I can't say I'd care too much if it happened to me. It's not a personal criticism, and it doesn't really affect me at all. If I was required to move away from my friends/family as a result, it'd be a bit more irritating. But then I guess I could probably swap seats with one of them...

Yeah, that's who I meant. My bad, I hadn't checked the actual figures, I just remember reading it somewhere.

I think the paper I saw put it down to metabolism.

You're arguing against a point I haven't made; I said there IS a correlation. My point is that there are measures with much better predictive power and we should use those instead. BMI isn't totally useless but it isn't the best available measure and I see no reason why we should use a demonstrably inferior…

There's much more of a lower limit to weight than there is an upper one.

Oops. Didn't realise that was your point, thought you were defending prohibition. My bad.

...I'm far more worried about the state of science education.

Because it does roughly measure the height to weight ratio and that obviously has a connection to body fat percentage and size. However the correlation is not a particularly strong one (ask Jonny Wilkinson if he's got any fat-induced diseases; he's obese according to BMI). There are better measurements and we should…

There is some evidence that things like being overweight, unhealthy and inactive when a child can make it much harder to shed the pounds when you're older (as compared to someone who gained weight when they were 18 for example). So the last paragraph isn't quite true; it wouldn't be conclusive proof of a bigger issue.

My point was that the government can only regulate things if the trade in them is legal, and that legal businesses tend not to go into the gang violence so much i.e. it's the illegal status of drugs that causes the two things you mentioned, not the drug trade itself.

If you'd checked in the 1920s, it would still be a crime. It'd also be unregulated and business disagreements would've been handled by shooting each other in the street instead of the court system...

It's as victimless a crime as selling alcohol...

...I give up.

And suddenly your objections become a lot clearer...

Do you really think that's the same?

The law isn't necessarily always right.

The infrastructure isn't totally gone, nor is the sporting culture. They still invest a fair bit in sports in the former Soviet bloc, although obviously a bit less.

It's not like a completely separate city, it's just a region of a city that's going to be entirely industrial/economic\business-y and all the jobs held by women.

Ayn Rand claimed Social Security and Medicare later in life. Sounds like Ryan really does find her inspirational.

...I was going to dispute this, but then I read your subsequent comments and you managed to prove yourself right, although I imagine not quite in the way you intended.