Favourite Story of 2008?

Yves Smith has an open thread Favorite Story of 2008.
3quarksdaily links to 50 Things We Know Now (We Didn't Know This Time Last Year): 2008 Edition.
One of the comments in the first post links to Top 100 Stories of 2008 from Discover magazine.
An interesting remark that I came across today. From an economist's response to CAN SCIENCE HELP SOLVE THE ECONOMIC CRISIS?:
"Imagine that fires were devastating the world's forests and you came across this manifesto:

The forest crisis has to be stabilized immediately. This has to be carried out pragmatically, without undue ideology, and without reliance on the failed ideas and assumptions that led to the crisis. Complexity science can help here. For example, it is wrong to speak of "restoring the forests to equilibrium," because forests have never been in equilibrium. We are way ahead if we speak of "restoring forests to a stable, self-organizing critical state."

Would this convince you that only complexity science can prevent forest fires?

With one tweak, this is the first paragraph from the pull-quote for this piece. All I've done is change "market" to "forest." "

My favourite story (which developed over several years but I came to know about it this year)Can kids teach themselves?