Yesterday we looked at the countries, movements and people who, in a purely Machiavellian sense, had a good year in 2013. Whether what they did was right or wrong, good or evil, smart for the long term or not, the winners emerged from the arena at the end of 2013 with their power and their prestige significantly enhanced. Today we look at the flip side and ask who were the unlucky and unskillful players who lost the most ground in 2013. Once again this is not about moral beauty or enlightened self interest. This isn’t about whether your intentions were good or bad, or whether your impact on the world was for the better or the worse. It is about whether, at the end of 2013, you were in a weaker position than you were at the start of it.

As the Christmas season draws to a close and the return of regular blogging looms, I’m looking back over this short period of intense religion writing and thinking about how writing on religion is and is not like writing on other controversial topics.

Obamacare really isn’t targeted to lower costs nationally or make people healthier; it’s targeted to make Americans more financially stable by shifting costs around. This analysis coheres with the first Oregon study from last year, that found Medicaid users weren’t more healthy those the un-enrolled but were more financially secure. The question then becomes: is there a better way to help make health care more affordable for those struggling to pay?

Happy New Year from the AI staff! Here’s what we’ve been reading this week:

1. MOOCs as sporting events.

2. Jobs of the future…or something.

3. A dangerous provocation.

4. Avoiding the picnic-table crisis.

5. Cigars go up in smoke.

6. New Year’s resolution: Stop lying to pollsters.

And, as always, readers are encouraged to let us know what you’re reading.

Attempts to legalize pot are fraught with tremendous complexities. The black market probably isn’t going away even with legalization, which means even the visible costs of punishing dealers probably aren’t going to go away either. There’s no better guide to the issues here than Mark Kleiman, perhaps our country’s foremost expert on drug policy and the person Washington state brought in to help set up their new market.

Here’s a column the academy hopes no-one will read: Glenn Reynolds’ insightfully advocating in the WSJ for deep reforms to the American college system. Reynolds argues that mounting college debt paired with stagnant wages will catalyze solutions that could drastically disrupt the academy. Any college president who isn’t taking Glenn’s concern seriously isn’t doing the job.

Looking back at 2013, some actors on the international scene, both state and non-state, notched up significant achievements and advances. Others didn’t do as well. In developing our list of the world’s biggest winners and losers in 2013, AI didn’t make moral judgments. This is a realist calculation, looking at who gained power during the year and who lost.

Even at the most basic level the distinction between GMOs and “natural” foods doesn’t make sense. When they’ve got scientific evidence on their side, green campaigners spew hate speech about the evil science deniers on the other side. But the moment a scientific consensus attacks some cherished green myth (organic good, GMO bad, for example), they spew hate speech against scientists as corporate shills.What the planet and the people who live on it badly need is a pro-environment, pro-people movement that actually cares about scientific evidence.

To get any insight at all into what Jesus’ childhood and upbringing were like, you have to do something that sometimes makes Protestants uncomfortable: study Mary.

New reports suggest that Hezbollah has been taking advantage of the chaos in Syria to smuggle advanced anti-aircraft and anti-ship weapons into Lebanon. As the WSJ notes, however, the key player is Iran, which backs Hezbollah and appears to be behind these shipments. For those in Western capitals making the case that Iran is ready for a real reconciliation and change of policy, life just got a little bit worse.