Bloglander

This season’s Doctor Who premiere had, at its core, a very compelling, tried and true sci-fi idea: The Doctor realizes that by abandoning a young boy to certain death, he created Davros, creator of the genocidal Daleks. In order to stop Davros, the villain, the Doctor has to go back in time and save Davros, the boy.

But getting to that conclusion so full of stuff, so full of free-floating Cool Ideas, that describing the plot easily sounds like a 7-year-old delivering a single-sentence stream-of-consciousness monologue about the adventures he made up about his action figures. Something like this: 

So the Master is freezing planes in mid-air in present day England and so Clara Oswald leaves school to go to UNIT and then finds the Master, and the Master says she and the Doctor are actually friends but the Doctor is going to die, and so then they travel back to medieval times where the doctor is facing down a knight with a tank and a guitar, but at the same time Davros’s messenger is trying to find the Doctor and going through all these planets and places like the Maldovarium and the Shadow Proclamation, and then the messenger finally finds the Doctor in medieval times and tells them Davros is dying, and then they go to what they think is a spaceship but is actually an invisible planet named Skaro and the Daleks kill Clara, and the knight turns out to be a Dalek in disguise and the Dalek’s destroy the Master and the TARDIS, and the Doctor travels back in time to save the Davros as a boy, who he’d previously abandoned.

Now, there are much more coherent recaps than the one delivered by my hypothetical 7-year-old. But the point remains that to someone who’s never seen Doctor Who before, the episode would be completely unintelligible. To someone who’s seen every episode of Doctor Who since 2005, the result is basically unintelligible. And Saturday’s episode was just part one of two! Who knows what nonsense will come next week?

Since making her professional artistic debut many years ago by selling out of her paper collage-style prints at the first arts and crafts show she ever attended, Cori Dantini's artistic profile has only climbed. The Pullman-based graphic designer and illustrator has racked up nearly 7,000 sales on her Etsy shop, had her work printed on Kleenex boxes, and now fans can find her whimsical and playful designs on bedding sold by mega-retailer Target. Besides this impressive list, Dantini's art is also found on fabrics and greeting cards.

The Inlander knew Cori's work was special early on, having commissioned her to design the cover of our 2012-13 Annual Manual, along with inside artwork for that year's issue. 

Currently, an online search at Target.com shows that Dantini has eight bedding items showcasing her work, sold as part of the DENY Designs line. Many of the Denver-based company's artist-designed housewares products are also sold through Target. Four of Dantini's soft, nature-inspired designs are printed onto duvet covers ($140-$180) and pillowcase sets ($30), which as of this posting are on sale for 10 percent off.

Do you realize the first day of autumn arrives on Wednesday? That means it's time to send summer out with a bang and greet the new season the same way. We have many opportunities to do so in our event listings and Staff Picks. 

Here are some highlights for the week ahead: 

Monday, Sept. 21

WORDS | It's Spokane Poetry Slam night at The Bartlett, where you can turn the $5 cover charge to get in to $50 for winning the audience vote for best performance. 

LIVE BANDS | The WSU Humanitas Festival is off and running in Pullman, and tonight you can catch the "ethno-chaos" Ukrainian crew DakhaBrakha. Chances are you haven't heard them, so here's a little sample. 

Tuesday, Sept. 22

BENEFIT | Experience a night of Rwandan history and joyful music at One Night with Impanda, a Spokane-based organization raising funds to help Rwandan street kids learn life skills through art education. You can read a bit more about Impanda right here. 

WORDS | Pulitzer Prize-winning author Diane McWhorter, who penned Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, is the headliner of the 12th Annual Northern Idaho Distinguished Humanities Lecture and Dinner and Coeur d'Alene Resort. 

FROM INLANDER.COM...
• Proper etiquette for rock concerts
• Can a zombie stop a slapshot?

• Seahawks fall to Packers, dropping to 0-2
Is it time to panic?

• The pope visits Cuba; on Tuesday, heads to Washington
Pope Francis met with Fidel Casto, gently criticized the communist system and celebrated a Mass in the Plaza of the Revolution. Tomorrow Francis goes to Washington, D.C., where leaders from both parties hope to capitalize on his visit.
• The Emmys
Viola Davis became the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for best lead actress on a drama series. Jon Hamm also got his.

• Man charged in fatal crash to appear in court today
Ryan Turner, 27, of Hayden is expected in Kootenai County Superior Court today. He faces vehicular manslaughter charges after officials say he crashed in the car of Mathew-Michael Baroni, 33, and his two young daughters, killing all three. A GoFundMe page has been set up for the family. (KXLY)

• The weather forecast
Mid 70s to start the week, dropping into the mid 60s by the weekend.

Apparently someone at Business Insider is a big music fan, because this week they published a list of 10 Things You Should Never Do at a Concert. He covers all the expected bases — taking too many pictures, ignoring the band, getting too drunk — but there are definitely some holes.  
Here are a few things that could make all of our concert experiences better if we abide by them: 

Keep your shirt on. Some dude-bros insist on taking off their shirt when they build up a sweat, particularly at metal and punk shows. No one likes going home covered in someone else's sweat. No one. Cover it up. 

Don't order mixed drinks at a packed club show. You're seeing a great band. You're thirsty and try to make a quick trip to the bar for a beer without missing too much of the show. The person in front of you decides it's time to play "stump the bartender" with some idiotic order. "Can I get six Lonely Grizzlies on a Beach? What do you mean you don't know what that is?" Keep it simple, people. Shots and beers will do you right. 

Mind your manners while you navigate the crowd. Barreling through a crowd, causing multiple people to lose significant parts of their beer to spillage, is no way to go through life. Be conscious of your fellow show-goers' beverages. 

Dancers take precedent. If you want to sit, move. This is controversial; battles between ticket-holding sitters and standers have raged forever. I'm firmly in the corner of the standers/dancers. If someone pays good money for a concert ticket and wants to dance at the show, they should be able to do just that. Yes, the sitters paid for tickets, too, but they can sit at home and watch videos of the band on their computer or TV. A concert is an interactive, hopefully transcendent experience, and sometimes that requires standing. Ideally, a venue would have areas for the dancers to get their groove on, but until that becomes common, I stand with standers. 

And, finally...

Never yell "Freebird." It's over, man. Been done. Move on. 

What other things should fans never do at a show? Hit us with some ideas. 

Calling all zombies, Spokane Chiefs' fans and everyone in between! 

There's a nice confluence of events happening on Friday, Sept. 25, as the Z Nation television series will be filming scenes for an episode that features a hockey team. As part of that filming, they're looking for people to show up AT the Spokane Arena in their full Spokane Chiefs' regalia — or anything a "normal" hockey fan might wear to a game — to be part of some background shots. If you want to be part of the filming, simply show up at the Arena and find the Z Nation table near the Guest Services office sometime between 5 and 6 pm. 

This filming just happens to be happening while the arena hosts its 20th Anniversary Celebration Open House from 5 to 8 pm that night, so in between dodging zombies and cheering for some fake hockey action, you can check out the innards of the Arena, throw a football around the Shock field and dive into some birthday cake. 

There’s a lot on the horizon for people interested in a little string action.

2Cellos
Playing the cello can be super cool, or at least that’s what the guys in 2Cellos want you to think. The YouTube sensations are heading to the INB Performing Arts Center April 18, proving that head banging instrumental versions of pop hits resonates well with folks — especially those who aren’t normally into classical music. 2Cellos, aptly made up of two Croatian cellists, Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser, were first propelled to stardom in 2011 for their take on Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” — they were even featured on Glee and asked to tour with Elton John because of it. More recently, their Baroque-themed music video of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” has taken the world by storm, garnering millions of views. That song is included on their January release Celloverse. Tickets are $30-$60.

Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Fiddle Contest
The fiddle scene is seriously smokin’ hot in the Inland Northwest thanks to a bevy of teachers, bands and, of course, area competitions. The Coeur d’Alene Casino Fiddle Contest returns to Worley, Idaho, offering up more than $15,000 in cash and prizes for contestants playing today and Sunday. Fiddlers are separated into the following categories: Small Fry, Junior Junior, Junior, Accompanist, Young Adult, Adult and Senior with the Small Fry’s starting the whole thing off at 8:30 am Saturday. The public is more than welcome to attend the two-day event for free. 

Spokane Symphony season opener
Russian composers’ works never go quietly into the night — they’re brash and bold pieces of art, as dramatic as they come. So yes, an opening weekend full of Russian music is the perfect way to make a statement for the Spokane Symphony’s 70th season. Take Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, for example. This is that spooky devil-inspired piece folks grew up hearing in Disney’s Fantasia, and it’s sure to spark the audience’s attention immediately. Also expect a lot from the harsh and spectacular Bartók Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring acclaimed Filipina pianist Cecile Licad. The Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox concert starts tonight at 8 pm, with one more chance to see it Sunday at 3 pm. 

SATURDAY: "Partly cloudy until afternoon, with a high temperature of 76° around 4 PM, and a low of 47° around 5 AM. The sun will rise at 6:33 AM and will set at 6:56 PM."

SUNDAY: "Partly cloudy throughout the day and breezy starting in the afternoon, continuing until evening, with a high temperature of 77° around 3 PM, and a low of 49° around 5 AM. The sun will rise at 6:34 AM and will set at 6:54 PM."

source: forecast.io

We all need copy editors. Even journalists. Especially journalists.

So, yes, there's a bit of a "speck in your brother's eye" quality to criticizing the grammatical errors.  I make plenty of typos, so it's hardly for me to judge. Hypocrisy admitted. 

Still. The recent press release, "Students Will Continue to Persevere," that Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra submitted for newspapers to publish is a mess, filled with extra commas, subject-verb agreement errors and confusing sentences. It's drawn mockery on Twitter and Facebook, with one commenter comparing it to a piece he'd read in the Onion.

@TaraBethIdaho Ybarra emailed her column to multiple outlets for publication. We published her words as she submitted.

— Idaho Education News (@idahoednews) September 16, 2015

After all, Ybarra is the state superintendent of schools that teach grammar courses. She's been criticized, time and time again, for lacking qualifications. There are thousands of highly qualified English teachers in Idaho who would be happy to copy edit her prose before she publishes it.  But where some may see her opinion essay as an indictment of Idaho's educational system, I see an opportunity. This is a perfect exercise for high school English teachers across Idaho to give their students: Edit the state superintendent's essay. Fix punctuation errors. Rewrite clunky sentences. 

Here are a few sentences they can start with. 

Mutual accountability includes multiple measures over multiple times, and does not look like one test score, as most parents will tell you, “There is more to my child than one-test score.” 

Split up into two sentences by changing that comma after "score" to a period. Also: Is she referring to a specific scoring index called the "one-test"? 
If so, please explain what the "one-test" score is. If not, remove the hyphen. 

According to a recent magazine article, “Studying others’ misfortunes is one of the most valuable tools we have; one must navigate through failures and misfortunes, on their path to success.”

I attempted to Google this phrase to find the article Ybarra referenced and came up short. Now I'm curious where it came from. It seems to have the same comma trouble as the rest of her essay. For example, there should not be a comma after the second "misfortunes."

Also, if I'm being a stickler, in formal writing "one" is singular and "their" is plural. While the singular "they" is on the rise, many Idaho English teachers will still mark this as wrong. If Ybarra's next campaign platform centers on fighting for the "singular they" in Idaho schools, that's a campaign I could get behind.  

I used to have a poster in my classroom, “This is a mistake-making place.”

"Says," or a similar word, is missing after classroom. On the other hand, if Ybarra is intentionally making mistakes in this essay to highlight the value of making mistakes, that's some next-level meta jiu-jitsu she's pulling. And then there's this sentence.

For example, from the time that a student steps into their classroom, they not only have a lesson plan written, and teaching strategies in place, but they also support students in many different ways that we don’t see; for example, they show up for class, even when students are hungry, when students are going through personal struggles, and they show up for class when our students are victims of unspeakable things, or victims of terminal illnesses. 

Let's set aside the comma and subject-verb agreement problems for a moment. There are very few times when a semicolon is the best choice. In a sentence this long, with this many ideas, it just makes it a mess messier. Split up the sentence instead. 
I'm also confused about the antecedent of "they." Is Ybarra referring to the teachers showing up for class when their students are hungry or to the hungry students who still show up for class?

But, this is probably going to be messy and chaotic, and there will be failures and misfortunes that we will need to learn from, in order for our educational system to get better. We need to allow our schools to have this flexibility and mutually responsible accountability culture, in order to change the landscape of education in Idaho.

Lose some of those commas. I don't understand the phrase "this flexibility and mutually responsible accountability culture." Is she trying to say, "this flexible and mutually responsible culture of accountability?" Or maybe "this flexibility and this mutually responsible accountability-culture?" 

And, as your state superintendent I want to renew our partnership and build excitement for our educational system and our students, and I will continue to drive our agenda forward, with a message that failure is just a stepping stone on our path to success!

Aside from the comma issues, this is another messy sentence that could use a period, preferably after "students." And "our partnership" with whom? Parents? Students? Local districts? Pearson?

Don't worry, Ybarra. This happens to everybody. You'll make mistakes and you'll experience failures. Errors are just stepping stones to success. Make the changes and I'll bump the essay up a grade. 

Last week, KXLY ran a story about a couple who followed Spokane County Sheriff's Deputy John McQuitty while he was on patrol during dark, early-morning hours. In an interview with reporter Jeff Humphrey, Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said the couple's actions were dangerous, "especially in this day and age where, again, you have officers being executed." 

A recent survey by Rasmussen Reports found that 58 percent of people polled believe there is a war on police today, and it's easy to understand why. In August, a Texas sheriff's deputy was shot in the back while gassing up his patrol car in a Houston suburb. Kentucky State Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder and Louisiana State Trooper Steven Vincent were shot during traffic stops in the past two months. And two New York City police officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were shot point-blank while sitting in their patrol car in December.

Washington state is no exception. In 2009, a man killed four Lakewood police officers while they met at a coffee shop before their shifts. 

Indeed, law enforcement is a tough and often ugly job, and some police officers are killed simply because they're police officers. However, a deeper look at data on law enforcement deaths and assaults on police does not support the notion that there is a "war on police." In fact, since the 1970s, policing has become increasingly safer, and perpetuating the idea that police are under attack is dangerous, according to Washington Post blogger Radley Balko. 

Balko lays out his argument in a recent post: 

"When cops are constantly told that they’re under constant fire, or that every interaction with a citizen could be their last, or that they’re fortunate each time they come home from the job in one piece, it’s absolute poison for police-community relations. That kind of reminder on a regular basis would put anyone on edge. We’re putting police officers in a perpetually combative mindset that psychologically isolates them from the communities they serve. Incessantly telling cops that they’re under fire can condition them to see the people with whom they interact not as citizens with rights, but as potential threats. That not only means more animosity, anger and confrontation, it can also be a barrier to building relationships with people in the community — the sorts of relationships that help police officers solve crimes and keep communities safe." (the emphasis is ours)

Now let's look at the numbers: 

Dan Wang, an economics and philosophy student at the University of Rochester and former assistant to Balko, has compiled data on the number of "felonious" police killings since 1961 from FBI Uniform Crime Reports. (Felonious killings are deliberate killings of law enforcement officers in the line of duty.)

According to Wang's data, "more officers are feloniously killed in the 11 years between 1970 and 1980 (1,228) than in the 21 years between 1993 and 2013 (1,182);" and on average 125 officers were feloniously killed per year between 1971 and '75. That number dropped to 50 for the years 2006-2010. 

Here are a few of Wang's graphs: 





You can also look at Wang's raw data in a Google doc here.

And here's a chart from Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor and former police officer, that shows felonious killings since 1970 (in orange) juxtaposed against murders in the general population (in blue). 

@rcjparry @radleybalko Appreciate it! Keep in mind: murders only, not all violent felonies; no murder data for 2014 pic.twitter.com/F0ljAtBYrm

— Seth Stoughton (@PoliceLawProf) September 12, 2015

And here are graphs showing the rate at which officers were assaulted and injured from 1992 to 2012, via Daniel Bier, the founder and editor of the blog The Skeptical Libertarian:


Click here to see data that dates back to 1870.


A current police cadet attending an academy in a northern red state wrote an op-ed for The Daily Beast in which he too describes the dangers of the "war on cops" rhetoric, especially in police academies. The cadet, who authored the post under a pseudonym, writes that his instructors blame the Obama administration and the Black Lives Matter movement for inciting violence against police.  

“Our instructor is likely trying to warn us to take heed of the dangers of the job, and not expect to be thanked by politicians for doing it. But he has made the government and the people we’re meant to serve out to be the boogeymen in the process.”

...

“But there is no War on Police. This Us vs. Them mentality still prevails even in fresh academy cadets. Perhaps some of these people will become future jackbooted, truncheon-wielding oppressors. Or perhaps they will encounter the reality that betrays the fear they are taught.”

Larry Wilmore says Fox News should take some of the blame: 


Despite the numbers, the message seems to be taking hold. In May, Heather Mac Donald wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which she argues the spike in crime is a result of "the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months." (Mac Donald also cites an 89 percent jump in murders of officers from 2013 to 2014; however, she fails to acknowledge the fact that the number of officers killed in 2013 was 27 — the lowest in decades and well below the national average of the past 34 years, which is 64.)

According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks law enforcement deaths throughout the country, 89 officers have died so far this year (two in Washington and one in Idaho). The total figure includes accidental deaths, heart attacks, gunfire, vehicle pursuits, assaults and more. So far this year, gunfire deaths are down 26 percent, and overall line of duty deaths are down 4 percent. By contrast, law enforcement has killed between 700 and 835 civilians (depending who you ask), a figure that is "almost double the highest number of police shootings ever reported by the FBI for an entire year," the Washington Post reports.