The English language social advertising blog Houtlust is back from hiatus. After a re-branding it has shed its unpronounceable name Houtlust and traded it for Osocio. The concept is still the same: short, mostly graphical reviews of startling social advertising campaigns (see the example we wrote about earlier). Dutch founder Marc van Gurp has been joined by bloggers from over the world. (“Houtlust”, by the way, is a name meant to evoke the image of a pleasant wooded area, and is therefore etymologically related to the more neutral “Holland”, wooded land. In some Dutch areas, and indeed in Germany, the l in “holt” is still pronounced.)
December 8, 2007
December 7, 2007
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Polite Canadians blow up Dutch ride
The Ministry of Defense got one of its blown up trucks back from Afghanistan with a note from Canadian soldiers. According to the Defense internal newspaper, the note said “Sorry we blew up your truck! But it saved two lives. Thank you very much. Canada.” The DAF XF truck was borrowed from the Dutch army and returned with an Antonov transport airplane into the Nethererlands. These things happen!
(Link: gelderlander.nl)
Tags: Canadian army, DAF, Dutch army
December 6, 2007
Hyves.net throws party for 30,000 people
Thenextweb.org writes:
Sure, discussions about the Web 2.0 bubble are here to stay. Sometimes however, a social network proves the critics wrong. For example, the Dutch equivalent of Facebook, Hyves.net, is welcoming its fifth million user today. Four million users are Dutch (well, not me – where did they get that?), which is huge considering that the Netherlands has a population of 16 million. That’s absolutely true.
To celebrate the occasion, Hyves is throwing a party in Amsterdam. The location has space for 800 ‘Hyvers’ to party with the crew.
And this is the amazing part: more than 30,000 members asked to be on the guest list! What an active network! If so many members want to party with each other in real life, Hyves must have some value.
(Link: thenextweb.org, Illustration: sevensheaven.nl)
Of course it’s not a Christmas tree
The controversial statue ‘Santa Claus’ by American artist Paul McCarthy (someone feel free to clean up the Wikipedia article) will most probably be placed on the Binnenwegplein in Rotterdam, near the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum.
The meter-high statue got people talking about it two years ago because the Santa Claus (Father Christmas) has a big Christmas tree that looks like a sex toy, commonly known as a buttplug. The city bought the statue for almost EUR 300,000 in 2001, but couldn’t find a suitable place for it.
Funny enough, in 2003 the Tate Modern in Britain had no qualms about Paul McCarthy’s work, neither did the city of Antwerp, but Dutch politicians did. Even the huge 24-meter Santa Claus installed outdoors in a park in Antwerp was entitled “Santa Claus with a Buttplug”.
I thought you weren’t supposed to buy things if you didn’t know what to do with them, especially with tax payers’ money.
(Link: De Pers)
Tags: buttplug, Christmas tree, Rotterdam, Santa Claus
December 5, 2007
Take a seat and it will follow you around
Check it out: a chair that follows you around! The chair has an RFID chip and the human has a card to activate it. When the human leaves the perimeter in question (sounds like Star Trek), the chair goes back to its original spot, like Spot the Dog. This brain child is from Jelte Van Geest, a student at the Eindhoven Design Academy.
(Link in French: consottisier.blogs.liberation.fr, Tip: Laurent)
Tags: chairs, Eindhoven Design Academy, libraries, RFID chip, robots
“Take the day off or be stuck in traffic”
Hang on a minute! Sure, the kids should get their presents on time for Pakjesavond, the evening before Sinterklaas, which for those new to Dutch culture is in fact more important than Christmas. But seriously, even though it sounds logical, the idea of taking an entire day off from work to avoid traffic has to be messed up. As far as I am concerned, take the rest of your working life off and avoid traffic for ever!
Basically, with the new timetable of the Dutch railways, hailed as nothing less but “chaos”, taking the train won’t get you home on time. The image of a little boy crying because he thinks Sinterklaas forgot him is something I am sure any parent wants to avoid. So you take the car to work, like many people who believe in sitting down when they travel (when trains are full at 140% capacity, you have to stand) and who don’t believe that green guilt trip (pardon the pun) about how if we all took the train, the train would magically improve and become a Disneyland ride. Cycling to work if possible is great, but does not work for everyone.
So picture a small country, a major Dutch holiday and the entire flippin’ country has some 500 km of congestion, almost twice the congestion around Paris a few weeks ago with the public transport strike. It’s not even a strike!
Conclusion: public transport blows more than ever before (Merry Christmas to you to), motorways suck big time and who cares about work? Stay home, your entire country is under siege. But by all means, enjoy the gifts.
(Link: ad.nl)
Tags: congestion, Dutch railways, Pakjesavond, Sinterklaas
December 4, 2007
Comedian Martine Bijl “loses” antique picture books
Comedian/singer Martine Bijl decided to clean house last summer and chose to get rid of the remains of an abandoned hobby: many antique picture books she had collected over the years. She contacted Amsterdam auction house De Eland, who promised to take care of everything. Wondering what had happened to the cheque, she contacted the house after a couple of months only to find out that she wouldn’t get any money. The auction house had decided to throw away the 13 boxes of books after a cursory glance in some of them had revealed that they were not worth anything.
According to the print version of newspaper Het Parool, some of the books had an estimated value of hundreds of euro each. By British artist Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), Bijl owned De Ring van de Neveling (1911, 1912; text by Wagner/Kloos), Britsche Balladen (Verwey), and Midzomernachtsdroom (Shakespeare, Burgersdijk). By French artists J.J. Granville (1803-1847) Bijl owned the rare Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux (1853). It’s the auction’s house standard policy to throw away any lot that it expects will not net more than 25 euro, which a box of regular books rarely would.
Tags: antique, auction, martine bijl, picture book, shakespeare, wagner
December 3, 2007
Donald Duck magazine takes kids’ money for copyright lesson
Illustration copyright 2007 Disney.
– Scrooge: Plus a fine for PIRACY! Ten thousand euro, you sneaky thief!
– Donald: M-mercy! I am so sorry! And I finally BOUGHT the original CD!
This week Donald Duck magazine has decided that their customers should be treated to what amounts to a lesson about copyright. In a two page story (issue 49-2007) Huey, Dewey and Lewey download the latest Jan Goudsmid CD, but only so that they can already listen to it until they can afford to buy the real thing. Donald Duck suddenly realises how much money he could make if he bought a 20 euro CD and sold 100 copies at 10 euro a piece, and starts to put his nefarious scheme into practice. But record company owner Scrooge McDuck finds out and puts a stop to Donald’s plan.
Downloading music for private use is legal in the Netherlands, but selling unlicensed copies is not. The over-the-top moralistic tone of the story caught the attention of FOK forum subscribers, who immediately started pointing to the similarities between this story and the Brein foundation’s party line. The dialogue is preposterous at times. Donald: “Why don’t you guys keep this [downloaded copy]?” The nephews: “But that’s not fair! This CD is COPYRIGHTED! If nobody would buy CDs anymore, the record companies and artists would become beggars!” (Remember: the record company is owned by Scrooge McDuck.) One of the FOK forum subscribers: “They used to print »(advertisement)« about items like that.”
Disclaimer: I have written for Donald Duck magazine myself. Although they paid significantly less than the competing Sjors en Sjimmie franchise, it was always fun to write stories for them, simply because they pretty much let you decide what to write. As a result, stories for the magazine may have a tone of voice that implies grown-ups talking down to kids, but typically the stories are just fun adventures. Moralistic tales like this copyright story are rare. Indeed, in the next story of this week’s issue Chip ‘n’ Dale try to break into what looks like a military compound in order to steal nuts. Their three attempts fail because the compound is well secured – even underground – indicating the owners’ unambiguous desire to keep out intruders. But in the end, the two chipmunks luck out, and end up with a mountain of nuts. Moral of that Disney story: crime pays.
Also: the MPAA is a member of Brein. Disney is a member of the MPAA.
Update December 4: Thom Roep (Dutch), Donald Duck’s editor-in-chief, denies to FOK that the Brein foundation is in any way connected with this story, and admits that the dialogue is a little heavy handed for a magazine that dubs itself “het vrolijke weekblad” (the happy weekly):
Specifically the things that the nephews say on page 25, frame 7 [the bit I quoted before – Branko] should have been a lot less goody-two-shoes, and does indeed not correspond to the style of the magazine, which often tries to look at certain situations with a somewhat cheeky wink. We regret it a lot that this story has caused so much irritation and reactions, and we will definitely stay alert to remain a “happy weekly” in the future.
Tags: brein, copyright, dewey, Donald Duck, huey, Lewey, Scrooge McDuck
December 2, 2007
Genever, not gin, is protected
It’s called jenever in Dutch, referred to as ‘genever’ in English and the rest of the world calls it ‘gin’.
Jenever can only be made in the Netherlands, Belgium and a few German and French provinces. The ministers of agriculture granted jenever the status of protected geographic indication last Monday.
The Netherlands traditionally has a number of large jenever distilleries, in Schiedam (shown here), Amsterdam and Groningen, to name a few. In Belgium, Hasselt is the best known city for this strong alcoholic drink.
Read more about this underrated drink and if you want to visit Schiedam, the town with the five biggest windmills in the world, check out Ontdekschiedam.nu, a site I did some work on.
I read a few articles that said that the Dutch introduced gevener (gin) to Ghana through the slave trade some 150 years ago. It is still used for special occasions, but then the real Dutch variety, not the local moonshine.
A glass of jenever is at least 35% alcohol. Young jenever is the most commonly drunk spirit in the Netherlands: 170,000 hectolitres in 2005, according to figures from the Commodity Board for Alcoholic Drinks.
‘Jenever’ was discovered in the Middle Ages during the search for medicines: the medicinal juniper berry was added to brandy wine. These days grain or treacle from the sugar industry is the basis for the alcohol in ‘jenever’.
Agriculture minister at the time Cees Veerman suggested to his EU colleagues last year that ‘jenever’ be declared a protected product. There were no objections.
(Link: expatica.com)