ARIZONA FAIL BLOG

Catholic charter school Our Lady of Sorrows forfeited its championship baseball game rather than play against a girl. STOP FAILING ARIZONA.

One thing is certain. Paige Sultzbach and her teammates deserved a chance to play for the championship. They were the only undefeated team in their league, and they’d already beaten Our Lady of Sorrows twice this season. They’d worked hard enough, and played well enough, to be allowed to win their championship on the field, and not have it handed to them because somebody hiding in a chapel somewhere decided not to give them the satisfaction. For all the theological dust they’ve thrown up to cover their cowardly retreat, Our Lady of Sorrows plainly and simply didn’t want to lose to a girl.

read full editorial

If topics for peer reviewed scientific research funding is not safe from congress’s influence than nothing is. What’s next Jeff??? Climate change research because only gays and eskimos worry about melting ice and plankton counts?

On Thursday, on a mostly party-line vote, the House passed an amendment by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) to prohibit the National Science Foundation from funding political science research. And, in doing so, it politicized one of the main ways this country funds scientific research

“My amendment does not reduce funding for the NSF,” he explained. Rather, “this amendment is simply oriented toward ensuring, at the least, that the NSF does not waste taxpayer dollars on a meritless program.” Well, what Flake considers a meritless program, anyway.

As Christopher Zorn writes, the NSF runs a widely respected peer-review program that decides what science to fund. If Flake wanted to reduce the funding available to the NSF in total, that would be one thing (and, to be fair to Flake, he has proposed that in the past). But what he’s doing here is telling the NSF what is and isn’t acceptable science to fund. That’s not how scientific decisions are supposed to work. And the effect could be chilling.

read the full editorial on the Washington Post

It seems there’s not a month that goes by that Maricopa (Ariz.) County Sheriff Joe Arpaio isn’t involved in one controversy or another.

GOT THAT RIGHT!

read the full story from npr