Posts Tagged ‘Beethoven’
What ails you?…
As age continues its colonizing of one’s body, one is rarely without a complaint of some sort or another. So perhaps one can take consolation from Listverse’s Top 10 Bizarre Illnesses… at least one doesn’t have, for instance:
Cutlery Craving
The desire to eat metal objects is comparatively common. Occasionally there is an extreme case, such as that of 47 year old Englishman Allison Johnson. An alcoholic burglar with a compulsion to eat silverware, Johnson has had 30 operations to remove strange things from his stomach. In 1992, he had eight forks and the metal sections of a mop head lodged in his body. He has been repeatedly jailed and then released, each time going immediately to a restaurant and ordering lavishly. Unable to pay, he would then tell the owner to call the police, and eat cutlery until they arrived. Johnson’s lawyer said of his client, “He finds it hard to eat and obviously has difficulty going to the lavatory.”
All ten, each with links to further info on each, here.
(And further to the recent post on GiantURL, readers might consider the alternative, DickensURL, via which your correspondent’s modest http://www.LawrenceWilkinson.com becomes:
http://dickensurl.com/90f3/Under_an_accumulation_of_staggerers_no_man_can_be_considered_a_free_agent_No_man_knocks_himself_down_if_his_destiny_knocks_him_down_his_destiny_must_pick_him_up_again
… from The Old Curiosity Shop, as it happens)
As we fend off “medical student syndrome,” we might recall that on this date in 1824 Beethoven’s Ninth (and final) Symphony, Chorale, premiered in Vienna, with “lyrics” by Frederich Schiller (part of his “Ode to Joy”); Beethoven’s chorus concludes:
Be embraced, ye millions!
This kiss for the whole world!
Brothers, beyond the star-canopy
Must a loving Father dwell.
Be embraced,
This kiss for the whole world!
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium,
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods!
Simple! Simply simplify…
from Ji Lee (whose work is imminently worth a browse… check out, for instance, “The Redundant Clock“)
As we re-ink our pads, we might take a moment to celebrate an anniversary of great and true beauty: on this date in 1724, Bach’s “St. John Passion” premiered; then exactly 81 years later, on this date in 1805, Beethoven conducted the premiere of his third symphony, “Eroica.”
Title page of the manuscript of Beethoven’s Symphony #3, opus 55
Holy Holes!…
The Dutch design firm Spranq observed that casual printing was wasteful not only of paper but also of (expensive, ecologically-unfriendly) ink.. so they set out to see how much of a letter– in the end, each letter in the alphabet– one could remove and still retain legibility. The result:
Appealing ideas are often simple: how much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability? After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink. Free to download [for all platforms], free to use.
Click here to see how less can be more.
As we refrain from filling in the holes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1795 that Beethoven, then a 24 year old who still had his hearing, made his debut as a pianist in Vienna… scholars are unclear whether he played his First or Second Piano Concerto. Later that same year he published the first of his compositions to which he assigned an opus number– the piano trios of Opus 1.
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