Recently we ran across several fascinating articles about civics, liberal arts, and climate hysteria that raise basic questions about the content taught at too many of our educational institutions: Has our society lost sight of the fundamental purpose of education, and is the result less resilient, less capable adults?

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Part 2 in a series

Did you catch the story about the swarm of 25,000 bees that had to be captured and removed (by a special police unit, no less) from the Staten Island Ferry Station in New York City?

After many years of media reports about honeybees and wild bees dying off, you'd think they were nearly extinct — so what were 25,000 of them doing at a ferry terminal in one of the world's most densely populated cities?

Maybe they heard that New York was "all the buzz."

Seriously, as I will explain, wild bee populations, like their honeybee cousins, are not endangered.

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"To observe government is to observe the absence of accountability," James Freeman wrote in the Wall Street Journal.[1]

That's certainly true of unwise regulation of many innovative technologies; and modern biotechnology, also known as "genetic engineering (GE)" or "genetic modification (GM)," perhaps along with civilian applications of nuclear power, could be the poster child.

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Part 1 in a series

Much of modern environmental activism, which owes more to zealotry than evidence, has spawned a nasty perversion — let's call it the Pseudo-Scientific Method. As employed by environmental campaigners and the activist scientists who enable them, it has little to do with scientific discovery or the accumulation of knowledge; rather, it is "advocacy research" that creates "evidence" to support a pre-determined public policy — usually, inappropriate regulation or even bans.

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October 31^st will mark the 37th anniversary of one of biotechnology's most significant milestones -- the approval by the FDA of human insulin synthesized in genetically engineered bacteria. It launched a revolutionary new era in pharmaceutical development, and as the FDA medical reviewer of the product and the head of the evaluation team, I had a front-row seat.

The saga is remarkable in several ways, not least of which is that although both the drugmakers and regulators were exploring unknown territory, the development of the drug and its regulatory review progressed smoothly and rapidly.

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