Dangerous Minds pal Alan Stuart writes:

We here at One Long House have been working hard on a new non-profit venture, Women’s Voices Now, over the summer.  In their first effort for women’s rights, the team at Women’s Voices Now (with the help of us) created Women’s Voices from the Muslim World: a short film festival, which has received hundreds of film submissions from over 50 countries—the best of which highlight and comment on the lives of Muslim women in stories that might otherwise go unheard.

If there are any filmmakers out there, which there almost certainly are, you have until November 24 to submit to the festival (one week!), for a chance to win part of the $35k being awarded.

For non-filmmakers, there are scores of films to love, hate, donate, laugh at, comment on, share, and rate.

So far my fave follows the first and only female bus driver in Tehran, in a simple documentary that sheds light on something most of us would have no idea of.  If you don’t dig that one, there are films ranging in topic from slavery, dancing, smoking in the bathroom, and racism in French class, that might just tickle your fancy.

Below,” It is Written” by Mostafa Heravi (2006) “A woman in chador passionately dances to ancient Persian music. In Iran women are not allowed to dance in public. “It is Written” shows us how it would look like if a woman was allowed to dance. Heravi emphasizes the fate of womankind and the inescapable results of freedom of action.”
 

 
Rocky Flats Gear may provide the answer to maintaining privacy and protecting the crown jewels when going thru airport security with their selection of radiation and X-ray blocking undergarments.

Rocky Flats Gear™ is the US manufacture of a revolutionary flexible, attractive, lightweight, Lead (Pb) free, radiation shielding garments for individuals. Our emphasis is on protecting the traveling public, airline, medical, and security professionals from radiation generated by security and medical imaging equipment. Our novel products can protect tissues from a broadband of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation generated by imaging equipment and natural sources. For the first time, radiological shields are attractive, durable, affordable, fun, and comfortable to wear.

Background radiation has increased over the decades from atomic weapons testing, coal power plants (thorium-40 emissions), industrial accidents, medical/security imaging, and use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions putting us all at greater cancer risk and generational DNA damage. We are bathed in radiation from a variety of sources both natural and man-made, we are trying to do our small part to improve general health and enhance dignity.

A selection of undergarments are available with radiation blocker fig leaf, flowers or hand clasps are available on the Rocky Flats Gear site.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
 

 
With thanks to Betsy Burger!
 

 
Seldom heard early recording of a recently-out-of-college Lou Reed (with some uncredited musicians performing as “The Roughnecks”) during his pre-Velvet Underground days as a staff songwriter and performer at Pickwick International Records. This and three other tracks recorded in 1964, showed up on a 1979 Velvets bootleg called “the velvet underground, etc.” Obviously that’s his voice, and it most certainly sounds like Lou on guitar, too

This particular bootleg, which came from Australia, was once a record collector holy grail, along with its companion volume, “the velvet underground & so on.” Now you can easily find both of them on audio blogs.
 

 
iTunes who?

(via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk)

 
Unemployed Man and his trusty sidekick, Plan B (who was forced out of the workplace for being too expensive to insure by his former employer) have a word with the “Hero in Chief” in a panel taken from Erich Origen and Gan Golan’s The Adventures of Unemployed Man graphic novel.

Obama better have a fuckin’ Plan B is all I can say…

 
This is nothing too profound, in fact it’s rather goofy and quite amusing to see how giddy the two Johns are around each other, but I’ve never seen this before and have no idea as to its provenance. Anybody?

 
New Threadless t-shirt called “Heartless” by Juan Carlos Bueno.

(via Laughing Squid)

 
Bob Dylan’s handwritten letter of support for John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their travails with the U.S. Immigration Dept.

JUSTICE for John & Yoko!

John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to this country’s so called ART INSTITUTION / They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only can help others to see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this mild dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass-media. Hurray for John & Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!

Bob Dylan

Via Letters of Note

‘Just Kids’, one of my favorite books of 2010 written by one of my rock and roll heroes, gets the recognition it deserves.

The rock musician Patti Smith won the National Book Award for nonfiction on Wednesday night for “Just Kids,” a sweetly evocative memoir of her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe and life in the bohemian New York of the 1960s and ’70s.
Accepting the award to applause and cheers, Ms. Smith — clearly the favorite of the night — choked up as she recalled her days as a clerk in the Scribner’s bookstore in Manhattan.

Read the article in the New York Times.

Update. From the Village Voice on Patti and The National Book Award:

Typically at the National Book Awards, the books most likely to sell are the ones most likely to take home the prizes. But Smith doesn’t fit in at all with the typical mold of a National Book Award winner. Plenty of insiders had written off Smith’s book as a Bob Dylan’s Chronicles-esque recollection of her time in New York, whose strength is its stories and not its writing. It made the surprise of hearing Smith’s name called all the better.

Smith was shocked. She shuffled up to the stage from her table and started to speak. “I’ve loved books all of my life,” she started out, noting that when she used to stock books in the city, she always paid attention to the National Book Award-winners, and dreamed about taking home an award. “I used to wonder what it would feel like,” Smith teared up. It was unexpected and emotional. “Thank you for letting me find out,” she finished, before adding one last aside that got an ovation from the crowd:

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”

 
Here’s the classic Bad Brains video culled from 4 hours of footage shot over the course of 3 nights of performances at CBGB in December of 1982. Hardcore rock/reggae doesn’t get any better than this. While most of this footage has been available in bits and pieces of varying quality on Youtube, here’s the entire video with superb sound and visuals.

You can buy this on DVD from MVD Visual here.
 

 
More badness from Bad Brains after the jump…