For all: a good new year. At xsamplex, 2008 will be ‘more of the same’: we’ll bring you the bad, the good and (if I can make some more time) more code.
You may have already read about this one: The Edge’s yearly question to scientists, authors and others. This year’s question is ‘What has changed your mind and why?’. If you’re bored for a couple, it may probably take you a couple of hours to get through all the submissions (Metafilter thread and Slashdot thread). Additionally, more commentary at the Guardian.
There were two astronomy articles that caught my eye, last night. The first one is about the mysteries of our (outer) solar system, specifically about the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. The second one is actually a MetaFilter post about giant diamonds in space. The post links to an excellent site about stars.
The last link, is the one about the discovery of a 2500-year-old civilization in Russia. Actually, the find is at the bottom of Lake Issyk Kul (Wikipedia) in the Kyrgyz mountains. For a moment, I was thinking that it would be neat if news articles provided actual topography for these kind of locations.