Are you a bad enough dude to live?

Women may regenerate microlives faster, but men can jump higher.
Women may regenerate microlives faster, but men can jump higher.

Remember waaay back to Monday, when some crazy physicist suggested that our entire universe could be a simulation created by our evolutionary descendents to study us, sort of like a Sim Jurassic Park but for grandpas? Turns out Dr. Bostrom was close: we live in a video game.

Dr. David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at the University of Cambridge, authored a study on the impact of food and lifestyle choices on human life expectancy:

Calculating that the average life spans about 80 years, he divided that time up for adults 35 and older into nearly a million half hours, and assigned each 30 minute period to be 1 microlife. Each microlife is about one millionth of life expectancy after age 35. He then assessed how unhealthy eating habits would impact a person’s total microlives.

If you, Average Human, start out with 1,401,600 microlives that begin ticking down immediately at your spawn point, then you can slow this down or even regain microlives by, say, eating a salad a day or exercising. Meanwhile, smoking will take away 10 microlives for every pack smoked.

Even gender affects your microlife count. Women regain 4 microlives a day compared to men, which explains why men are more affected by our mid-live crises: we’re desperately seeking a savepoint.

There’s no infestation like a New York City infestation …

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that, despite the city’s best efforts, you just can’t kill off a New Yorker infestation. “Babies born in New York City in 2009 can expect to live on average 80.6 years, roughly 2-1/2 years more than the most recently reported national rate of 78.2 years,” the mayor told members of the press, ruefully shaking his head.

It was hoped that, by shortening human lifespans, this research would lead to a cure for the city’s bed bug problem — a plan that animal rights activists hailed as a fun exercise in role reversal. Alas, all of the Mayor Bloomberg’s initiatives, “including bans on public smoking and the use of trans-fats in restaurants,” have only resulted in more New Yorkers living longer neurotic lives.

“If you want to live longer and healthier than the average American, then come to New York City,” the mayor said before distributing cyanide capsules and pistols to his staff. “Me? I want off this merry-go-round, and I’ll do the same for anyone else.”

Paging Dr. Obvious, paging Dr. Obvious

Sharks: the scourge of our next generation.A New England Journal of Medicine study is blowing the roof off of the house that is everything we understand about medical science.

Now that smoking rates are down, everyone should be healthier, right? That’s what we always heard.

However, the obesity rate is still rising. So, while lower smoking rates raised the average life expectancy for current 18-year-olds by 0.31 years, obesity lowered it back down 1.02 years.

So, after all that quitting, we finally learned that if (a) one thing doesn’t kill you, (b) something else will.

Also, maybe you were better off smoking?