Hello lovelies! Are you ready to rock? Of course you are. Because you’re fabulous.

This week’s song comes from Jonathan Coulton. He’s written songs on a variety of topics, from biology, to astronomy, to the zombie apocalypse. Today we’re featuring a song on math called “Mandlebrot Set” from his 2004 EP When Tradition Meets Tomorrow. The song is named for the late Benoit Mandelbrot, who is considered to be the father of fractal geometry. Not your typical musical topic, but that does not make it unworthy. 

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• You brain can reveal whether you are vulnerable to addiction. (via Not Exactly Rocket Science)
• Doctors aim to dispel myths about vaccines. (via Medical Xpress)
• 144,000 children are hospitalized for concussions, a third of which are caused by organized sports. (via Scientific American)
• Tanning salons lie to teenage girls. (The Atlantic Wire)

Featured image credit: Travel Salem

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• According to the FDA, your stem cells are now drugs. [via Gizmodo]
• Facebook might not be good for those with low self-esteem. [via ScienceDaily]
• Given that super PAC donors are the very rich, it’s unsurprising that most are men. [via Salon]
• Alzheimer’s spreads in the brain along a path, transmitting from nerve cell to nerve cell. [via The New York Times]

Featured image: An image of a human stem cell colony on a layer of mouse embryonic fibroblast feeders. Public domain image from here.

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Last week, Twitter announced that it’s going to enable country-specific censorship. In a nutshell, it allows a government to request that an individual tweet be censored in a specific country. For example, the government of Egypt could have requested that Twitter censor tweets from protesters so the tweets would not show up in Egypt.

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This is an interesting story, and I’m sorry for taking so long to get around to writing about it! Sir Paul Callaghan, a celebrated physicist, has been receiving high-dose intravenous infusions of vitamin C, in order to treat his cancer. He has now ended this experimental treatment, and come out with a bunch of scathing criticism of both the treatment itself and the alternative medicine industry in general.

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• Ebooks will not end civilization. (via The Crux)
• The health impact of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster has been low. (via Scientific American)
• People need to stop hating on the introverts! (via NPR)
• The largest breast cancer charity in the U.S. will stop giving money for breast exams to Planned Parenthood. (via The Guardian)

Featured image credit: WeNews

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Suspension of Disbelief is a weekly feature, in which we review movies, books, TV shows, and other popular culture for the skeptical teen.

Although by no means a new movie, Princess Mononoke is one of the most beautiful Studio Ghibli films ever made. Despite initial release in 1997, the film continues to grow in popularity, and is now ranked amongst the best anime movies of all time. So if you’re a fan of anime- and perhaps even if you’re not- read on, and find out if Mononoke is worthy of your attention.

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• Researchers skipped the stem cell stage and made brain cells out of skin cells. [via BBC News]
• The Burgess shale has revealed another oddity: tulip-shaped filter feeders. No known relatives today. [via Discovery News]
• How glass has changed the world over and over again. [via Gizmodo]
• The African crested rat’s poisonous fur–and other naturally synthesized toxins in the animal world. [via The New York Times]

Featured image credit: Kevin Deacon.

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I’ve eaten food off the floor. Don’t act shocked. You have, too. You may have looked around to make sure no one was watching, but you’ve done it. And if you’re like me, you silently declare, “Five second rule!” as you’re popping that unfortunate M&M or almond into your pie hole. But is there such a thing as the five second rule?

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• A French man is suing the Catholic Church to become de-baptized. (via NPR)
• Should YouTube remove videos of slow lorises, as activists suggest, because those videos fuel trade in those animals? (via Scientific American)
• The new Star Wars video game is too gay for the Family Research Council. (via The Raw Story)
• Babies are born with “intuitive” knowledge of physics. (via Medical Xpress)

Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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