A New York Times feature on a fierce GMO debate in Hawaii casts the idiocy and hypocrisy of the modern green movement on the issue in stark relief. For anyone curious themselves about the GMO debate, this is a piece worth reading in full. But here’s the quick and dirty summary: our best scientific understanding of genetically modified crops suggests that they’re just as safe as their non-modified counterparts.

Britain may be jumping on the higher-ed reform bandwagon, thanks to a new plan proposed by Labour Party MP John Denham. Rather than give students loans to attend college that prove difficult to pay back, the government would partner with businesses to jointly pay for the education of young employees in relevant fields. This is an interesting proposal with some merit, but can reforms like this coexist with liberal education?

Last month’s ruling that Detroit could reduce pensions in bankruptcy was a major setback from the city’s unions, but the latest defeat may be even bigger. Effective January 1st, all public workers in the city, with the exception of police and firefighters, will find their pensions frozen. What’s more, new and existing employees will find their defined-benefit plans replaced with a defined-contribution plan along the lines of a 401(k).

Spain recently walked back on solar energy subsidies, and in so doing hurt its credibility and left many green energy producers out in the lurch. The country’s energy policies are a mess right now, but the decision to renegotiate rates paid for renewable energy production, though unpopular, was necessary. The takeaway for the rest of the world: propping up technologies incapable of competing on their own merit doesn’t work.

Turkey’s prime minister signaled a willingness on Sunday to allow a retrial of hundreds of army officers who were convicted of a conspiracy to overthrow the government. Former military chiefs, alongside hundreds of more junior officers, journalists, and opposition lawmakers, were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences in the so-called “Ergenekon” trial in 2013. “Our position on a retrial is a favorable one,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul.

MOOCs have always been most promising in the STEM fields, but lab science has long been a major weakness for digital learning. One professor at Stanford University may have found a solution to this problem: digital laboratories.

The business model for PhDs is functionally off. Graduate schools are minting far more PhDs than the market can absorb. The problem is that the post-World War 2 university system was built on the assumption of an ever expanding population of students needing more and more higher ed. Therefore there was a need for each generation to produce more professors than the last. This is not unlike what plagues other blue mode constructs such as Medicaid and the various defined-benefit pension schemes.

Christmas is important to Christians because from their point of view the baby Jesus is the meaning of Christmas, and the meaning of Christmas is the meaning of life.

Working remotely saves time, money, and according to Harvard professor and president of the American Economic Association Claudia Goldin, it could be the key to closing the gender wage gap.

China picked a loser in solar energy, and to soak up its glut of cheap (and often shoddily-made) panels, it’s building out white elephant projects like a new solar power plant in a remote northwestern desert.