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.

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?