What: blogging conference.
Where: Amsterdam
URL: http://blog08.nl
For more info follow the link or read our announcement.
October 12, 2008
Gay Frenchman fought the law and helped change it
A few months ago I wrote the following article on the Amsterdam Weekly blog about a French homosexual having his nationality revoked for marrying a Dutchman:
“Frédéric used to be French, but because he married a Dutchman, the French Embassy forced him to give up his French nationality. The French consulate revoked his nationality because they did not want to recognise his marriage when he also acquired the Dutch nationality. According to an agreement between France and the Netherlands, anyone who opts for the nationality of the other country automatically loses their original nationality, unless they are married to a person of the other nationality, in which case dual citizenship is automatically awarded.
The consulate declared Frédéric unmarried and wants him to hand in his passport, ID card and has told him he is banned from voting. Frédéric, very much attached to his home country, is terribly upset.
Tanguy Le Breton, the official representative of the French community in the Netherlands, calls this “blatant discrimination”. “It’s obvious that the French authorities discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In this case, the discrimination is symbolically terrible because we are depriving homosexuals of their nationality. It is about time to start a debate on the issue and put an end to this discrimination.”
Frédéric is French again
This summer Frédéric got his French nationality back thanks to the efforts of people like French gay Amsterdam politician and author Laurent Chambon who spread the news and got things moving. The entire “reintegration process” took a speedy two months and was aided by a high Sarkozy cabinet official, Emmanuelle Mignon. Frédéric still had to show his birth certificate, national ID cards (1995 and 2004) his passport, proof he had become Dutch in 2006, and proof he kept ties with France by being registered with the consulate in Amsterdam.
What happened to Frédéric will probably never happen again to any French person in the Netherlands, as the law will change as of March 2009. Any French person marrying a Dutch person will not have their French nationality automatically revoked.
(Link: laurentchambon.blogspot.com (in French))
Tags: Amsterdam, gay marriage, homophobia, identity, nationality
October 11, 2008
Python found after 3000+ km underneath a car
A male Royal Python, a popular pet, travelled more than 3,000 kilometre in its owner’s car, hidden underneath the mudguard after having escaped from the house half a year ago. After Raymond Oosterbroek from Deventer had traded in his car, car salesman Marten van Kastel of Tonny Keijzers’ in Apeldoorn went to take photos of the Volvo S40 for their website. That’s when he discovered the snake. “At first I saw something brown, then noticed that it was a snake’s head, then suddenly I saw it move. It gave me quite a scare,” he told Telegraaf.
The python escaped half a year ago with its female mate. The female got no further than the bread basket, the male was luckier, at first. The stay underneath the car emaciated it fairly. The people from the car shop managed to drive it into a barrel, and from there into the arms of its owner.
Photo: a Royal Python by j4yx0r, some rights reserved.
October 10, 2008
Dutch designers in London
Bright.tv caught up with Dutch designers (video, mostly Dutch) who had stayed in London after finishing their studies at the Royal College of Art. Among them Henny van Nistelrooy who made this table out of cloth.
Photo via Dezeen.com.
Tags: London
October 9, 2008
Dutch railways upset about popular iPhone application
The NS (Dutch railways) is not pleased with the Dutch iPhone application ‘Trein’ (‘Train’) developed by IT student Dennis Stevense. The programme fully optimises data from the NS’ mobile site for the iPhone and is currently at the top of the list of applications you can buy in the Netherlands, costing a mere 2,39 euro. A spokesperson for the NS told Bright.nl that the student did not get permission from them to use their schedules and that they plan to release their own application shortly.
The question is whether train schedule information is covered by copyright law. I’ve asked a copyright lawyer this morning and will keep you posted.
UPDATE: Dutch copyright lawyer and photographer Olivier says:
“Not likely to qualify for copyright, but perhaps database protection. The schedules may not qualify for database protection if NS is not able to show that it invested (spent money) in the database, separately from the investment made in the operation of the trains. (The schedule database may be a so-called spin-off from the main activity of making the trains run on time, and informing the NS customers about the schedule.) The spin-off exemption to protection is not always applied correctly though.
Even if it qualifies for database protection, I am not sure that the *app* (and, consequently app maker) would infringe on the database rights, as it apparently only allows the *user* to more easily access the NS database. As far as I know, cases in the Netherlands have always dealt with instances where the content/database from one site was extracted in some manner or fashion to a database on another site.
And then there is always tort.”
(Link: bright.nl, Photo: Stevenojobs)
Tags: copyright, Dutch railways, iPhone, NS
October 8, 2008
Biggest foul mouths on the web
The Dutch are the worst foul mouths on the web in Europe according to a report (Dutch) by Christian daily Trouw (literally Loyalty). Germans enter comment threads of news sites with “dear Madam slash Sir,” the French don’t shy away from harsh language, but always reasoned, and the British pepper their comments with humour. The Dutch on the other hand are less sophisticated. They wish to ram their fists up the prime minister’s and the state budget up his replacement’s behind, to have the army rape Moroccan kids and to send “the Jews” to, er, the quiet province of Drenthe.
I didn’t get that last one either.
According to NoviaFacts, a company that moderates comments for newspaper De Telegraaf, some articles generate such bile that only about 10% of the comments can be published. The Dutch are too negative, says NoviaFacts’ CEO Claudia van der Laan: “Even when Anky van Grunsven wins a golden medal during the Olympics you still get people who say ‘Oh look, it’s horse face again.'”
Via Bright (Dutch). Related articles “Schelden op nieuwssites typisch Nederlands” and “In andere landen zijn andere ‘uitlaatkleppen’” (both Dutch). Photo of and by Jason Cartwright, some rights reserved.
October 7, 2008
Blogging and vlogging rocks at Blog08
For the first time on October 24 Amsterdam will play host to a one-day extravagaza dedicated to blogging, vlogging and all things blogosphere called Blog08. Young Dutch blogger and rocker Ernst-Jan Pfauth and his curly blonde counterpart Edial Dekker have put together an impressive programme of speakers, including American Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable, local serial entrepreneur Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten and the only woman so far, Clo Willaerts from Sanoma Magazines Belgium.
I also talked to Ernst-Jan and Edial about the Dutch Bloggies, the prize for Dutch blogs and what they feel constitutes a Dutch blog: the language of the blog, the domain suffix or the nationality of the blogger. They said ‘nationality’, which would make this blog run on co-blogger Branko Collin’s Dutch passport when we will attempt to get nominated for an award (hint hint).
I really like the idea of a guitar pick as a trinket!
Tags: Blog08, blogging, Dutch Bloggies, vlogging
October 6, 2008
Major art sale due to cigarette factory closing
Over the last 50 years, the British American Tobacco (BAT) factory in Zevenaar, Gelderland has built up a large collection of modern art. The factory will soon be closed and the artwork in the Stuyvesant collection will be auctioned off, albeit not as a one lot.
“At the end of the 1950s, factory director Alexander Orlow started hanging works of art among the cigarette-making machines. The workers needed something interesting to look at to stave off boredom and increase their productivity, he felt. Orlow went for modern, avant-garde art – large, colourful and mainly abstract paintings.
In collaboration with the directors of the Rotterdam Boijmans van Beuningen museum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, it acquired over 1,500 pieces, 150 of which are often loaned to major exhibitions. But on August 15 this year, BAT announced that it would auction off the total collection.”
The commotion surrounding the sale is due to the fact that the cigarette manufacturer tried to find a buyer who would keep the collection together and accessible to the public, but had been unable to do so. Mayor Jan de Ruiter, who has been trying to save the collection since 2006, spoke to the BAT executive in London and mobilised the Dutch state, the provincial government and the Mondriaan Foundation. He spoke to Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum about the possibility of an annex in Zevenaar. He had calculations made on how much a Stuyvesant Museum would cost. Everyone was helpful yet all his efforts failed.
Neither Sotheby’s nor BAT want to comment on the total value of the art (which includes paintings by Karel Appel, Corneille and Anton Henning), but it is believed to be between 15 and 25 million euro.
(Link: nrc.nl (In English))
Tags: cigarette factory, cigarettes, Gelderland, Sotheby's, Zevenaar
October 5, 2008
Letter reveals Anne Frank house as ‘unworthy’
According to De Telegraaf, The Dutch government had no objections to the house where Anne Frank wrote her wartime diary being torn down in the 1950s. The place where the young Jewish girl described life hiding from persecution by the Nazis was not considered worthy of preservation, De Telegraaf said, quoting from a letter written by Joseph Luns, the foreign minister at the time.
Luns said the house where Anne and her family hid from 1942 until her betrayal in 1944 was “not a historical monument of the Netherlands” and unremarkable from an architectural point of view. The letter, dated May 3, was sent to the Dutch ambassador to the United States, informing him of the official position of the Ministry of Education, Art and Science towards the Anne Frank House. The newspaper said the letter was discovered recently when the part of the ministry’s archives was being moved to a new home.
According to the Anne Frank Foundation, it was apparently written in response to questions by Americans why the house was not declared an historic building. Located on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht, the house began attracting its first visitors shortly after the book Anne Frank – The Dairy of a Young Girl was published in 1947. In the mid-1950s, a real estate firm proposed knocking it down to make way for a modern building, but dropped the idea after a series of protests.
(Link: earthtimes.org)
Tags: Amsterdam, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House
October 4, 2008
New Brueghel (the Younger) discovered
Hot on the heels of a recent discovery of a Frans Hals painting comes the news that a painting of Pieter Brueghel The Younger was unearthed last Sunday in Enschede. Writes the Guardian:
It cost the equivalent of £560 when it was snapped up in a Dutch flea market almost 50 years ago. Now the owner of a small round painting of two peasants has been told she owns an unknown work by the 17th-century Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel the Younger.
The owner took it to experts on the Dutch TV show Between Art and Kitsch, similar to the Antiques Roadshow. They immediately recognised the importance of the signed, 16cm-wide picture of a farmer and his wife resting next to a tree, valuing it at €80,000 to €100,000 (£63,000 to £79,000).
The painting was discovered during a recording of Tussen Kunst en Kitsch at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede. The round panel from 1620 depicts a couple of farmers resting near a tree after harvest. Broadcaster AVRO reports that the signature is applied to the stem of the tree and can be read from top to bottom. The show’s expert of old paintings, John Hoogsteder, notes that the way the paint has risen because of the shrinking of the wooden makes him sure that it’s an original. AVRO will broadcast the episode with the Brueghel discovery sometime in March.
Pieter Brueghel the Younger was a Flemish painter best known for copying his famous father’s works.
Photo: detail.