Act now: a Consumers Union campaign to stop Congress, which is waffling, from backing off from the November deadline to impose number portability on cell phone carriers nationwide.

“A student cut off his own penis and his tongue after drinking an infusion of the latest drugs craze to sweep Germany.

The 18-year-old, only named as Andreas W, from Halle in Germany drank a tea made with the hallucinogenic angels’ trumpet plants.” Ananova

The article does not discuss the basis of the plant’s hallucinogenic properties, but for you ethnobotanists out there, some research reveals that it is a variety of Datura, in the same family as deadly nightshade, and thus likely to contain the highly toxic alkaloid scopolamine and related substances. Jimson weed is a species of Datura which plays an important part in the Carlos Castaneda mythos. Fictional as that is, in actuality Datura does have a ceremonial role in southwestern and Mexican indigenous cultures as well as the “Mickey Finn” of Asian prostitutes and thieves, to make a victim stuporous before he is rolled or otherwise violated. In addition to an infusion, the leaves can be smoked. Scopolamine is a a potent blocker of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and the state it produces is an anticholinergic delirium characterized by agitation, confusion and visual hallucinations as well as profound physiological changes; in higher doses stupor, paralysis, respiratory depression and coma. It works by an entirely different mechanism than ‘classical’ — natural or synthetic — hallucinogens. such as mushrooms, peyote or LSD.

An Elevator to Space: I have always been aware of this as a pie-in-the-sky notion, something Arthur C. Clarke wrote about decades ago. The New York Times reports on a recent conference of enthusiasts, engineers and space scientists working on the concept; the current plan involves a carbon fiber nanotubule ribbon strung between an earth station and a geosynchronous satellite, with elevator platforms hoisting themselves up the thread powered by lasers on the ground below shining on their solar panels. Conferees say it might be feasible within twenty years and keynote speaker Clarke says he might live to see it, as he would be “only” 106 then.