot for me to make a sweeping dismissal of anything already in the status quo; in a modern age where sensible people avoid superstitious nonsense like praying to a deity for rain, my gut feeling suggests that if something has made it into the status quo, there's probably a good reason for it to be there. Of course, everything is subject to common sense... I'm just saying that the status quo is not to be dismantled willy nilly without some sensible logic. NPR isn't a conspiracy-theory organization, so I'm always open to hearing their reasonable analysis; if it makes sense to me, I'm willing to go along with it as well. While still an interesting and somewhat useful measurement of healthy body weight, BMI is not the panacea to me that it once was. Body fat percentage seems a more accurate marker of healthy body weight.

Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus
by Keith Devlin

The BMI Formula
BMI = weight in pounds/(height in inches x height in inches) x 703

The 703 is to convert the index from the original metric version of the formula.

CDC Recommendations:

Below 18.5 = Underweight
18.5 to 24.9 = Ideal
25.0 to 29.9 = Overweight
30.0 and above = Obese

Weekend Edition Saturday, July 4, 2009 • Americans keep putting on the pounds — at least according to a report released this week from the Trust for America's Health. The study found that nearly two-thirds of states now have adult obesity rates above 25 percent.

But you may want to take those findings — and your next meal — with a grain of salt, because they're based on a calculation called the body mass index, or BMI.

As the Weekend Edition math guy, I spoke to Scott Simon and told him the body mass index fails on 10 grounds:

1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.

The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. In other words, it is a 200-year-old hack.

2. It is scientifically nonsensical.

There is no physiological reason to square a person's height (Quetelet had to square the height to get a formula that matched the overall data. If you can't fix the data, rig the formula!). Moreover, it ignores waist size, which is a clear indicator of obesity level.

3. It is physiologically wrong.

It makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body. But bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as fat, so a person with strong bones, good muscle tone and low fat will have a high BMI. Thus, athletes and fit, health-conscious movie stars who work out a lot tend to find themselves classified as overweight or even obese.

4. It gets the logic wrong.

The CDC says on its Web site that "the BMI is a reliable indicator of body fatness for people." This is a fundamental error of logic. For example, if I tell you my birthday present is a bicycle, you can conclude that my present has wheels. That's correct logic. But it does not work the other way round. If I tell you my birthday present has wheels, you cannot conclude I got a bicycle. I could have received a car. Because of how Quetelet came up with it, if a person is fat or obese, he or she will have a high BMI. But as with my birthday present, it doesn't work the other way round. A high BMI does not mean an individual is even overweight, let alone obese. It could mean the person is fit and healthy, with very little fat.

5. It's bad statistics.

Because the majority of people today (and in Quetelet's time) lead fairly sedentary lives and are not particularly active, the formula tacitly assumes low muscle mass and high relative fat content. It applies moderately well when applied to such people because it was formulated by focusing on them. But it gives exactly the wrong answer for a large and significant section of the population, namely the lean, fit and healthy. Quetelet is also the person who came up with the idea of "the average man." That's a useful concept, but if you try to apply it to any one person, you come up with the absurdity of a person with 2.4 children. Averages measure entire populations and often don't apply to individuals.

6. It is lying by scientific authority.

Because the BMI is a single number between 1 and 100 (like a percentage) that comes from a mathematical formula, it carries an air of scientific authority. But it is mathematical snake oil.

7. It suggests there are distinct categories of underweight, ideal, overweight and obese, with sharp boundaries that hinge on a decimal place.

That's total nonsense.

8. It makes the more cynical members of society suspect that the medical insurance industry lobbies for the continued use of the BMI to keep their profits high.

Insurance companies sometimes charge higher premiums for people with a high BMI. Among such people are all those fit individuals with good bone and muscle and little fat, who will live long, healthy lives during which they will have to pay those greater premiums.

9. Continued reliance on the BMI means doctors don't feel the need to use one of the more scientifically sound methods that are available to measure obesity levels.

Those alternatives cost a little bit more, but they give far more reliable results.

10. It embarrasses the U.S.

It is embarrassing for one of the most scientifically, technologically and medicinally advanced nations in the world to base advice on how to prevent one of the leading causes of poor health and premature death (obesity) on a 200-year-old numerical hack developed by a mathematician who was not even an expert in what little was known about the human body back then. Link.

Punctinilification

I see this odd little error from time to time and never really understand it—"R.I.P". If we follow the logic that the first two periods mean that "R" and "I" stand for other words, then the resulting translation is "Rest in P", not "Rest in Peace". And you thought punctuation was unimportant.

I see this error crop up in many iterations... U.S.A, A.K.A, M.I.A, etc. I see it so often that I even coined a word for it way back when sniglets were all the rage—punctinilification.

Sure, there are greater problems in the world than worrying about forgotten typographic characters, but I also feel that how carefully we deal with small details like punctinilification hints at how carefully we'll deal with the greater problems in the world. Put another way, if we can't take an extra split second to add a simple period at the end of an acronym, what hope do we have in solving world poverty?

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani took a similar approach to tackling crime when he became mayor. His idea wasn't to go after the serious crimes as a sole priority, but to also focus on "incivilities", the minor crimes like vandalism, loitering, etc. The theory was that minor crimes are the tip of the iceberg that lead to major crimes later on... the result was a completely different city greatly removed of its former criminal strife.

It always sounds so... petty to snipe at missteps in grammar or spelling but I often wonder: if we forced each other to be more precise about our use of language, doesn't it follow that our thoughts would be more precise as well? George Orwell certainly thought so.

Selling Digital Content in The 21st Century (Fans are key)

Below is one of the most astute lectures I've ever seen on how content providers can make money in the changing economy. It's a keynote speech by Mike Masnick on Trent Raznor's (from Nine Inch Nails) creative approaches to making money by simply connecting with his fans... and then giving them a damned good reason to buy from him.

As I've said before, piracy is not a technological problem, and thus cannot be stopped in the long-term by making it illegal. Pirates will always outnumber policing agencies and the swiftness of digital transfers will always favor pirates over content providers. No amount of locks will keep someone from breaking into your house if they want to. Piracy is really a social problem—people pirate because they're frustrated with being gouged by $30 DVDs or $20 CDs (just to buy 1 song), or the content can't be seen or heard yet because the movie or song is (pick one: still in theatres, still on pay-per-view, not being broadcast locally, too old to find on DVD, only on a non-US region DVD, being sold for outrageous prices on Amazon due to it not being a US region DVD, not something you would usually see or listen to but are curious to sample it, etc.) Ultimately, piracy is simply a free market force in the hands of pro-active consumers. Consumers want the content and if it's easier to get that content from a pirated copy, they'll do it.

However, if you give consumers a true reason to buy your product (e.g., DVDs specifically made to glow when they spin, treasure hunts & Alternative Reality Games found on T-shirts sold at your concerts), piracy quickly becomes moot. Consumers want to experience creativity from their artists and they'll gladly reward the most creative artists with cashey money if given a chance.

Embedded here is the 15 minute (trust me, it goes by quickly) presentation I did at MidemNet on January 17th in Cannes, France. If you're reading via RSS or another site like iGoogle, click through to see the full presentation. Sorry it took so long to get the video up. There were a few minor technical difficulties. Anyway, the presentation garnered an interesting reaction and a whole series of fascinating discussions over email, in person and over the phone since I presented it, and while I don't want to repeat what's in the video, I did want to discuss a few points raised by the presentation. The core of the presentation is the following simple "formula" that is the basis for making money in the music business (and, I'd argue, many other businesses) in the digital era:

Connect With Fans (CwF) + Reason To Buy (RtB) = The Business Model ($$$$)

There are many artists—famous and not so famous—who have been making use (on purpose, or not) of this formula to create successful strategies for building up a stronger fan base, creating wonderful new works of art, distributing them out to the community and getting paid for it at the same time. What made Reznor so interesting as a case study was the fact that he's done it so many times in so many different ways that he, by himself, represents a great example of how you can approach this simple formula in an infinite variety of creative ways.

One of the issues I've had in discussing recording industry business models is that we always hear excuses for why a, b or c won't work. "Well, that guy can make money selling t-shirts, but this guy's fans aren't t-shirt types." "That guy will sell concert tickets, but this guy doesn't like to perform." "Maybe some fans will pay upfront, but people are so greedy that most will just free-ride." It's all excuses. They all want a simple model that everyone can follow, but the point here is that while the model itself is simple, executing on any business model is difficult.

It's about applying that "simple model" in a variety of different creative ways—which Reznor has done time and time and time again. Hell, I couldn't even include all of the examples of Reznor's successes in this single presentation, let alone successes by other musicians who have executed differently—but all of whom connected with fans (CwF) and then gave them a real reason to buy (RtB).

A second point that needs to be discussed is that a true reason to buy (RtB) is a voluntary transaction. Too often we've seen musicians or other content creators think that there is some sort of obligation to buy. And, so they put something out with a price tag, but without doing a very good job convincing fans why they should buy. There was no real reason—and then they seem to lash out at their fans for hurting them. The fault, however, lies with the musician (like any business) who failed to give a proper reason to buy, and falsely assumed that fans had some sort of obligation to buy. If an artist believes there's an obligation to buy, fans will often educate the artist very quickly.

One final point on this is the last question that people often raise: why should the musician be involved in any of this? Shouldn't they just be creating music. There are two answers to this. First, this is exactly where a smart record label, agent or manager can come in and be quite helpful. Let the musician create the music and let the "business guys" focus on applying this business model. Second, however, is that due to the way the industry is these days, the musician does need to be somewhat involved. You cannot connect with fans if you're in seclusion. If you don't want to make the effort to connect with fans, then that's fine: you won't have that many fans. It's a choice you make.

That said, there are tremendous opportunities allowed by new technologies, new communities and new methods of communicating today. They all enable better ways to connect with fans, and better ways to offer real reasons to buy. Those who look at the past and complain about what's been lost need to turn around and look at the vast open fields of opportunity in front of them. There's a lot more music to be made, a ton of new fans to make very, very happy—and, yes, through it all, an awful lot of money that can be made as well. You just need to stop worrying about what was lost and recognize all there is to be gained. Link.

Anatomy of a Sale (or Lack Thereof)

Yesterday I was doing research on a TV series from the 1970s called Survivors. It took me a little time to suss out what the name of the series was called, by I remember catching glimpses of it during my childhood on WPBS in New York. Since I was developing a very similar series, I wanted to know more about the one I had faint memories of. In fact, I wanted to know everything I could: series story arcs, episode story arcs, number and types of characters, practical and budget considerations when creating episodes, etc.

A Google search turned up an in-depth review of the series with this disheartening addendum:

If you want to buy Survivors on DVD today then you’ve got a problem. Originally Survivors was released in three DVD box-sets: one for each series, which sensibly were available separately. Meaning that you could just buy the first series and forget the rest unless your are a fanatic or have no critical faculties. However, since last year, those individual box-sets are no longer available and all three series have been made into one huge box-set: not the most convenient of ways to attract new fans and obviously quite expensive. Of course there is still the second-hand market, but—as always happens—greedy sellers used the ‘deleted’ status of the individual box-sets to crank up the prices. I’m glad to say that the prices seem to be setling again to more realistic levels and careful browsing of eBay and amazon MarketPlace should yield reasonable results for the Series 1 box-set. Series 2 is still expensive, which isn’t a problem because its rubbish, and Series 3 is comming down in rice. Alternatively you could just suck-it-up and buy the Series 1-3 box-set and be done with it. Link.

Hmmm, maybe I could rent it on Netflix instead? I do a quick search and turn up zilch. Okay...

If I couldn't rent the series (just one episode was really all I needed), I could buy one of the DVDs. Next stop, Amazon. I clicked on the article's links only to find the DVDs were on Amazon's UK site for £28.19. Money exchange problems aside, UK DVDs won't work on US DVD players due to piracy restrictions—UK DVDs are Region 2 and US DVDs are Region 1. Fine, whatever. I'll just look up the first season on Amazon's US site and buy it in Region 1.

Not so fast. Amazon's US site was charging $169... for a Region 2 DVD. So I'd fare better by buying the bloody thing via their UK site and having it shipped to me internationally, if they'd permit it. Amazon also had this warning on the page:

This DVD will not play on most DVD players sold in the US or Canada [Region 1]. This item requires a region specific or multi-region DVD player and compatible TV.

Now I'm seriously ticked off. I'm staring at the screen, a furrow on my brow. Have I not been the good consumer? Did I not try to do everything possible to find the content and offer my money for it? My credit card is at the ready... I'm willing to exchange my hard-earned money for content already distributed in the market, but that content is frustratingly out of reach due to the market's outrageous prices and stupid piracy restrictions (stupid from my perspective). I'm not a pirate—I want to pay the series' producers money for their product—and they're not letting me. All they've done is throw obstacles in my way to an honest sale.

Rather than accept my fate and turn tail defeated, I now decide to pursue the matter unconventionally. I'm no longer interested in rewarding the producers and distributors with my money, and opt to ignore their dictatorial pay structure to get what I want regardless. First I turn to Wikipedia to look up their show and there I find a detailed episode guide which turns out to be extremely informative, even mentioning similar shows I might be interested in. Finally, I do a Google video search and find a couple of episodes online. After watching a few minutes of one episode, I've gathered everything I wanted to know about the look and tone of the series. The window where I was willing to spend money has been closed—forever. Too bad for them.

Let's review the stages from product interest to a (potential) sale... and then to piracy:

1. Childhood memory of old TV show
   
2. Google search
   
3. Fan web site
   
4. Netflix search
   
5. Amazon (UK) search <— window opens to pay money
   
6. Amazon (USA) search <— too expensive & too inconvenient: window closes to pay money
   
7. Wikipedia search <— online synopsis available
   
8. Google Video search <— piracy begins; consumer gets content anyway

The bottom line is, I don't feel bad watching pirated content when that content is outside my reach anyway. (If you think it's my obligation to buy a multi-region DVD as a workaround to see a single Region 2 DVD, that's crazy talk.) If the producers of Survivors had just make their content more conveniently available (non-region DVDs, Video On Demand, iTunes, Netflix Watch Instantly) or at a lower and more reasonable price ($169? Seriously? How about $69?), then I'd gladly have forked over the dosh. But why reward stupidity, lack of foresight, and greed?

By way of epilog, it appears the only watchable episodes of Survivors are listed through Veoh.com, which offers 5 minutes of a free preview and to watch the whole episode, you have to download their personal video player where they use ads to pay for the site. Maybe the producers weren't quite so stupid after all.

+7.2 (∆ -1.4)

It's official—I finally dipped below my lowest recorded weight in five years. Woot!

+8.6 (∆ -2.2)

Nothing since April 18th and a loss of only 2.2 pounds? WTF, right?

May was rough. I caught some kind of weird virus that made all my muscles furiously ache for about two weeks. When I went back to the gym because (I thought) I was feeling better, my ass got kicked again. So, basically, three weeks were shot right there.

Having said that, I did go to Reno last week with the fam and went to three all-you-can-eat buffets and still managed to lose weight! No matter how you slice it, that's a huge win. Anytime you escape a den of sin like Reno and at least break even—either financially or gastronomically—you're ahead of the game.

79 more days until my birthday, the self-imposed deadline. Do you think I can get to +0 by then?

Also: I'm only 0.6 away from dipping below my lowest recorded weight in four years!