Friday, March 3, 2017
ON INLANDER.COM
Awwww... they think they're people!
A study of canine cognition suggests that dogs may not be so different from toddlers after all.
Zag when others Zig
Has anyone been following Gonzaga basketball? Know if they're good this year? We assess the team's b-ball chances in the West Coast Conference Tournament. (B-ball is slang for "basketball," in case you were wondering.)
Brown in Town
Alton Brown is coming down to town to turn that frown upside down. But Brown needs the lowdown of the spots around most deserving of great renown that deserve the crown.
IN OTHER NEWS
On the other side of the bridge
An Avista subsidiary is preparing a $10.6 million bioscience hub on the other side of the pedestrian bridge. (Spokesman-Review)
All along the Riverfront
The Riverfront Park project remains on schedule, despite the hellish winter. (Spokesman-Review)
Money Pot
KXLY breaks down how cities and counties are getting pot revenue. (KXLY)
Investigative Apathy
Republicans don't seem all that interested in a special inquiry into Trump's Russia ties for some reason. (New York Times)
Media Bias
A left-wing former journalist has been arrested and charged with at least some of the anti-Semitic bomb threats recently. Police say he was waging a harassment campaign against a woman. (Washington Post)
Tags: Morning briefing , News , Image
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Share your recommendations on social media with the tag #ABRoadEatsSpokane
Too bad he just missed Inlander Restaurant Week.
Still, charismatic food guy Alton Brown is planning to dine his way around the Lilac City when he comes to town later this month for his live stage show, "Eat Your Science." But first, he's looking to all of us for recommendations.
Today on his Facebook page, Brown invited fans to share their top spots they think he should check out while here for the March 29 show at the INB Performing Arts Center. By leaving a comment or using the hashtag #ABRoadEatsSpokane, fans can share their recommendations on social media. Then, be on the lookout for the bespectacled Brown (follow him on Instagram for updates, too) at local restaurants and coffee shops in late March.
When Brown was last in Spokane for his "Edible Inevitable" show in spring of 2015, he later lauded the coffee he tried at both Coeur Coffeehouse and Indaba Coffee, the waffles at The Scoop and tasty sandwiches at Stella's Café. He capped off the day with dinner at the Wandering Table in Kendall Yards.
If Mr. Brown is interested in the local dining spots Inlander staff would suggest he visit, he can refer to the following:
Any of our city's James Beard-nominated chefs' restaurants: The Wandering Table and The Gilded Unicorn (even though he dined at WT last visit, the Gilded Unicorn debuted since), both owned by 2016-nominee Adam Hegsted; 2015 nominee Jeremy Hansen's Santé, Common Crumb Artisan Bakery or his latest two projects, Inland Pacific Kitchen and Hogwash Whiskey Den; as well as this year's nominee, Laurent Zirotti of Fleur de Sel in Post Falls.
If he has a hankering for Chef Tony Brown's food, he'll find the celebrated sandwich line-up of the former Stella's now at Ruins, along with cocktails and a regularly rotating dinner menu.
Finally, if he'd like to try some eateries that have debuted since his 2015 visit, there's lots to choose from, including The Blackbird, 1898 Public House, and Table 13 inside the new Davenport Grand Hotel.
Of course, there are plenty of longtime, tried-and-true places that we all know and love, so make sure to share your top picks!
Tags: Alton Brown , Eat Your Science , #ABRoadEatsSpokane , Food , Image
Gonzaga big man Przemek Karnowski has good reason to smile. The Zags at the No. 1 seed of the West Coast Conference tournament starting Friday in Las Vegas.
Gonzaga’s loss to BYU in the regular season finale is overshadowing a whole season’s worth of work. And that work adds up to the Zags not needing much luck over the next few days in Vegas.
The West Coast Conference Tournament tips off Friday at Orleans Arena. Gonzaga, by virtue of a first place finish in the regular season, is the one seed. That puts the Zags on the easy half of the 10-team bracket and keeps a clash with arch rival Saint Mary’s, or more recent nemesis BYU, on hold until Tuesday’s championship game.
First, though, Gonzaga will have to take down either nine-seed Pacific or eight-seed Pepperdine. That first Zags game, televised on ESPN2, is slated for Saturday at 7 p.m.
In four meetings with those teams this season the Zags won by an average of 29.5 points, and no game was closer than 20. A win Gonzaga will advance them to face either four-seed Santa Clara or five-seed San Francisco on Monday evening.
Canines might be more like toddler humans than chimpanzees are, according to a new study. Read about it below.
Have a heart for kids who struggle
More than 700 people turned out for the Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital’s annual Kids at Heart luncheon this week. This year’s event raised money for improving access to psychiatric services for the region’s kids. Christian Rocholl, the keynote speaker and Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center emergency room pediatric physician, described situations in which kids can endure long waits—one ER census entry showed a child who had been in the ER more than a 100 hours — for an in-patient bed in the psychiatric unit to become available. Rocholl noted the ER is not a particularly conducive environment for those struggling with their mental health: There are no windows, so days and nights get mixed up and kids have to be in their rooms at all times, requiring an escort to go to the bathroom or take a shower. Read more about the crisis in providing mental health services to young people.
If you missed the luncheon, you can still donate.
Dreaming of Daffodils? It may be too early to work in the dirt, but you can plan a visit to the 2017 Master Gardener Foundation Cabin Fever Gardening Symposium next week. Among the classes offered are instruction on identifying the spring mushrooms in your yard and learning which ones you can eat, creating and using compost tea to help plants thrive, discovering the secrets of permaculture, and learning how to create a sensory garden to nourish your spirit. Conference participants get to choose four classes, enjoy a continental breakfast and boxed lunch, and maybe even win a door prize. It happens March 11 at CenterPlace Regional Event Center, 7:30 am to 4 pm, $75.
Dogs win!
A new study assessing dogs’ “social cognition” found our canine companions behave similarly to toddlers. In fact, in these tests, dogs were more like young humans than were chimpanzees, humans’ closest relatives in the animal kingdom. Researchers “looked at how 2-year-olds, dogs and chimpanzees performed on comparable batteries of tests designed to measure various types of cognition. While chimps performed well on tests involving their physical environment and spatial reasoning, they did not do as well when it came to tests of cooperative communication skills, such as the ability to follow a pointing finger or human gaze.”
The work is aimed at understanding how humans evolved socially. "There are different kinds of intelligence, and the kind of intelligence that we think is very important to humans is social in nature, and that's the kind of intelligence that dogs have to an incredible extent," says one researcher.
ON INLANDER.COM
• NEWS: The family of Ryan Holyk, a teen cyclist killed in an accident with a speeding Spokane Valley Sheriff's deputy, has reached a tentative settlement with the county for $1 million. The family's lawyer does not like what he's heard from Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich about the case.
• MUSIC: Local singer songwriter Marshall McClean has a lot to celebrate recently — no. 2 on that list is the release of his second album SoDak. The Bartlett is throwing him an album release party this Friday.
• GIG ECONOMY: What's your hustle? Inlander writers explore the variety of ways local people make ends meet or drum up a little extra cash — driving for Uber, renting their homes and coding from coffee shops.
IN OTHER NEWS:
From the Hip
• Rep. Matt Shea (R-Spokane Valley) is facing a defamation lawsuit after accusing a Spokane County Sheriff's deputy of supplying a convicted murderer with a gun used in a triple homicide. In August last year, Shea said on his podcast that guns belonging to Deputy Travis Pendell fell into the hands of Roy Murry, who was convicted of murdering his estranged wife's parents and brother. Longtime Sheriff's Office antagonist Scott Maclay is also named in the lawsuit.
• Did Sessions Lie Under Oath?
Multiple reports are circulating of a meeting between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Russian ambassador last year. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are calling for Sessions to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in the election. Sessions denied speaking with the Russian ambassador during his confirmation hearing to become AG. He denied the accusations again this week. (New York Times)
• First They Came For...
The feds came for a DACA "dreamer" after the now 22-year-old immigrant spoke at a news conference in Mississippi about her fear of deportation. Daniela Vargas was detained by Immigration and Customs Agents Wednesday and is being held without a bond. Vargas came to the United States from Argentina when she was 7 years old. She has remained in the U.S. under Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, though her DACA is expired. Her reapplication is pending. (Clarion-Ledger)
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
The family of Ryan Holyk, the 15-year-old cyclist killed after a collision with a speeding police SUV, has
Just days before the wrongful death case was set to go to trial, the two sides agreed to a $1 million settlement.
The lawsuit, which originally named Spokane County, the Spokane County Sheriff's
Mike Maurer, the attorney for the
During a news conference announcing the settlement, Knezovich praised the law enforcement investigations into the accident.
"Every ounce of evidence that was used on either side of this issue came from those investigations," he says, referring to those completed by the Spokane Police Department and the Washington State Patrol. "It was very thorough, very detailed. ... I believe that is what ultimately led to this case being resolved rather than it going to trial. The evidence consistently showed that Joe Bodman was not the causal effect."
Maurer does not agree.
"Sheriff Knezovich has attempted to distort the truth and mislead the public about Ryan's death and the police investigations from the start, and it's clear he will do so to the very end," Maurer says. "There is absolutely no credibility for anybody to assert that the truth came out because of law enforcement's investigations. The truth came out because my clients had the fortitude to litigate this case and shed light on the facts."
Tags: Ryan Holyk , Mike Maurer , Ozzie Knezovich , Spokane County Sheriff , Joe Bodman , News , Image
Anti-social-ish party games, word puzzles, bug battles and a long-awaited follow up
Welcome back to the Inlander staff's semi-regular rundown of the cool and worthwhile things we've been into lately: words we've been reading, shows we've been watching, music/podcasts we've been listening to, and tasty treats we've been drinking/eating. This week, we're telling you about the coolest, nerdiest games we've been wearing down our thumbs playing.
Find past installments of "What We've Been.." here.
SPELLTOWER
Every so often, I go on a hyper-focused game binge on my phone, playing the same app during every spare minute until I get completely sick of it and swear off phone games, for at least a few more weeks. When I do play, I gravitate toward games that are simple enough I can almost meditatively play them while watching TV or before I fall asleep.
Recently I came back to a solid standby that’s been on my phone for a few years: SpellTower. In a nutshell, you connect letters from a seemingly random jumble to create words. The longer and more complex the word, the more points you get. The game has a few modes — you might be trying to prevent your stacks of letters from reaching the top of the screen, or you might just be trying to get the most points from a single dwindling stack.
You’re reminded at the end of each round what your all-time best word was (for me, the elusive 880-point “quarantines”) and see how your best word this round compares. I play to beat my best scores, but you can also play someone you know in multiplayer mode. It’s simple, engaging and just right for this word nerd. (SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL)
Tags: What We've Been... , games , Pit People , SpellTower , Hollow Knight , Jackbox Games , Arts & Culture , For Fun! , Image
The answer to your question is, “Yes, that really is a dude!”
In a country suddenly fighting over who gets to use the restroom, drag queens and straight-laced working folks mingled just fine up on the INB stage Tuesday night for Kinky Boots’ opening night in Spokane.
This 2013 Tony-winner is definitely a case of “How’d they make a show out of that?” Based on a single episode of the BBC series Trouble at the Top (which was later turned into the 2005 Chiwetel Ejiofor-starring film), Kinky Boots follows the fate of a soon-to-be-defunct English shoe factory. When the buttoned-down owner teams with a London drag queen and begins manufacturing fetish footwear, well, that’s how Broadway magic is made … apparently.
It helped, of course, that Harvey Fierstein (Hairspray, La Cage aux Folles) wrote the book and that Cyndi Lauper (who, as we know, just wants to have fun) handled the music — a nice mix of pop, ballads and the usual Broadway move-the-story-along songs. But it’s Lola who makes the whole thing take flight — a role that seems scientifically crafted to win a Tony. And, in fact, Billy Porter did win the Tony with the original cast. It’s a barnburner of a part, with plenty of drag bombast, sprinkled with human moments — and even boxing.
Tags: Arts & Culture , Image
Transgender students in Washington state will still be allowed to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with, despite the recent decision by President Donald Trump's administration to revoke guidance to protect those rights nationally.
The Washington State Human Rights Commission reiterated in a Tuesday, Feb. 28 statement that Washington law on civil rights protections, along with clarifications the commission made in 2015, remains unchanged by the federal guidance. Last week, Washington's Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal also said the state rules would continue to protect Washington students.
Equal treatment of people is required by the Washington State Law Against Discrimination.
"Standing together with Governor Inslee and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Human Rights Commission will protect the rights of one of our most vulnerable populations, transgender youth," the commission states.
Tags: transgender bathrooms , civil rights , trans , lgbt , schools , News , Image
However, a 'perception' of unfairness against football players persists
An independent report has found no evidence of racial bias or discrimination within Washington State University's student conduct process, which has been the subject of scrutiny since the discipline of former WSU football player Robert Barber and others last fall.
Barber was involved in a brawl at a party in July 2016, and was seen on video punching a WSU student who was left unconscious. Barber and another football player, T.J. Fehoko, were expelled by Washington State University's Student Conduct Board in the fall, but Barber's expulsion was reduced to a suspension upon appeal, and by the end of the season he was playing in football games again. Last week — seven months after the brawl — Whitman County Prosecutors charged him with felony assault.
Asian-Pacific Islander advocacy groups alleged racial bias in the initial discipline of Barber and called on WSU to review its conduct process. An online petition gained thousands of signatures and called for "justice" for Barber, claiming he was "racially profiled and targeted" by the University.
Tags: Washington State University , Student Conduct Process , Robert Barber , News , Image
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