Carcinogenic Dreams

Left: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, circa 1815. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Right: J. Cole, circa 2013. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images for Clear Channel)

Mental Floss pairs famous literary first lines with rap lyrics:

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE/J. COLE In Xanadu did Kubla Khan Pay dues like a hair salon (“Kubla Khan”and “The Last Stretch”)

ROBERT FROST/2PAC Whose woods these are I think I know Creep with me through that immortal flow (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Thug Passion”)

VIRGINIA WOOLF/WALE Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself Fall in love with defeat, throw my endeavors on the shelf (Mrs. Dalloway and “The Artistic Integrity”)

OK, just one more:

ALLEN GINSBERG/2PAC I saw the best minds of my generation Destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked See me and hope I’m intoxicated or slightly faded (“Howl” and “Ain’t Hard 2 Find”)

Brilliant.

Isabelle Dalle. 

twenty one pilots-jar of hearts by christina perri cover

Formaldehyde is from the purification of the vaccine. 99.9% of which is removed. The reason it doesn’t give a dosage is the ammount is so minuscule that it can’t be measured without going into picograms. That’s one trillionth of a gram. You breathe in more formaldehyde by driving down a busy road than in a vaccine.

Thimerosal is NOT elemental mercury, It is a molecular compound made up of carbon, hydrogen, mercury, sodium, oxygen, and sulfur. This is used as a preservative for the vaccine. Thimerosal is used in a variety of other things, like tattoo ink, facial creams, nasal sprays. It’s toxic to humans only in fairly large quantities but highly toxic to aquatic born organisms like infectious bacteria. In short, it makes sure you don’t get salmonella from a stray bacteria from the chicken embryos. As for the dosage of the Thimerosal. That is the most laughable point in this post. It says 25 mcg, that’s micrograms, or one millionth of a gram. To put this in perspective, a dollar bill weighs roughly 1 gram, the average human eyelash is around 80-90 micrograms. The box also says that it contains a 5ml (milliliter/cc) vial which leads me to my next point.

Anything is poisonous if we try hard enough. Water, which gives us life, can also kill us in the right amount. That doesn’t mean we should keep our kids from drinking water. Quantity is an important factor and people need to realize that these microscopic amounts cannot possibly cause us harm. 

The other day a large bug flew into my mouth. It hit me right in the hangy ball thing and I instinctively swallowed. My first thought was, “Eww, that bug was probably full of bug poop. I just ate a bug’s worth of poop.”

In Jane Austen’s writing

FROM THE LANGUAGE LOG AT UPENN

BOY HOWDY LOOK AT ALL THOSE REFERENCES ON THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE

From the NYT (barely reliable source, preferrable to find another)

WOW LOOK EVEN SHAKESPEARE DID IT