Mystic tourism, the basis for William Burroughs’ The Yagé Letters, is becoming big business in the Amazon.

It sounds perfect.  Turn garbage into energy. 

Proposals for new or expanded waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators, which combust trash (i.e. municipal solid waste) to generate electricity and produce steam to heat buildings, are all the rage these days.  There's just one problem in this alternative energy; studies show they emit higher rates of lead, mercury, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide than the coal-fired plants we are told to hate.

We're already losing billions in taxpayer money on wasteful solar company placebos, let's not add hundreds of millions for these incinerators as well.

Conservative Republican Governor Bobby Jindal can't like why his state is in the news today; a Democrat state representative has spearheaded a successful effort to damage stores like...Goodwill?

District 44 Representative Rickey Hardy co-authored House bill 195, which says people who deal in 'second hand' goods can longer accept cash.   Why?  Apparently the government thinks the second-hand 'buying stolen goods' problem by Goodwill and pawn shops and other small businesses is so severe it needed to be legislated out.  Oh, and those flea markets are commonly regarded as real hotbeds of crime too.

One in six cellphones in Britain may be contaminated with fecal matter that can spread E. coli, likely because so many people don't wash their hands properly after using the toilet, according to  researchers at the London School of Hygiene&Tropical Medicine and Queen Mary, University of London.

The findings also suggest that many people lie about their hygiene habits. The study authors went to 12 cities and collected 390 samples from the cellphones and hands of volunteers, who were also asked about their hand-washing habits.

Neuroscientist Bradley Voytek recently got asked why a person can't individually control their toes.  Well, I never thought about it before - I don't have great need to use individual toes in some prehensile fashion but perhaps that is only because I can't.

Voytek says the primary motor cortex is the issue and shows us all about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to boot.

We've all heard of politicizing science, like when tobacco companies cast doubt on the scientific evidence for a connection between tobacco and lung cancer or environmental groups try to cast doubt on the benefits of GMO foods.

But in the case of Yucca Mountain, the reverse happened: Government officials "scientized" politics. They made decisions that were largely political but cloaked them in the garb of science.

Long ago, in a galaxy very, very near (because it was this one) we all talked like Yoda from "Star Wars", one hypothesis suggests.

The original "proto-human language", linguists contend, used subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering, with some variation.  So when prehistoric men met prehistoric women, he likely said, "Make out with me you will."

The researchers came to their conclusion after creating a language family tree, which shows the historical relationships between all the languages of the world.

The Original Human Language Like Yoda Sounded by Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries

If you're in the life sciences, you have like heard of The Scientist.  After 25 years of making a go of it, they announced they are closing the doors.

It's a tough market out there, as we can attest.  If we had 2008 advertising rates and 2011 traffic, we would be making pretty darn good money.  I have no idea how companies with expensive midtown Manhattan offices do it.   Well, they have a sales force and we don't, and multiple publications.   But you get the idea.  It's always a difficult market for science; Henry Donahue, former CEO of Discover, once said to me over coffee, "I think media buyers went into that business because they hate science."

Pity Pittsburgh. The Steelers are not having a good year and don't even get me started on the Pirates.  I got to wear my baseball jersey out of pride rather than defiance for the first time since Barry Bonds left for free agency - and then the first week of August arrived and they remembered they were the Pirates.

It's not even great to be a bridge in the Steel City which, since there is really no steel any more, is more accurately a City of Bridges.

Outside the city, in North Beaver township, thieves just stole a 50-foot-long bridge.  The whole thing.  It was a private bridge and made of corrugated steel.  Value?  About $100,000.