This is the dumbest, most pretentious thing I have ever seen.

Curious George My Google-fu has failed me. I have a bunch of mp3s on my harddrive that I want to burn on cd, and I want the cd to play on regular players. I find all sorts of programs to do this on a PC, but none for my 10.2.8 OSX ass... Help?

The Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Frederick Sandys and Ford Madox Brown, among others. Their beginnings, and their varied faces. more inside

J. Ralph: Ad Tune Master Millions of people listen to J. Ralph's music, yet he's far from a household name. (Link goes to "All Things Considered" interview, with other good stuff, like three full-length songs from his new CD, and links to his website) more inside

The Forgery Indictments and Biblical Archaeology Review - Learning from Hindsight. Via Ralph the Sacred River

The tragic story of the Lady Be Good. This WWII B24 bomber was lost in 1943 over the harsh Libyan desert hundreds of miles south of its base, due to a simple navigational error. As their plane ran out of fuel, believing they were still over the Mediterranean, the nine crewmen bailed out wearing their Mae West life preservers ...

Do a search on eBay for "monkeyfilter" more inside

40 things that only happen in the movies. I'd like to add one more: many, if not most of the people in many movies smoke cigarettes and no one ever notices, or objects. The smokers never ask permission either.

Stratellite blimp, floating at 65,000 ft, may allow WiFi in cars and in rural areas that DSL doesn't reach. The first airship underwent trials a few months ago, according to press releases. Whether Sanswire can field the blimps remains sketchy, but with crowding and latency problems on satellites and telcos doing little to reach the boonies, this technology may hold promise.

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

Fragrance for your belly button. Jessica Simpson is concerned about how your navel smells. -- via Pop Culture Junk Mail more inside

All your parrot news in one place. Covering news on endangered, threatened, and feral parrots. more inside

Don't they teach kids ethics anymore? When I went through school, they taught us a little something about ethics. Between Tom Delay Jr here and our own experience with moooshy I'm starting to wonder if this was the exception rather than the rule.

Two TVs for the price of two. What a breakthrough. "Sharp Corp. has developed a liquid-crystal display that shows totally different images to people viewing the screen from the left and the right." more inside

Otto Dix