PHXations, Thursday, January 28
Overheard in Borders. Our cast is a man and a woman, both fiftyish:
Man: Hon?
Woman: Mmmm?
Man: They got a book here about the iPod. [O’Reilly’s The Missing Manual
Woman: Really?
Man: Let’s get it and read it and then we can decide if we’ll get one.
Woman: Okay
[ Exeunt, pursued by a bear. ]
The Democratic Diva writes about a recent talk by ASU prez Michael Crow. One passage:
He clicked on a graph of state funding of ASU per student since 1990. Back then the state contributed roughly $11K per student. Today it’s around $5K.
Sounds like it’s time to introduce a bill to put the Ten Commandments on the state capitol.
The Arizona Cardinals’ Kurt Warner holds a press conference conference tomorrow. Most papers quote his agent saying that Warner will announce “whether” he will retire; this Chicago Tribune report says he will.
Warner, 38, is expected to retire after 12 seasons, including the past five with the Cardinals. A friend who talked with Warner after the Cardinals lost to the New Orleans Saints in the playoffs said “it sounded like he was done.”
2:25 PM
Arizona: C- in education
A report by the group that publishes Education Week magazine has rated the 50 states and Washington D.C. on education. Arizona comes in 46th—and dropped three places since the last report.
According to the Republic, however, there is some good news:
The good news is that for the second year in a row, Arizona earned an A- for the quality of its learning goals, tests and accountability. It is 18th in the nation with that grade, although last year it was eighth.
OK, so the good news isn’t really good. The bad news?
The bad news is the state lags in all other categories. In the “chance for success category,” Arizona sank from 42nd in the nation to 45th, although its grade was the same, C-.
7:00 AM