Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Physical Dimensions of QC Characters (No pervs please)
Carl-E:
The buouancy of about a quart of air in the lungs is enough for most people, yes. But not everyone. I never got by swimming merit badge in scouts because I couldn't float for more than a few seconds with a lungful of air. I'd drift straight to the bottom of the lake...
Fat is less dense than water and so it floats. Muscle is a little more dense, and sinks. I'm not sure about bone, it's probably pretty close to the edge, I imagine people with bone density losses are more "floaty" than those without. One of the tests for BMI is a floatation test (this is why the height/weight BMI charts are nonsense).
Also, everyone floats in the dead sea and the great salt lake, The dissolved salt increases the water desity. It's also easier to float in the ocean than in a lake or pool for that same reason.
And the only reason I remember my height/weight from 6th grade (5'6", 150 lbs) is gym class. I was the second tallest kid in school, and the second heaviest (the tallest and heaviest were not the same guy). I spent years struggling with what was called a "weight problem" in those days (the early 70's). I then stopped dead in my growth, and watched everyone pass me. I picked up a inch to 5'7" at 25. Suddenly, all my pants were too short...
The 50 pounds were picked up after I got married to a wonderful cook, who still hasn't figured out how to cook for fewer than 6 - 8 people...
And I'm definitely more "floaty" than I used to be, I now can float in the ocean. Makes it harder to find interesting shells on the bottom like I did when I was younger!
Redball:
I'm 5'10" and 180 pounds, a lot of that in my potbelly.
I could do a dead man's float in a swimming pool when I was 19, same height and 130 pounds -- lungs full of air, limp, face down, head mostly under water, knees naturally rising a little. (The rest of the exercise: I learned to push down with both hands, pushing my face out of the water, quickly exhale, inhale and relax back under water. You can stay afloat for hours that way.)
And I can still do it. If I exhale, I'll drop to the bottom of my pool.
Near Lurker:
--- Quote from: Tellusora on 12 Jun 2012, 04:00 ---On another note, is malnourishment a symptom/consequence of OCD? I can see how it could be, but wonder if it actually is a common occurrence among OCD folk.
--- End quote ---
It can be, the same way their living spaces can look like hospital rooms or the Aegean stables.
Akima:
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 12 Jul 2012, 08:56 ---One of the tests for BMI is a floatation test (this is why the height/weight BMI charts are nonsense).
--- End quote ---
Possibly terminology is different in the USA, but in Australia the floatation test is used to calculate Body Composition, and particularly Body Fat Percentage (%BF), rather than Body Mass Index (BMI). BMI is just a number relating height to body mass, and it needs to be interpreted intelligently with an understanding of its considerable limitations as a diagnostic tool:
BMI was originally intended for statistical studies, not clinical diagnosis, and its main virtue is ease of calculation. No competent medical professional should use it as the sole criterion for judging whether an individual is over or under weight. Simple height vs. weight tables are particularly potentially misleading when applied to athletes, children and adolescents (school nurses please note), elderly people, and people who are unusually short or tall because the height/weight ratio in BMI doesn't correctly reflect the way real human bodies "scale" (My hometown boy Yao Ming, pictured above, has a BMI of around 27. Overweight? Not so much, I think).
The criticism of BMI I read in forums like this one focuses entirely on the perception that BMI over-diagnoses overweight condition in fit muscular people, but BMI also under-diagnoses obesity in people with levels of body-fat strongly correlated with bad health outcomes. As the authors of the paper I link above put it:
"The implications of mislabeling patients are not trivial. By using BMI as a marker of obesity, we misclassify ≥ 50% of patients with excess body fat as being normal or just overweight and we miss the opportunity to intervene and reduce health risk in such individuals. Conversely, BMI may lead to misclassification of persons with normal levels of fat as being overweight, a fact that could cause unnecessary distress and prompt to unnecessary and costly interventions. In addition, such mislabeling has a deleterious effect on public trust for healthcare providers, particularly from fit patients with evident preserved muscle mass."
Having said all that, BMI is not without some value because of its simplicity. If you are a fairly sedentary urban adult, as opposed to an athlete or person engaged in heavy manual labour, and your BMI suggests that you are overweight (25+), you possibly are, and you should consider talking to your doctor about it. If your BMI is over 30 you probably are, and you definitely should.
I obviously spend way too much time around doctors...
Lasttimeiposthere:
Just to further speculations, there are some "Word of God" statements about the characters respective height (taken from Jeph's tumblr) :
"Tai is short. I imagine her to be 52 at most." (Question dump #43)
"I used to think she [Hanners] was the same height as Marten, but
lately I feel like she might be a teensy bit taller than him. Shes
gangly." (Question dump #14)
"[Hannelore is] Taller than Faye, about the same height as Marten,
shorter than Sven." (ibid.)
"[Marten is] 58 - 510, I think?" (Question dump #23)
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