Take a chill pill if you want to live longer

At one point in my life I was a sweat the details kind of guy. Little things would get my blood boiling. Working away at Microsoft led me to prioritize what I worried about and lots of little things fell by the wayside. I felt happier after I let those things go and now that I read this I'm even happier. Aside from being more carefree maybe I'm adding years on to my life too.

That's because being affable and more social confers health benefits, according to lead study author Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University Medical Center.

It may be that less neurotic people are better able to manage or regulate stressful situations than the highly neurotic, Perls said.

Though many aspects of our personalities are already set by our genes, Buettner said, we can all make lifestyle improvements to help us live longer.

For one, becoming more extroverted—and by extension widening our social networks—can be cultivated and trained, Buettner said.

Also high on his list is eating a plant-based diet—"the more meat you eat, the quicker you die," he said.

And having a clear sense of purpose in your life, he added, is worth seven years of life expectancy.

Study leader Perls added that numerous strategies exist to deal with stress, such as exercising, meditation, or just taking a "nice deep breath."

"It's a matter of setting aside the time and effort to effectively manage your stress well," he said. "One of the keys is to realize how important it is to do that."

Want to Live Longer? Stop Worrying

Cows and chickens and corn

Ah the evils of corn. I guess you could look at it as a government funded evolutionary experiment to see what happens when you take two animals and feed them a diet they were not meant to subsist on. Which in turn makes us fat but hey at least we get to buy cheap food right? Time for me to go watch the King Corn documentary me thinks.

Corn is central to agriculture in the United States, where it is grown in greater volumes and receives more government subsidies than any other crop. Between 1995 and 2006 corn growers received $5.6 billion in federal subsidies, and the annual figure may soon hit $10 billion.

But in recent years, environmentalists have branded corn as an icon of unsustainable agriculture. It requires large amounts of fertilizer and pesticides, both of which require large amounts of fossil fuel to manufacture.

Most of the resulting corn is fed to livestock who didn't evolve to subsist entirely on corn. In cattle, eating corn increases flatulence emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — and creates an intestinal environment rich in e. coli, a common cause of food poisoning. That necessitates mixing cow feed with antibiotics, in turn producing antibiotic-resistant disease strains.

Many of those livestock end up in high-calorie, low-nutrition franchised fast foods, which have been repeatedly linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Fast food's biggest selling point is its low price — and that, say industry critics, is largely possible because of corn's ubiquitous cheapness.

Chemical analysis from restaurants across the United States shows that nearly every cow or chicken used in fast food is raised on a diet of corn, prompting fresh criticism of the government's role in subsidizing poor eating habits.

Fast Food: Just Another Name for Corn | Wired Science from Wired.com

UFO or Jellyfish

I'm always really happy to read about scientists finding new species. I get tired of the doom and gloom you read in the news so often. So let's all take a second and be happy for this little floaty critter.