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Awesome Sauce Music Friday! The Bad-Ass F@#%ing Fractal Edition

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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Speak Your Mind: Freedom of Tweets, Redux

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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Physicist Tries Vitamin C for Cancer: Doesn’t Work

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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Suspension of Disbelief: Princess Mononoke

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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Modern Mythology: Crying Over Spilled Food

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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