Have you seen the dash-cam video of Sandra Bland’s arrest? Beyond the unknown role that racism may have played in the incident, it displays the dangers that arise when a cop abuses his authority.

  After basically tricking Bland into breaking the law—she clearly changed lanes without signaling because she saw a squad car racing up behind her and was anxious to get out of its way—the patrolman then goaded her until her temper boiled over. Bland should have gotten away with a ticket or even a warning, but instead she was threatened with a Taser, thrown to the ground and tossed into a jail cell from which she never emerged alive.

  Why do some cops treat their badge as a license to abuse? It almost becomes a chicken-or-egg question. Do professions such as policing attract people with a penchant for abuse, or do they take ordinary people and turn them into abusers?

  That’s a key question that arises in The Stanford Prison Experiment. Though it doesn’t deal specifically with policing, it does focus on the ways a position of authority can be a corrupting influence.

With the coming of August, we near the end of Summer Movie Season 2015. We’ve fought Ultron with the Avengers, followed Mad Max and Imperator Furiosa down Fury Road, tamed raptors and fought Terminators, felt sad for different reasons about Inside Out and Minions, and finally watched lovable loser Ant-Man and just plain loser Adam Sandler save the world. All that’s left ahead of us is another mediocre-looking Fantastic Four movie made to keep the rights out of Marvel Studios’ hands. So from this vantage point, what did we learn from the successes, flops and social justice darlings that came out of Hollywood this summer?

  Nostalgia was a big theme, but the approach this time was different. Instead of tepid remakes of beloved movies — for example, the bland Total Recall and Robocop remakes of recent years — we got three movies that sought to revive moribund franchises with long-awaited sequels. Of course, Jurassic Park, Mad Max, and The Terminator all had sequels, but only The Terminator has had any recently and none since Terminator 2 have been well-regarded.

When Kix Roxx takes the Jazz Meets Origami Festival stage with his band, Razor Dragon Assault, he’ll be doing so for the final time.
  “I’m tired of being the only purveyor of eardrum destroying thrash that plays the Jazz Meets Origami Festival, and I feel that another finger-tapping wizard of shred should have the opportunity to rock the brains out of people drinking lemon shake-ups in the park,” Roxx said by phone during a break from recording RDA’s latest album, tentatively titled “Space Demon Wizards of the Night.” “We’ve been doing this for seven years now, and half the audience has plainly memorized most of our dive-bombing pinch harmonics and floating arpeggios – we can see them walking away as soon as we begin our first song! It’s time to usher in new acts like Flaming Sword of God to scorch the souls of those waiting in line to fold paper into amusing shapes.”

When I sing in the shower, or the car or am the weird dude rapping to himself, you might  catch me randomly yelling Kevin Gates lyrics like  “I’m f*cking with the plug daughter.” It’s probably because I lack the verbal dexterity to say, “Six years ago I purchased a car. Most likely something you can’t afford.”
  To be honest I lack the ability to go word for word with Gates, Wu-Tang Clan, Nas or most rap.
  I listen to rap. I tried to email the Louisiana rapper’s publicist prior to his concert Saturday. I wanted Gates’ opinion on the shootings in Lafayette, gun control, what his six jobs are, and insight on some of his more humorous interview subjects.
  But Gates either viewed the gun control/Lafayette question as problematic or just didn’t really need to talk to me because he is famous and transitioning from being someone who tours the club circuit to being a full-fledged rap star.
  He sold the Newport out.

As the FBI continues to scrutinize the relationship between Mayor Michael Coleman and Chinese business woman Jianhua Li, their investigation has exposed a tiny window into how local power brokers are wooing foreign nationals to ship their foreign-manufactured goods into Columbus’ booming and secretive Foreign Trade Zone hub at Rickenbacker airport. Where the corporate taxes are low and a significant number of workers are temporaries who “pick pack” the imported goods and paid $9-an-hour while being treated like second-class citizens, say local labor activists.
  The Free Press earlier this year wrote about Rickenbacker’s “Free Trade Zone #138,” an FTZ that by all accounts is growing into a juggernaut. In 2013 over $6.3 billion worth of merchandise was imported into Rickenbacker, ranking it in the top-ten for the nation’s 177 FTZs.