Devlin's Angle  May 2009  Do You Believe in Fairies, Unicorns,
or the BMI?  Take a look at the guy in the photo. According to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he is
overweight. They base this classification on a number called the
body mass index, or BMI. Also overweight, according to this CDC
endorsed metric, are athletes and movie stars Kobe Bryant,
George Clooney, Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Will Smith,
and Denzel Washington. Tom Cruise scored even worse, being
classified as downright obese, as was Arnold Shwarzenegger when
he was a world champion body-builder. With definitions like
that, no wonder Americans think of themselves as having an
overweightness epidemic. (Using the CDC's BMI measure, 66
percent of adults in the United States are considered overweight
or obese.)  Yes, it's that time of year again, when I go for my
annual physical. I know the routine. My body mass index
regularly comes out at around 25.1, putting me just into the
"overweight category," and the doctor sends me