Queen’s Day 2008: if you weren’t dressed for the occasion, there were vendors more than willing to help you remedy that. After the nation-wide flea market we went dumpster diving, and as will happen we found some of our biggest treasures then.
April 30, 2008
Queen’s Day 2008
Tags: holidays, Queen's Day
April 29, 2008
Dutch student satellite makes it into orbit
The students at the Delft University of Technology have done something cool again: they’ve launched a satellite from India. A rocket carrying 10 satellites, including the students’ Delfi-C3, was launched from the Sriharikota space centre in southern India. Former air and space travel student Joost Elstak says the first contact with the satellite was made just after lift-off. “So, we know it’s working,” he explains. The satellite is only 30 cm long and not much bigger than a carton of milk.
The rocket is also carrying student satellites from Denmark, Japan, Germany and Canada.
(Link: radionetherlands.nl)
April 28, 2008
WirePod by Joris Laarman
Live from Milan: American brand Artecnica has launched WirePod, a multi-point electrical “power pod” designed by Dutch designer Joris Laarman.
Made of thermoplastic rubber and with four plug outlets, the 3.8 metre long products is the first in a series of Artecnica products called Wiremore, which will make electrical cables more, rather than less, visible.
There’s more pretty pictures if you follow the link.
(Link: dezeen.com)
Tags: Joris Laarman, Milan, WirePod
April 27, 2008
Play dough-like furniture by Maarten Baas
Eindhoven-based designer Maarten Baas presented prototypes for Chankley Bore, a line of furniture to be sold by UK firm Established and Sons. The photos in Dezeen Magazine show play dough-like lamps (?) and cupboards (?) with some mighty weird extensions.
Baas is a designer who uses actual clay to make furniture, and has a few other interesting projects in his portfolio.
Illustration: Established and Sons.
April 26, 2008
Country shuts down for the first half of May
Due to the unusually early first moon of spring, all the major Christian holidays are early this year, almost colliding with the traditional Dutch holidays. Starting next week: April 30, Queen’s Day—May 1, Ascension Day—May 5, Liberation Day—May 12, Pentacost. This year, the schools close down for the first two weeks of May, and families seem to take the opportunity to go on holidays. According to De Telegraaf (Dutch), 3.5 million Dutch people will go away for the next two weeks, up 1.5 million from last year. AD quotes (Dutch) Bas Hoogland, CEO of Landal Greenparks, as saying: “It’s as if the entire country closes down for the first two weeks of May. There is a huge sense of ‘holiday urgency.’ Many parents don’t feel like spending two weeks at home with the kids.”
The clash of holidays has also brought forward the Lintjesregen (rain of ribbons), the mass-awarding of royal decorations which takes place every year on Queen’s Day, the Dutch national holiday. Queen’s Day was traditionally held on the Queen’s birthday, but that tradition changed when Queen Beatrix ascended the throne in the 1980s. Beatrix’s birthday is in January, whereas her mother was born on the much warmer April 30, so it was decided that the latter day would be maintained.
Radio DJ Coen Swijnenberg life-long’s wish was to cross-dress as Queen Beatrix, and Veronica Magazine helped him make that wish come true this week (photo). Cross-dressing is not the norm for Queen’s Day, but people will don orange for the occasion.
Tags: decorations, holidays, orange, Queen's Day, vacationing
April 25, 2008
“Number 1 hit costs 5000 euro”
Singer/politician Henk Westbroek told daily De Pers (The Press) that it takes about 5000 euro to engineer a Top 40 hit. For this money a mysterious “team” called De Hitmakers will strategically buy songs at different stores both on- and off-line. Since less and less singles are being sold in the Netherlands, it takes less and less sales to top the charts. According to De Pers it takes as little as 500 downloads. GfK, owner of amongst other the 3FM Mega Top 50, tries to right things when it suspects manipulation by removing entries from the list or lowering them, but this has led to protests from genuine pop artists.
Perhaps the Dutch market is getting too small for hit parades, unless other methods of counting are introduced. But the country is probably still big enough to act as an international seed market for pop songs, where artists can attract international attention by scoring a hit. Not that I would like to suggest that budding pop artists from abroad start employing De Hitmakers’ services. That would be … immoral!
Tags: fraud, hit parades
Princess Máxima ashamed of wearing glasses
Stop the freakin’ presses! Our popular blond (cough) Princess Máxima was spotted in Argentina, her home country, wearing – oh horror of horrors – glasses! Normally I would not care about something this trivial, but some attitudes are just too old fashioned for words. And of course I wear glasses. The picture is here, see the horror for yourselves.
The Argentinean media had no problems publishing the photo, after all the princess is proudly waving to her fans outside some building. The Nederlandse Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst (RVD), roughly the Dutch PR and information service for the royals, were asked if the princess did in fact wear glasses ’cause we ain’t never seen her like this before! They said: no comment. Are they blind too?
The brouhaha is all because Her Highness didn’t want to be photographed with glasses on and that this was not an official visit. We all should collectively pretend we didn’t see them because wearing glasses in 2008 is simply vulgar and embarrassing.
I thought trying to pass for a natural blond was embarrassing enough.
These are my glasses here above and everybody recognises them and me now. And I love my girl Nana Mouskouri’s funky Pierre Marly glasses no matter what anyone says.
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Tags: Argentina, glasses, Princess Máxima
April 24, 2008
Paul Verhoeven gives Jesus a stab
According to Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, known for ‘epic’ films such as Basic Instinct and Robocop, Jesus Christ was probably the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee. Oh and Judas didn’t betray Jesus.
This September, watch out for a book called “Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait” (in Dutch), which will eventually be translated into English by 2009. Lucky translator.
It apparently took him 20 years to reach these conclusions, which nobody is ready to believe.
But let’s be fair. I cannot wrap my brain around the ‘fact’ that Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father and started freaking out when someone explained to me that the immaculate conception was Anne (Mary’s mother) giving birth to Mary and not Mary giving birth to Jesus. And that that fish on Friday nonsense was made up by some pope no more than 100 years ago to put their stamp on history. And that Christians were against marriage because it was all Pagan and stuff way back when.
And the source got his degree wrong: they gave him a Ph.D. instead of the Master’s degree he has. So much for checking the facts.
(Link: foxnews.com)
Tags: Anne, Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Paul Verhoeven
April 23, 2008
Rem Koolhaas to design Prada museum
Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has been asked to design a museum for Prada’s art collection, according to the website of Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Koolhaas’ architectural firm.
Designer Miuccia Prada and her spouse Patrizio Bertelli have bought hundreds of modern art pieces over the years and need a place to display them. They have found a place in Milan where Koolhaas is going to design three new buildings, including a tower with exhibition halls. Koolhaas has already designed the Prada flagship store in New York City (see photo).
(Link: gelderlander.nl)
Tags: New York City, OMA, Prada, Rem Koolhaas
April 22, 2008
Mumps epidemic aggravated by religious beliefs
Monday, various media reported a mumps epidemic in the Netherlands for the first time in 20 years. The epidemic is concentrated in the stretch of land between Zeeland in the southwest and the Veluwe heathlands in central Netherlands, the so-called “Bible belt” (that’s what they call it in Dutch as well) where many orthodox Protestants live.
Many people in the area refuse to have their children vaccinated against mumps and other diseases on religious grounds.
Mumps have been diagnosed in more than 60 blood samples over the past few months but the public health institute (RIVM) said the real number could be much higher because doctors are not legally obliged to report cases to the authorities.
The “Bible belt” was also hit by polio and measles epidemics in the 1990s.
Other sources claim that these religious communities’ children have been vaccinated but that it didn’t really help, which is plausible. As well, some 75% of people according to an online poll think it should be forbidden to refuse to vaccinate children on religious grounds. One good point is that their sicknesses bring other people in danger, which is considered asocial at best in such a densely populated country.
(Link: eviewweek.com)