The struggling artist.

Saturday's wind and rain inspired me to grab my camera and move five feet from the sofa to the window to capture some images of the rainfall. It's the same sort of artistic inspiration that da Vinci must have felt before he painted that ceiling in Rome just prior to drinking himself into a coma and collapsing in a heap. Later, I spread my arms and discovered that a man's reach equals his height. I'll draw it up later.
Think about how the world would have changed if da Vinci had a Nikon D40.

Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci and a peasant woman Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo's ideas were vastly ahead of his time. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics and hydrodynamics.
So, for all you people who think great genetics produces great children, suck on that. Find yourself a peasant woman and have at it.

My parents were married. Art is funny.