For the morbidly curious: Whitney Houston’s autopsy report …

Download Whitney Houston’s autopsy report in .PDF format here. A beautiful voice captured in a death spiral of substance abuse.

May she RIP.

Ingenious Birth Announcement …

Who would write such a “paper”?

The Untouchables: Government corruption in Russia …

When you despair at the corruption in your own government, consider this story and rejoice. Here’s “something right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous mixed with Crime Scene Investigation. Watch Russian tax officials who stole $230 million from their people getting $43 million richer. See them buying multi-million dollar properties on Palm Jumeriah in Dubai, in Montenegro and Moscow, and getting payments to their Swiss bank accounts and offshore firms. Russian authorities refused to investigate the $230 million theft and declared these tax officials honest victims. Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year anti-corruption lawyer who exposed their scam, was tortured and killed.”

Russian Untouchables. Episode 1: Artem Kuznetsov

Q: What happened the last time the government shut down?

A: A young White House intern, unable to take up a Federal paying job, tells the President she has a crush on him — so he takes her into a library at the back of the Oval Office and proceeds to …

Atari brings classic games to the iPhone and iPad: Tempest included!

My youth was not entirely misspent, but I was addicted to one particular arcade game: Atari Tempest. To the extent that I purchased a game console at auction and installed it in my apartment in Hillbrow, Johannesburg and played it to perfection.

Flying 101: Kulula’s helpful new livery …

South Africa’s Budget airline Kulula has just rolled out a helpful new livery: Flying 101 …

At last, given the description of “mile-high club initiation chamber”, Americans will learn what the “loo” is (click on the next picture to zoom in on the tail end) …

This gives new meaning to taking a “light” snack!

You’ll find this photographic gem in National Geographic’s Daily Dozen for the 1st week in April, 2009 …

Photo and captions by James Snyder: April 2, 2009. This is a Cuban tree frog on a tree in my backyard in southern Florida. How and why he ate this light is a mystery. It should be noted that at the time I was taking this photo, I thought this frog was dead having cooked himself from the inside. I’m happy to say I was wrong. After a few shots he adjusted his position. So after I was finished shooting him, I pulled the light out of his mouth and he was fine. Actually, I might be crazy but I don’t think he was very happy when I took his light away.

I’m guessing the frog instinctively thought this was a fire fly!

Sex Education for Girls: A Refresher Course ..

This internet meme has been making the rounds: It claims to be an actual extract from a sex education school textbook for girls printed in the early 60’s in the UK — or the 50’s in Australia, depending on which version you read. Written by a woman, apparently.

“When retiring to the bedroom, prepare yourself for bed as promptly as possible. Whilst feminine hygiene is of the utmost importance, your tired husband does not want to queue for the bathroom, as he would have to do for his train. But remember to look your best when going to bed.

Infidelity on the iPhone?

Hoax or tragedy? This is just too salacious to pass up …

In Apple’s discussion forums, under a post titled “Pictures automatically attach to e-mail?“, recently registered Susan042764, with only two posts under her belt, asks …

“Please help! I took my husband’s i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account). When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!”

Can cooler made from recycled PC parts …

This is a geek project, to recover a few major parts from a scrap PC to make a clamp on cooler to chill a highly caffeinated beverage. The aim is to take a canned drink at room temperature and cool it in less than 5 minutes to a crisp, refreshing 8 degrees Celsius.

Recipe: Milk Tart

Melk Tert is the Afrikaans name of a South African custard pie, a dessert typically served at a braai (barbecue) or at tea time — this is not that!

Milk Tart is a road-side concoction bikers brew up from ingredients obtained from almost any convenience and liquor store in sub-saharan Africa.

Every year since his passing I shake up a fresh batch of my brother Alf’s recipe for Milk Tart, take a hit and sleep soundly on fond memories of our time together.

This is an alcohol based drink reminiscent of Bailey’s Irish Cream, only younger, stronger and tastes like more. Sublime on the rocks — which are the hardest things to find on the road: Ice, not rocks!

Recipe, Ingredients & Method:
One medium can of sweetened condensed milk (approx 300g).
Half a bottle of vodka (375ml).
Optional extras are a teaspoon of vanilla essence and/or a shot of espresso.
Pour can of condensed milk into half a bottle of vodka.
Shake up well and serve over ice (e.g. frozen cubes of strong coffee)

Suggested reading Wikipedia’s entry on Bailey’s Irish Cream | Melk Tert recipe

Raccoons eating goldfish in our fish pond!

This past September strange things started happening in our fish pond, a plastic-lined half whiskey barrel set out in the corner of our deck. At first the water lilies were being destroyed. Large parallel tears started appearing in the pads. I imagined it was a cat striking out at the fish with its bared claws.

Excepting for the destruction of the vegetation I didn’t think the fish stocks were dwindling — but they were indeed. When some old friends stopped coming up at feed time and then some stones off the bottom of the pool were found scattered on the deck I was determined to find out what was causing the loss.

I clamped a compact fluorescent lamp to the back of a garden chair and aimed the reflector at the pond, set my PowerBook on the kitchen table with its iSight camera facing out through our sliding glass door and set up the software to capture time-lapse images every second throughout the night. On the very first night the culprits were revealed in this silent movie …  

What I’d appreciate hearing in comments is how other people protect their small fish ponds from raccoons. I’ve heard of a dark, rigid hexagonal grid that can be mounted below the surface of the water which the fish can swim under to escape — but which would limit the ability of tiny hands from swishing around to catch their prey. But that won’t save the water lilies …