This just in from off the canals in Amsterdam: forget the Village People, Amsterdam has Bear Force 1. Check out their latest clip and have fun with all the Dutch guest appearances and cameos.
June 19, 2008
Dutch talk faster than Flemish
A Flemish study which showed that the Dutch talk faster than their Southern neighbours was shot down rapidly by Dutch experts when it was first published in 2004. But four years later linguist Hugo Quené from the University of Utrecht has proved his Flemish colleagues right. Quené used new methods to pick apart the 38-hour speech corpus and used a recently developed statistical method, multi-level analysis. As it turns out long “phrases” (bits of speech separated by pauses) take relatively less time to pronounce than short ones. Even so, the Dutch tend to use shorter phrases than the Flemish. Also when phrases of the same length were compared, the Dutch proved to be the fast talkers.
Via Blik op Nieuws (Dutch).
June 18, 2008
EURO2008: Van der Fart
Nomen est omen? While the second Dutch football team was battling it out against a surprisingly lackluster Romania in the last match of the first round of EURO2008 in Berne, Switzerland yesterday, the first team appeared to be submitted to some pretty heavy duty chemical warfare from one of the Oranje’s talented creative midfielders, Van der Vaart. Pronounce that any way you like.
Youtube link. Tip o’ the hat to Jeroen.
Tags: football
Public broadcasters testing YouTube-like system
The united Dutch public broadcasters are considering introducing a YouTube like system for posting videos of shows according to Webwereld (Dutch), and have a test version of the system online.
The current version of Uitzending Gemist (Missed a programme?) uses WMV clips, which aren’t as accessible as Flash Video. Apart from introducing Flash video, the new system will allow you to embed Dutch shows in your blog and elsewhere on the Web, and will let visitors comment on shows. Pretty much the things Youtube allows you to do.
Webwereld quotes NPO (part of NOS) manager William Valkenburg as saying: “For now we’ll be testing the player with a limited number of shows to see what people will do with it and what functions they will use. After that we will consider the nature of further deployment.”
The Dutch public broadcasting system was originally set up for radio in the early 20th century in a way that allowed the Catholics, Protestants, socialists, and so on to set up their own broadcasting corporations. Fees were collected directly from citizens and distributed among the broadcasters depending on membership ratios. An umbrella corporation called NOS was founded to share costs and to broadcast programmes of a general nature. As recent as the late 1980s, commercial stations started pirate broadcasts from Luxembourg, and in 1992 these were legalised, making it possible for commercial entities to broadcast from within the Netherlands itself.
This week minister Plasterk was asked questions in parliament why NOS uses a proprietary Microsoft system for broadcasting EURO2008 over the Internet, locking out GNU/Linux users in the process.
Tags: public domain, television, TV, YouTube
June 17, 2008
Artist censors her own explicit artwork
The 7-meter-high artwork “Miss Universe” by Dutch-born American Lara Schnitger exhibited in the Sonsbeek exhibition ‘Grandeur’ in Arnhem was adjusted after people complained about the ‘pornographic character’ of her work. The artist decided to cover up genitals on the work with little red hearts, which actually ruined the work for many people. Ironically, no one from the organisation had any problems with her work, but visitors did. Schnitger’s intention was to make a work about love, but apparently the photographic quality of people making love is still pornographic to many.
The usual remarks range from ‘too bad if people are shocked, it’s art’ to ‘religious art has naked people too, should we put stickers on it’. Well, that last one is considered less explicit and realistic than photography nowadays. Roland Barthes comes to mind very quickly all of a sudden.
(Link and photo: gelderlander.nl)
Tags: Arnhem, censorship, exhibition, Roland Barthes
June 16, 2008
World’s first graphic design museum opens in Breda
On 11 June 2008, Queen Beatrix royally opened the Graphic Design Museum in Breda, the first museum in the world dedicated to graphic design. The museum plans to function as a museum, knowledge centre, training facility, shop, designer café and production house for graphic design. It offers an international stage for established designers as well as a springboard for new talent.
(Link and photos: graphicdesignmuseum.nl)
Tags: Breda, graphic design, Graphic Design Museum
June 15, 2008
Earthlings to perform Klingon opera
The Klingon Terran Research Ensemble is planning to perform a real Klingon opera called U in November this year. If you cannot wait until then, the ensemble regularly holds musical “battles” at the Zeebelt theater in the Hague. It also has several videos up at Youtube showcasing Klingon instruments and techniques.
According to the print version of Zone 5300, KTRE founder Floris Schönfeld takes his work very serious and many of the artists involved are classically schooled.
For those of you who have been stuck In Real Life the past forty years, Klingons are a race of space aliens from the fictional Star Trek universe.
June 13, 2008
Skull-shaped bird house
Germany-born but Rotterdam-based artist Stefan Gross sells these nesting boxes that look like skulls. “Rebirdy is fashioned from a frost-resistant ceramic material and can be easily cleaned by lifting the skullcap,” the artist says.
Recently he posted a video of a skull-shaped bird house inhabited by a blue tit at Youtube.
Via BoingBoing, who got the story from Kitschy Kitschy Coo.
June 12, 2008
Tutti frutti football tips
Johan Cruijff, former Dutch football star and guru, came up with another of his famous off-the-cuff expressions after the Netherlands’ surprising 3-0 victory over Italy last Monday: tutti frutti.
Sports folks are known for not being able to speak properly and hypercorrect themselves to try and sound better. Johan Cruijff is known for mangling Dutch grammar, but at the same time, has this uncanny ability to make some sense. Cruijff said, “Zet er één in de spits en maak er wat tuttifrutti van,” which probably makes as much sense to the non-Dutch speaker untranslated as it does translated: “Put one up front and make tutti frutti out of it.” Cruijff was apparently boasting the merits of using one striker and having midfielders attacking in waves, but nobody knows for sure, although it sounds good.
Here are some other odd but could be prophetic things he has said in the past. There’s a whole book out there with these expressions.
“Sometimes something’s got to happen before something is going to happen.”
“Football is simple, but it is difficult to play simple.”
“Every disadvantage has its advantage.”
My favourite is “If you don’t shoot, you can’t score”. How true.
(Link: radionetherlands.nl)
Tags: football, Johan Cruijff, tutti frutti
June 11, 2008
A white affair at future Amsterdam Central Station
Maybe the small man or boy on the right is not white, but Arnoud de Jong of the Amsterdam Central Station website doubts it. Apparently, once the station will be renovated, it will be populated by white yuppies.
De Jong took a look at the municipal website and found that the ‘artist impressions’ did not provide a single identifiable person of foreign origin. No Muslims, no one even remotely religious looking or multicultural, while one in every three residents of Amsterdam fits the ‘non-Western foreigner’ bill. Maybe they’ll be riding donkeys.
And then there’s the women, as one woman pointed out in the comments. Young, thin and long-haired. The one in the foreground was probably taken from some catwalk. Not a single one of them is dressed for work, while the men are in suits. This has to have been the ‘work’ of a heterosexual white man.
If this is what Central Station plans to look like, I will continue to use the modest yet modern satellite station Sloterdijk where real people take the train.
(Link and Illustration: nieuwsuitamsterdam.nl)
Tags: Amsterdam Central Station, racism, sexism, trains