October 31, 2010
What do you do if your countryside is so flat, even the holes duck for cover? Why, build the highest climbing wall in the world of course.
Meet Excalibur, the 37 meter climbing extravaganza of Bjoeks Klimcenter in Groningen. The tower was built in 2004 by Polsar, also from Groningen—the same owners in fact.
(Link: Damn Cool Pics, which has some interesting photos of the tower made by cameras dangling from kites. This photo by Jan Lafeber, who released it into the public domain.)
October 30, 2010
The latest disco video of tom-boy Dennis (Denise van Donselaar) has her being undressed and dressed again (and again) while girls with triple strap-on breasts dance through clouds of bubbles.
Also good for last-minute Halloween costume ideas. See if you can find the ‘secret level’.
(Link: The Awl. Video: Youtube / ThisIsDennisMusic.)
October 29, 2010
On Sunday the Old Catholic church, not to be confused with its Roman counterpart, will make a woman provost, the priest that takes care of the actual priesting in a cathedral, NRC reports.
The Old Catholic church is a schism of the Roman Catholic church that identifies with the Orthodox Church and the Anglican Church, and that rejects the dogma of papal infallibility. In 1998 it started allowing women to become priests, and has about 6,000 members in the Netherlands.
Annemieke Duurkoop (63) is the third female priest for the Old Catholic church in the Netherlands, and the first to become provost. Before this she was a PR Manager.
(Photo of the Saint Gertrude cathedral in Utrecht by Wikimedia user pepijntje, some rights reserved)
Tags: Old Catholic church, public relations, Utrecht, women
October 27, 2010
Women who work in the Dutch military are obliged to buy their sports bras from a sports good chain called Run Today. However, in the province of North Holland (in and around Den Helder) where most of the female military work and live, there is no Run Today, so women have to travel to Haarlem (about 80 km) or Groningen (about 154 km) to buy their two allocated sports bras for work. The women can also declare their travel expenses and do their bra shopping during work hours.
Marine commanders are upset about this because it’s a waste of time. How stupid is the Ministry of Defense? Let the women buy their bras elsewhere! Run Today, open a store in Den Helder, pronto!
And zibb, I also told you you’re a bit dumb for calling sports bras ‘lingerie’. Imagine if we called jock straps ‘sexy underwear’.
(Link: zibb)
Tags: bras, Den Helder, Marines, women
October 26, 2010
I popped into the local cheap stuff store to see if I couldn’t score anything weird – it’s my idea of retail therapy. Just as I walked in the Dutch Christmas cards were already within reach and I had to see how bad it was. We don’t celebrate Halloween here in general, so once summer is over, Christmas and Sinterklaas paraphernalia hits the stores as early as September, a common gripe here, as kids no longer want to wait for December to get goodies from their parents.
Seriously, check these cards out. On the right, we have Santa Claus is petting (!) one of the most dangerous animals I know from my native Great White North. This is just beyond tacky, it’s environmentally incorrect and could mess up small children for life (sarcasm in place). It looks cute at first glance, but I jumped when I saw it. Have a good, hard look at what being mauled by a polar bear actually looks like if you dare, I know you want to.
On the left, we have Santa Claus with the entire white fur dangerous wild animal petting zoo: baby polar bear (Knut look alike), a very still rabbit (unreal), two wolves (surreal), a baby seal (mind blowingly improbable) and what I think is a hermine.
Have a white, über-Caucausian, environmentally incorrect yet cuddly messed up Christmas! If anyone wants to receive one of these cards, let me know I have eight left.
Tags: Christmas, Santa Claus
October 25, 2010
Major Australian cities have decided to ban some Calvin Klein jeans adverts because they are “suggestive of violence and rape”. The sexy pic, shot by British based fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, show Dutch model Lara Stone “fooling around with a group of half naked guys in what looks like a public basketball court.”
No, no wait. Stop. That’s not what I saw. I saw a painfully orchestrated yet very unplausible photo of a girl that’s getting way too much attention due to her choice of (and lack of) jeans. The guy on the left is bored with the entire deal, too busy looking like James Dean, the one holding her head is not pinning her down or anything and the guy giving Lara some attention looks almost too young and inexperienced to be doing so. Granted, it looks like the light version of a gang bang where everybody looks nice and friendly, and it could be provocative to adults if you were living in a cave and missed out on Madonna’s book ‘Sex’ and oh so many other things. If it was a Jean Paul Gaultier perfume advert with just men, would people have said anything? Or all women? Or women tearing up some young guy’s shirt? Hm?
Granted, young children won’t get this and it is risqué, but this kind of advertising is not going away any time soon. Selling jeans hasn’t been about actually seeing jeans for about 15 years. If you want to protect your kids, educate them, methinks.
(Link: dutchdailynews)
Tags: advertising, Australia, jeans, Lara Stone
October 24, 2010
The Stichting Gave (Gift Foundation) has been trying to win souls for their Christian faith at Dutch refugee camps, and they do not even realise what they are doing wrong. A volunteer told Nederlands Dagblad:
We are being accused of preying on the uncertainty that asylum seekers experience. I can partly understand the accusation, but it’s wrong. We want to show asylum seekers […] that there is a God who transcends the position they are in.
After reports came in that some of the foundation’s volunteers had been pressuring Muslim refugees into converting to Christianity by claiming that their asylum requests would be denied if they did not convert, the foundation had its access to the refugee camps restricted by COA, the organization that runs the camps.
When did this happen? Half a year ago, and the news was mostly reported on in the religious press. I would have certainly missed it if Stichting Gave hadn’t come out with a ‘study’ last week that claims that Muslim asylum seekers are physically attacking Christian asylum seekers. That last story got a lot of attention in the press, in the parliament and elsewhere, perhaps because it much better fits the tired narrative we’re used to.
According to Geen Commentaar, the Stichting Gave study consists entirely of an inventory of rumours. A good starting point for more research perhaps, but certainly not the collection of facts that the press suggest it is.
See also: Convert to Christianity and get citizenship for free.
(Photo: COA)
Tags: asylum, Christianity, humanism, Islam, refugee camps
October 23, 2010
Dutch cooking, the kitchen that has put the meat and the potatoes in meat ‘n’ potatoes, is great for increasing male fertility according to PhD student Marijana Vujkovic.
Men who eat meat, potatoes and vegetables have a sperm count twice as high as those with other diets.
Women on the other hand seem to benefit the most from a Mediterranean diet, which includes vegetable oils, vegetables and fish.
Vujkovic gets to defend her thesis next Wednesday, Trouw reports. An article by Vujkovic and others about the same issue in the Oxford Journal on Human Reproduction can be read here.
(Photo by FotoosVanRobin, some rights reserved)
Tags: biology, Dutch food, fertitily, sperm
October 22, 2010
The advertising authority (Reclame Code Commissie) has given the poster for Dick Maas’ new horror film Sint the green light this afternoon, NOS Nieuws reports.
‘Concerned parents’ had complained about the poster for being too scary and for being contrary to the traditional way Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) is viewed in the Netherlands. The advertising authority pointed out, correctly in my view, that nothing in the way Sinterklaas is portrayed in the poster (see illustration) deviates much from the way the good (or in this case evil) saint tends to be depicted.
However, the movie is a different story. Since that one is rated age 16 and older, nimby parents would have had little to complain about. I hope Sint puts the whiners all in the sack this year, and carries them back to Spain for further punishment—it is the traditional way!
The movie will be released November 11 in the Netherlands and Belgium. Rumours have it that Sint will already be lurking the cobblestone streets of these misty lands by then. Unofficially, of course.
(Source photo: Facebook / SintdeFilm. Source video: YouTube / Parapromo)
Tags: advertising authority, parenting
October 21, 2010
Mark Rutte, the first liberal Dutch Prime Minister since WWI, has told parliament in a letter that he will keep a teaching position at a high school in The Hague.
Rutte teaches a two-hour sociology and civics class (maatschappijleer) to VMBO students at the Johan de Witt College. He won’t be remunerated for his second job, RTL Z reports. Rutte has moved his two-hour class from Friday to Thursday, as the former date would conflict with cabinet meetings.
VMBO is a practice oriented type of secondary school.
Queen Beatrix appointed Rutte and his right-wing cabinet last Thursday, brutally squashing hopes that the Dutch could take back the record for going the longest time without government.
(Photo by Petra de Boevere, some rights reserved)
Tags: education, Liberalism, Mark Rutte, politics, schools, The Hague, VMBO
