Did you just accuse everyone who isnt a dem or rep of not having a coherent political philosophy? Really?

I'd like to see a definition of public social spending. That seems ripe for political bias issues. (does adding charities 'fix' the outtliers, or cause more chaos? What about VA hospitals? I know the US has large state expenditures, were they counted?, etc)

No comment on X thousand years of genetic modification giving dogs this ability? 
 
How about Chimps inhabiting an uncanny valley with regards to comunication with humans? (Our signals are so close it confuses them, and us)

Gee, I wonder where he could have picked up the idea that selling his pet research project as a 'crisis' was a good way to get funding?

It seems like it might be worthwhile to control for actual families. 
 
Rather than try to say 'first children are more open than average', look at 'first children are more open than their siblings, on average'

Is it possible that non-Darwinist theories are so dominated by people desperate to find room for God that Evolutionary Biology as a science has been retarded in those areas? 
 
Kind of like how the study of intelligence and genetics is retarded by the history of Eugenics? 
 
That would leave a significant 'truth gap' where both sides have good points and neither has incentive to close it.

Patrick hits the nail on the head. 
 
Also: Who owns the homes, and how much do apartments affect things? What is a home? 
 
1: What is a home? Apartments don't count, but what about condos or 'owned' rooms in buildings. 
 
2: How does the rate of ownership correlate? If the price changes are due to cutting off poorer people at different rates, is the data meaningful? 
 
3: Who owns the homes? Do many large corporations buy condos in NYC as a perq for upper management who likely don't 'reside' in NYC for tax purposes? Also, the UN is in NYC, and that means crazy embassy housing should push things up. 
 
4: Self employed says a lot. People are likely charging the exhorbinate cost of housing to their company for tax reasons. In a place like Manhattan, I'd expect to see a chasm between real wealth and IRS-style 'income'

Additionally, if you look at the Maine/Vermont border up top, there's something fishy. (Additionally, Utah and Northern California). 
 
I would check those counties to make sure those counties actually had hospitals before taking that data seriously... If a large number of sick or wounded people cross county lines to go to the hospital, you're going to see a lot of counties with high lifespans simply because people need to leave when they are near death to find a hospital. (I wasn't born in the same county my parents were living in at the time...) 
 
There's a lot of patches of dark blue in and around Minnesota that exhibit the same qualities (significantly longer lifespans in relation to immediate neighbors in relatively low density areas)

Just looking at the map, it almost requires a cost of living adjustment to carry useful data, but I haven't been able to find a by county graph to even look at side by side... Still New England can't possibly benefit by adding in CoL, can it? It's set to get even MORE blue...

I don't see any comments about how population mobility is affecting this graph. Things like people with health problems (and thus closer to death) not continuing to live in Alaska comes to mind. 
 
Additionally, Florida has the 'retiree' band which is a form of selection bias. If you retire at 65 and are healthy enough to move to Florida, you're probably going to live longer. 
 
There's likely more effects, as well

I have 'experienced' VR running on desktop level computers (science experiment), at the DisneyQuest arcade in Orlando (Video Games). I also hear that many modern fps games come with options that allow 2 viewpoints (left eye, right eye). 
 
All in all, VR feels a lot like flying cars. Really cool idea, but when you start to get into the nitty gritty of designing it, you realize that the cost/benefit analysis doesn't pan out. The imersion difference between a big screen TV with surround sound and a VR helmet isn't worth the isolation, monetary, and comfort costs.

Is it possible that there's causation in the other direction? That is, if you are naturally healthy, your brain develops better and you end up smarter.