February 14, 2008

Statistics Netherlands uses Google maps for local numbers

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

Statistics Netherlands (CBS, Centraal Bureau voor Statistiek), the government agency for statistical research, has launched a website called CBS in uw buurt (CBS in your neighbourhood) that is exactly that: it shows detailed statistical information about your neighbourhood. The data are shown superimposed over a Google map, and the site lets you compare the data of your neighbourhood with that of others. The types of statistical data available are pretty limited: things like income, housing, and demographics.

Webwereld reports (Dutch) that housing site Funda has been providing a similar service for a while now, but doesn’t operate at the neighbourhood level.

Via Dagelinks (Dutch).

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February 13, 2008

Dutch sports fans as seen from space

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

This image is a top down view of the Burgplatz (platz = square in German) in Leipzig on June 11, 2006 as seen on Google maps. We know the date, because all the people on the square are clad in orange, the colour that Dutch sports fans don whenever they wish to cheer on their national team. On June 11, the Dutch national football team was in Leipzig to play the team of Serbia-Montenegro during the 2006 world championships. The Dutch team won 1-0. (The red, white and blue flag across what I presume is the podium is a dead give away too, but probably not as visible from higher up as the orange square.)

Via Google Sightseeing.

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February 12, 2008

Fake-3D cartoon mural

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

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This trompe-l’œil mural is by Daan Botlek, presumably from his most recent “Uitgewanden” (Outards) series, in which the artist sculpts “bodies and body parts into images which are metaphorical and/or absurd,” though the Trendbeheer blog doesn’t say.

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February 11, 2008

Utrecht police get served paper pizza

Filed under: Gadgets by Orangemaster @ 11:16 am
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The police in Utrecht are kicking off a fitness campaign called ‘Zorg goed voor jezelf’ (‘Take good care of yourself’). The cops will be given a pizza box, albeit not with pizza inside. The box features a paper pizza that are vouchers for various fitness-related clinics, such as quit smoking, learning about healthy food, and hydrospinning and nordic walking.

The pizza box is a hint to eating healthier and is meant to get the police to think about their lifestyle. The Netherlands doesn’t have doughnuts shops like they do in North America by the way.

I don’t understand why the box has to have an English motto and why it doesn’t really make any sense.

(Link and image: vleesmagazine.nl)

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February 9, 2008

Le Patron, the 2CV-based kit-car

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 8:24 pm

Godfried van den Bergh from Ophemert, Gelderland, has been selling his Le Patron Citroën 2CV mods since 1998, but last January international recognition finally came in the shape of an invite to the Brussels Autosalon. The car kit manufacturer named after the nickname of Citroën founder André Citroën sells cabriolet coachworks for about 5000 euro. Handy car owners can then mount these coachworks on top of a 2CV chassis. It takes about 200 hours to get the job done, according to Van den Bergh.

Citroën is a French car manufacturer. Founder André Citroën was the son of Dutch emigrants. His parents added the diaresis when they moved to France: “citroen” is Dutch for lemon.

Via Z24 (Dutch).

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February 8, 2008

Netherlands strongest European economy

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:04 pm

According to z24 (Dutch), the Netherlands is in second place on the so-called Misery Index, right after Japan. The index adds unemployment rate to inflation rate, and a high position (low value) indicates a healthy economy.

  1. Japan: 4,5
  2. Netherlands: 4,9
  3. Norway: 5,3
  4. Denmark: 5,5
  5. Switzerland: 5,6
  6. South Korea: 6,8
  7. Great-Britain: 7,3
  8. Australia: 7,5
  9. Austria: 7,9
  10. Luxemburg: 8,2

You could probably come up with all sorts of reservations against such an index. For starters, unemployment rates are notoriously unreliable, as they tend to be closer related to propaganda than to statistics. But even a Netherlands that is merely highish in the index might be still be doing well because of it. Z24 writer Mathijs Bouman points out that consumer confidence in the Netherlands took a dive the past half year from 15% to -2%. The factors that have a healing influence on lowered consumer confidence? Low unemployment and inflation rates.

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February 7, 2008

Beatles guru and transcendental meditation founder dies

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:30 pm

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of transcendental meditation, died at his estate in Vlodrop, Limburg, last Tuesday at the age of 91. He was popularly known as the man who introduced the Beatles to transcendental meditation.

The Beatles stayed at his Himalayan “ashram” in Rishikesh during early 1968, where they wrote about 23 to 48 songs, according to Telegraphindia. Seventeen of these songs were included on the Beatles’ White Album. Songs they wrote included While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

Maharishi had made his home in the former episcopal College St. Ludwig

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February 6, 2008

The Netherlands to become a floating waterworld

Filed under: Architecture,Design by Orangemaster @ 10:35 am
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Besides making the typical mistake of saying that Holland is a country (Holland refers to two provinces, North Holland and South Holland where people do live under sea level), this is what the future might look like.

The inevitable rise in sea level that comes with climate change is going to make it increasingly difficult to control flooding in low-lying Holland. But instead of cursing their fate, architects are designing a new Holland that will float on water, and the Dutch government seems willing to try out the scheme. Holland has made other countries begin to question, too. Who says you have to live on dry land?

Chris Zevenbergen work at the Dura Vermeer firm. “The whole idea is, in our designs, we should always take into account what will happen when there’s an extreme event,” Zevenbergen says. In the past, the Dutch only built homes in places where dikes made flooding unlikely. “The concept that in fact you build in an area where a flood may occur is completely new,” Zevenbergen says.

At his office in The Hague, Koen Olthuis drums his fingers on his desk while he is fielding calls from people all over the world interested in water architecture. Olthuis is bursting with energy. He’s the co-founder of a firm called Waterstudio, a small office with a dozen or so youngish employees.

Olthuis’ projects go beyond the idea of simply keeping the house and its contents dry.

“The next step: we not only make the house floating, but we make the complete garden floating,” Olthuis says.

Why not? Why lose all those pretty Dutch tulips just because it floods? After all, Olthuis says, building floating foundations is a snap. Just fill a concrete box with some kind of plastic foam, flip it over, and you’ve got a stable platform that’s ready to float. And the more of these platforms you join together, the more stable they are. So Olthuis doesn’t plan to stop at single family homes.

“You see a floating foundation, with a garden on top of it, a swimming pool on top of it, and a house on top of it. And you can fix those floating gardens to each other, and make a floating village of it,” he says.

(Link: npr.org)

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February 5, 2008

Prayer party against porno on television

Filed under: Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:41 am
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This one is for all of you out there who think that the Dutch are so very liberal and totally relaxed about sex, drugs and rock & roll.

A huge brouhaha has been created by a Dutch television station that will be broadcasting the 1972 porno film Deep Throat after 10 pm I might add on Feb 23. As if all those R&B videos with ‘hos’, those sex programmes with couples getting married naked in Jamaica and misleading webcam sites haven’t taken up enough space on television already.

Apparently, a bunch of religious fanatics (yes, we have those too) led by former evangelical television director Bert Dorenbos have decided to pray on Friday 8 February and Friday 15 February by the television broadcast tower to try and stop the broadcasting of the film.

1. Unless you take the tower out Jack Bauer style, you’re wasting your time. I hope it rains really hard.
2. Are you blind to all that other porn-like stuff on TV or just having Christian tunnel vision?
3. Don’t watch, no one is forcing you. You can always rent it if you change your mind.

(Link: fok.nl)

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February 4, 2008

Alaaf! Carnival in Maastricht

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:20 am
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While more than half of the Netherlands does not celebrate carnaval, the South of the country, namely the provinces of Brabant and Limburg, take a good three days to do so every year. This year’s carnaval in Maastricht was blessed with good weather and people came from many parts of the world to take pictures.

Alaaf! is a carnaval cry from the Cologne (Germany) dialect meaning ‘elf’ (‘eleven’). According to tradition, 11 is the number of fools, probably because it is one less than 12, which is the number of perfection. Cologne’s carnaval usually has bigger crowds and the people in the parade throw tons of sweets onto the crowd. I also noticed that Cologne had more marching bands and much less DJs than in Maastricht.

One of my client’s from Maastricht asked me if I planned to celebrate carnaval this year. I said that I planned to go to Maastricht and take pictures. She asked if Carnaval was celebreated in Québec, Canada where I am from. I explained to her that the Québec Winter Carnaval lasts three weeks and is the biggest outdoor winter carnaval in the world. So I guess that’s a yes. And it’s usually really cold!

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