There's no question that our sense of well-being is a significant contributor to our overall longevity. While it may or may not impact directly on aging, it most certainly influences the ways in which we engage in life and with others—and that most certainly impacts on our mental and physical health.

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Fortunately, we have more control over our happiness than we think.

Lately you may have noticed that hard SF is starting to break the rules. Writer Jason Sanford identifies this as the emerging "SciFi Strange" subgenre, and he's curated a list of free stories online that make SF a lot stranger.

Sanford says SciFi Strange reflects a multicultural world where tradition co-exists with multiple, minority perspectives on reality. He continues:

SciFi Strange also flirts with the boundaries of what is scientifically—and therefore realistically—possible, without being bounded by the rigid frames of the world as we know it today. But don't call SciFi Strange fantasy. This is pure science fiction. It's merely an updated version of the literature of ideas. A science fiction for a world where the frontiers of scientific possibility are almost philosophical in nature.

Three months ago I was lifelogging every day and keeping a good record of my activities at Daytum. Around the time I moved back to Nova Scotia I fell out of the habit of recording my eating, sleeping, exercising and meditating activities. Since then I have allowed myself to neglect lifelogging during the transition involved in returning to Halifax. Now I am looking forward to beginning again on September 1st.

This time I will be trying an alternative to Daytum, the flashier and more social zeaLOG.

The ostinatos are more ominous. The slow chords hang in the air like wraiths. The one which sounds coolest, to my ears, is the Babylon 5 theme, which is just majestic and echoes through your mind with the thought of our last, best hope for peace. But the Doctor Who theme sounds like alien monks chanting their slow Gregorian observations — plus you can totally hear how Delia Derbyshire made one of the earliest pieces of electronic music by pasting together bits of tape by hand.