The plot thickens [sickens?] in the San Jose Garbagegate scandal: The Contra Costa [Calif.] Times reports that Santa Clara County's civil grand jury and district attorney are now looking into whether San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales received any personal or political payments in return for surreptitiously helping Norcal Waste Systems secure an $11 million amendment to a city garbage contract a couple years ago.

Boys & Trash Trucks: Here, for no other reason than I have two lads of my own who are fast outgrowing the universal rug-rat fascination with banging robotic monster-vehicles, is a tender reflection on that rite of boyhood, "Dancing As The Garbage Truck Rolls By."

Do-Overs: By and large, I'm not too keen on blogs. I keep trying to find good ones, and I keep coming up empty. There just aren't many I've come across that have struck me as worth the time it would take to slog through them to try to figure out what they're getting at .

There are exceptions, though, and here's an excellent one: Achenblog, written by Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbach. I mention it here because Achenbach tackles science and environmental topics on a semiregular basis, and the writing is sharp, tight and often hilarious.

A good example is his entry yesterday morning [Jan. 25] titled "2005: Hottest Year, Or Just Second Hottest?" (Achenbach post entries often, usually once or twice a day, so you may have to scroll down a bit to find this one.) It's a funny, mildly ominous rumination on global warning.

As I ended that last sentence I noticed the typo in the last word. I started to go back and fix it, but then I thought, no, just leave it. Dr. Freud may get a chuckle out of it. Can you say parapraxis?

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.