Links that interest me and maybe you
Arguably the most famous classical composer in history (Beethoven) and the inventor of recorded music technology (Edison) both were partially or totally deaf, and therefore both listened to music by biting into wood to hear the musical vibrations pass through their teeth (via Derek Thompson)
Update: Jamie McCarthy pointed out on Mastodon that this isn’t 100 percent accurate. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull did help finance The Holy Grail, but George Harrison didn’t — he did, however, mortgage his house to finance a different Monty Python movie: Life of Brian.
We drove down to spend March in Florida, near Venice — just south of Sarasota, on the Gulf side — so of course I brought my kayak, and when I had a free afternoon I took it down to Curry Creek, which runs behind the mobile home park where we are staying, and empties into the bay and from there into the gulf. It was a beautiful day for a paddle, so I took it slow and paddled about three or four kilometres — saw a few ibises, a couple of herons, some miscellaneous birds of various kinds, and lots of moss hanging from the trees.
While I was paddling, I saw a man sitting on a bench on the bank of the creek and he was looking at something across the creek. “There he is,” he said, pointing at an alligator sunning himself on a sand bar — about eight or nine feet long probably. As I paddled by he submerged, so I only got a shot of his head poking up above the water. Further along I saw another one, but he was completely obscured except for his nose, and seemed to want to have nothing to do with me, which was fine with me 🙂
The only downside to this whole trip is that it was such a beautiful day that I just kept on paddling for about two hours, despite a dull ache in my shoulder that had been there for a few days, and I haven’t been in a kayak for about six months. I thought maybe I could paddle it out, but this was a mistake — the following day I could barely move my shoulder without pain, and it was throbbing even without me moving it. So now I am on a rest, ice, warm, no exercise regimen for awhile I guess. But it was worth it! Almost.
