I just noticed there is a new Gene Genie out, hosted by Sciencebase and I am linking to it because Sciencebase does good stuff and this is not the sort of 'same old people' self-promotion we tend to see in these carnivals.  

It's also coincidental because this just came up in an email with Berci yesterday.   If anyone thinks this is something we should host (and I wrote that to Berci also) go ahead and get it going.

It needs one person to collate all the articles but we like that kind of community thing and we can provide a substantial audience outside the blogging community.  

The Maya are having a tough 2008. First, the mystery of the cool blue pigment they used in pottery was solved and then we found out that all kinds of Mayans were building temples to do those enlightened sacrifices they did. Everyone's been throwing out theories about the downfall of the Maya; hurricanes, overpopulation, disease, warfare, peasant revolt or (insert your favorite disaster here).

When you saw 'bio-based lubricants' you thought it was just a way to appeal to that girl wearing a Greenpeace shirt at the bar around 2AM, right? Not so, perv. Aside from being non-petroleum based, bio lubricants are good. Maybe too good, as this article cum PR piece for WISE Solutions notes. Namely, they can cause machines to over-perform. But that's a good problem to have. Sure, the article coos a little too affectionately about these lubricants to be on the level but the idea merits some consideration. I like the bio-based idea but it hasn't worked well so far.

I am not sure why Cali Lewis wore a tight t-shirt to discuss Chinese breast-massaging robots, but I bet there was a good reason. So let's chalk it up to another miracle of science.

Because we are basically clueless about what's happening in the blogosphere, I only learned about this flare up because a gentleman from PLoS who writes for scienceblogs mentioned us in his response. I had a small quibble with his statement

Scientificblogging.com is another blogging community. They have a different model. Almost all of it is commentary on the freshest papers. This is fine, but is unlikely to draw much of an audience. Popular magazines, like Wired, are trying to do the same.

but only because he used a prism that was not very accurate.