Fantastic, Mysterious, and Adventurous Victoriana - Fiction and stuff from the Victorian Era. Sort of links with this MoFi post. more inside

The Desert and I: A Study in Affinity. The geographer Yi-Fu Tuan explains why "Of all the places I have lived in, without doubt the one for which I have the greatest affinity is the desert." (This is for desert-lovin' un- and comes to you courtesy of wood s lot.)

middleclas tool is making a movie and blogging the process. more inside

Digital George: Help with hard drives. I have ~100 GB of music to transfer from a Windows computer to an orphaned 160 GB HD. I want to get an enclosure for the 160 GB hard drive and use it as an external drive on an iBook that I plan to buy next time Apple updates the line. What are my options? more inside

Lost in the Sahara , the story of Captain Bill Lancaster. In 1933, Lancaster set out to make a record breaking solo flight from England to South Africa in a very small plane, his Avro Avian. Twenty-nine years later his journal of his last 8 days alive was found by a French army motorized desert patrol in an area of the Sahara the Bedouins call The Land of Thirst. more inside

Lost in Translation: a journey to Yezdinar village in Iraq. E.S. Drower traveled and wrote about Yezidi customs in 1941, producing the book Peacock Angel. Yezidis, worshippers of Melek Ta'us The Peacock Angel, have been persecuted as "satanists" because of the parallel between the fall of Melek Ta'us from grace and the fall of Lucifer. To the Yezidis Melek Ta'us repaired relations with God long ago, and is probably best described as a benevolent demiurge. more inside