Small town, right-winger busybody know-nothings strike again!

The Scopes Monkey Trial was decided 84 years ago this past July, but in Sedalia, Missouri, you’d think it’s the summer of 1925 again.

That’s because the band director at the town’s Smith-Cotton High School recently got in hot water for making T-shirts that depict primates evolving into man. The shirts—based on the popular illustration above—were designed to promote the band’s fall program, “Brass Evolutions,” that explores how brass instruments have changed from the 1960s to today.

On the T-shirt, monkeys and early humans hold trumpets throughout their various stages of evolution.

That didn’t sit well with Sherry Melby, a teacher in the school district and mother of a band member. Yesterday Melby told the Sedalia Democrat: “I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”

Evolution T-Shirts on Trial in Missouri Town

Here’s an interesting tower located in Beijing fashioned from 28,000 decaying human teeth. Has the identity of The Tooth Fairy been revealed?

(via The Presurfer)

 
Today’s NYT alerts us to the 60th (!) anniversary of Paul Bowles’ novel The Sheltering Sky.  A race to the limits of experience—and existence—set against North Africa’s unforgiving desert, Sky gave Bowles the means to live with the absolute freedom of his two most famous characters, Port and Kit Moresby.  That freedom would ultimately consume the Moresbys, but Bowles, along with his wife, Jane, lived out their years in Tangier, experimenting with hashish and bisexuality, and nurturing friendships with everyone from Gore Vidal to William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.

It was with Gysin that Bowles met The Master Musicians of Jajouka, a discovery that would later yield Brian Jones Presents: The Pipes of Pan at Jajouka.  Dubbed, dryly, by Burroughs as a “4000-year-old rock band,” The Masters can be seen below playing at the 40th anniversary of Brian Jones’ death.

 
In the NYT: Trusting in the Sheltering Sky, Even When It Scorched

 
Ricky Gervais has brought and continues to bring major joy to all of us here at Dangerous Minds.  I’m happy to report the same goes for his past as well.  Seona Dancing, his mostly ignored ‘80s new wave group, might have found more success in the Philippines than in England, but perhaps that was a lucky career stroke.  Failure, humiliation, the crushing of expectations—welcome to the world, David Brent!

 
(Via Cakehead Loves Evil)

Check out the “dirty car art” of Scott Wade

Via Wild Ammo

 
Ever hear David Bowie‘s ?

 
These are just two of the images from LA-based Sandow Birk‘s effort to “hand-transcribe the entire Qur’an according to historic Islamic traditions and to illuminate the text with relevant scenes from contemporary American life.”  Using a calligraphy style “loosely based on the Cholo graffiti associated with East Los Angeles,” Birk reinvisions the Qur’an,

as it was intended—as a universal message to humankind.  If the Qur?

Not being able to read Japanese there is not much I can write here, but I think a picture is worth a thousand words in this case! Damien Hirst take note.

Via Japan Probe

Moldover’s new CD, over 3 years in the making, not only delivers gorgeously diverse music with meaning and musical mastery, it completely redefines what it means to “play an album”... Moldover’s CD packaging itself IS a new musical instrument! The CD is mounted on a custom designed circuit board, intricately patterned and powering a “light-Theremin”. Yes! You play the artwork and it makes sound! Only the musical supervillain genius of Moldover could develop something so stunningly innovative.

(via Arbroath)

Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Robert F. McDonnell has, perhaps, just a teensy weensy bit of a right-wing authoritarian streak in him, what do you think? Well, McDonnell seems to think he’s going to get away with “re-branding” himself as a moderate. Although he’s trying to back peddle furiously to disassociate himself from his own words—good luck with this one, buddy—let’s hope the VA Democrats really stick it to this jerk in the general election. From The Washington Post:

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He described as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families—a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.

In his run for governor, McDonnell, 55, makes little mention of his conservative beliefs and has said throughout his campaign that he should be judged by what he has done in office, including efforts to lower taxes, stiffen criminal penalties and reform mental health laws.

—snip—

He argued for covenant marriage, a legally distinct type of marriage intended to make it more difficult to obtain a divorce. He advocated character education programs in public schools to teach “traditional Judeo-Christian values” and other principles that he thought many youths were not learning in their homes. He called for less government encroachment on parental authority, for example, redefining child abuse to “exclude parental spanking.” He lamented the “purging of religious influence” from public schools. And he criticized federal tax credits for child care expenditures because they encouraged women to enter the workforce.

“Further expenditures would be used to subsidize a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family by entrenching status-quo of nonparental primary nurture of children,” he wrote.

He went on to say feminism is among the “real enemies of the traditional family.”

There’s more! Oh yes, there is more…

‘89 Thesis A Different Side of McDonnell Va. GOP Candidate Wrote on Women, Marriage and Gays