November 16, 2008

Free University in Berlin honours Cees Nooteboom

Filed under: Dutch first,Literature by Orangemaster @ 3:19 pm
Cees Nooteboom

Cees Nooteboom is the very first Dutch writer to receive an honorary degree from a German university, the Free University in Berlin. He is one of the Netherlands’ greatest authors, having won a string of literary awards and one day expected to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

Oddly enough, he is more popular in Germany where he is very much in demand. In the Netherlands, Nooteboom is a successful writer, but it is said that he will never become as popular in the Netherlands as he is in Germany where almost all his books are bestsellers. Nooteboom’s German publisher Suhrkamp has just published his complete works in nine volumes, while the Bezige Bij publishing house in Amsterdam has no plans to do the same.

According to Radio Netherlands, the Dutch are more likely to name Harry Mulisch as being up for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I can’t help but say “No man is a prophet in his own country”.

(Link: radionetherlands.nl)

Tags: , ,

November 15, 2008

Electro-magnetic suspension makes cars zoom

Filed under: Automobiles,Science by Eric @ 2:43 pm

If it’s up to doctoral student Laurenţiu Encică, cars of the future will zoom by on electro-magnetic suspension. This system shall replace the combination of shock absorbers and springs used in today’s cars, which is cheap, but not optimal.

Encică’s reseach focused on using a combination of permanent magnets and electro-magnetic coils. The permanent magnets provide passive suspension, much like the good old mechanical suspension system. The electro-magnetic coils add an active component to the mix, allowing the system to respond to changing road conditions much faster than current systems.

Don’t expect Encică’s electro-magnetic suspension to be under your car any time soon, though. Measuring about 20 by 80 centimeters, the prototype he built is still a bit too bulky to fit under an average car and further research will be neccessary to make the design smaller and less energy consuming. Encică expects it will take another five to ten years for his system to hit the road.

(Link: TUE, Photo: Quasimondo)

Tags: , , ,

De(con)struction of a country

Filed under: Religion by Branko Collin @ 2:36 pm

The Christian government’s War on Fun is plodding along at a glacial pace here. This can make it difficult to get a decent picture of how bad things have gotten. Luckily, over at the Yak’s forums, somebody who calls themselves DutchLlama has provided a list of battles lost and about to be lost:

One thing DutchLlama forgot is the ban on flags in the inner city of Amsterdam, as these make the city look too cheerfulcommercial according to some politicos.

I should point out that although all of these bans are right up the alley of the Reformed government (the Reformed are a protestant sect), the measures taken in Amsterdam can likely be subscribed to nimbyism, as they’re often based on decisions taken by the council of the city center borough.

Yak is the pseudonym of brilliant games programmer Jeff Minter, the guy who almost single-handedly brought the concept of author’s voice to the video game world, and kept it there against great opposition.

Via Cloggie. Photo of the spire of the Westerkerk by Mararie, some rights reserved.

Tags: , ,

November 14, 2008

Dutch kids are happy because they’re egocentric

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:13 am
Children in the Netherlands

According to a survey carried out by research institute TNS Nipo for the Volkskrant and broadcaster NCRV, a few eyebrow-raising conclusions were drawn about raising children in the Netherlands:

“Parents spoil their children too much and do not teach them to take others into consideration. The survey also says that 75% of older generations are not happy with the way children are raised. Child-centred upbringing has been the trend in the Netherlands since the 1970s as a result of smaller families and growing prosperity and this had led to a generation which is demanding and self-centred.”

My Dutch friends refer to annoying kids or parents who let their kids walk all over them by pointing to them in disgust and saying “ikke ikke ikke”, which means “me me me”. A recent case in point was a little boy of about two who kept hitting other smaller children at a children’s party and the parents stopping him, but not reprimanding him in order to stop the behaviour. This went on the whole time I was there. What I’ve heard is reprimanding your kids is bad for them (?) and so getting them to stop bad behaviour has to involve not making them feel bad.

How does that work? It doesn’t. I saw a man hit a five-year-old on the head (!) in an organic supermarket populated by the middle class because he kept poking the man and the mother let it happen. The mother actually had no problem with the swat, as she got to avoid the ‘confrontation’ of trying to punish her own son. Guess what? The kid stopped his bad behaviour.

“However, Dutch children are also the happiest in the western world, according to a World Health Organisation survey in 2008. The report found they are the most pleased with life, get on well with their parents, have a large social network and like their schools. A UNICEF report a year earlier also found that Dutch teenagers are the happiest in the developed world.”

Hell, I’d be happy too if you let me do what I wanted all the time!

Is being all “ikke ikke ikke” a really good universal value to teach your children?

(Link: dutchnews.nl, Photo: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Tags: ,

November 13, 2008

Life-size model car kit

Filed under: Art,Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 8:34 am

Just like the model cars you built as a kid, only bigger! I stumbled on this artwork on the Oude Haagseweg in Amsterdam during a walk around the Nieuwe Meer last Sunday. The rust and graffiti suggest it’s been there for a while. Does anybody know who the artist is?

Update: I posted a couple more (small) photos from this walk here. I’ll post the larger versions on Flickr if and when I have the time.

Tags:

November 12, 2008

Laurel & Hardy’s city in 3D

Filed under: Art,Film,History by Branko Collin @ 12:05 pm

In 1998, Piet Schreuders and “a team of computer graphics experts” from Utrecht dedicated their time to recreate Main Street, Culver City in digitized 3D form. They used “historical records to design a digital version of Culver City as it looked in 1920s-era Laurel and Hardy films and other motion pictures from the Hal Roach studio,” as BoingBoing says.

We wrote about Schreuders here on this very blog not two weeks ago. BoingBoing also links to a copy of of Schreuders’ other magazine, Furore, which is devoted entirely to describing the process: “The Shortest Main Street In The World.”

Tags: , ,

Meat-plugging vegetarian nominated for sexiest vegetarian award

Filed under: Animals,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:58 am
Jan Vayne Unox

Can you promote eating Dutch smoked sausage as a vegetarian? The animal activists at Wakker Dier don’t seem to have a problem with that. Jan Vayne, currently the main celebrity plugging Unox smoked sausage on television, was nominated as one of the sexiest vegetarians of the Netherlands. (Personally, I would vote for columnist Leon Verdonschot, but that’s just me.)

On the list of Dutch celebrities that claim not to eat meat, the description of Vayne reads “With his wild hair, Jan Vayne would rather sit at the piano keyboard than sit down for a plate of dead animal.” If I remember correctly, he made it pretty clear more than a year ago that sitting down for a plate of dead animal was mmm mmm profitable. You don’t see him eating any sausage on television though.

Wakker Dier is very much against the bad bad bad meat industry, but not when it comes to their annual most sexy vegetarian contest, which is quite odd. Both Wakker Dier and the Netherlands’ political party Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals) held a huge campaign last year against Unox because they use pork from pigs that were not castrated under anaesthesia.

I once had a boss who claimed and acted superior because he did not eat meat, but showed up at work once, back from visiting the United States with fire engine red snake skin boots. They had midlife crisis part deux written all over them. When I told this to my best friend she said, “he doesn’t eat animals, he just wears them”.

(Link and photo: vleesmagazine.nl)

Tags: , , ,

November 11, 2008

Musician ‘fined’ by social networking site, possibly for faulty grammar

Filed under: General,Music,Online by Branko Collin @ 9:17 am

An unnamed musician got fined recently by a social networking site (Muzikanten-in-jouw-stad, Musicians in your city) after she had aborted the registration process, according to a report by Volkskrant blogger Satuka. Though the site’s administrators would not tell the musician what the fine was for, they did present her with a list of finable offenses, among which:

  • Posting meaningless texts and random characters
  • Using bad grammar
  • Using something other than the local language

Muzikanten-in-jouw-stad presents itself as the online meeting place for local musicians, but Satuka’s blog entry suggests it’s mostly a place for extracting hard-earned cash from those unlucky enough to register. Last week she wrote that a friend was fined 10 euro after not finishing her registration. The friend had gotten tired of the large number of obligatory fields on the sign-up form, and had started to enter non-sensical texts. When the site told her—still during the “free” sign-up process—to call an 0900 number and record some demo music for the mere sum of 40 euro, the friend decided to abort.

As a result she received an e-mail “a little while later” (Satuka’s entry is nothing if not vague), which claimed that she had violated the site’s General Terms & Conditions and that she therefore had to pay a ten 10 fine.

Law blogger Arnoud Engelfriet has this to say about this case:

  • You should send a reminder before you fine people, not during,
  • If you want to fine people you should not leave any mention of fines out of the T&C, and
  • The T&C are invalid in their entirety because they are presented in a pop-up window without the possibility of saving the T&C to a local medium.

I’d like to add that the musician never finished the registration process, so you have to wonder what legal obligations she has towards the site. I’d guess none, but IANAL. Also, I was told by reputable legal scholars that only courts can impose fines. Engelfriet suggests Satuka’s friend tell the networking blog to take a long walk off a short pier, though in politer and legally binding terms.

Today’s special rich creamy irony sauce: the letter that claims the social networking site can fine you for bad grammar is full of, yes, you guessed right, examples.

(Photo by Tomascastelazo, some rights reserved.)

Tags: , , , , ,

November 10, 2008

Bureaucratica – the power of bureaucrats

Filed under: General,Photography by Orangemaster @ 11:01 am
Kunsthal

Yes, it’s been on for a while, but the current exhibition Bureaucratica, quoted by The Wall Street Journal as “a surprisingly compassionate view of the ways in which individuals inevitably resist all efforts to impose one single standard of behavior,” is on display at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam until 14 December 2008.

The exhibition features the work of photographer Jan Banning who photographed bureaucrats from countries such as India, France, Liberia, the US, and Russia from 2003 to 2007.

(Link: kunsthal.nl, via spunk.nl, photo Jan Banning)

Tags: , , ,

November 9, 2008

Sunday quickies November 9, 2008

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:31 pm

Stolen credit card data for sale in user-friendly web shop

Zembla, the news show of Labour broadcaster VARA, bought stolen credit card data from a Russian website and used those data to purchase goods. Director Ton van der Ham told Webwereld: “The site is hidden behind a login. You can search credit cards by country and card type, and then you select a data package which you can pay for online. It’s almost unreal.”

The program got permission from the credit card holders before making the what Webwereld calls “fraudulent” purchases. Either Webwereld knows something about fraud that I don’t, or it’s trying hard to become the Telegraaf of Dutch tech news sites.

In 2006 investigative news show Zembla took claims of 9/11 conspiracy theorists serious by testing them. It concluded most of the claims were unfounded. The show is also famous for “exposing” (the news was not news to a limited circle) that politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali had lied in her asylum claim, which led to her resignation from parliament.

Serious satire

Perik is a copywriter who, when he noticed that he could write 2000 words about anything, decided to quit and become a bartender. The writing bug has never left him though, and now he is blogging satirical pieces at Sargasso. And darn it, he is good! Today he caught me unawares with his (fake) report about a banned ad in which fathers are encouraged to spend more quality time with their children. The ad is titled: “Who is this whiny broad anyway?” and in Perik’s world raised a storm of protest from the child protection board, which, as everybody knows, “has been campaigning for a radical feminization of the child rearing domain for almost a century.”

Disclaimer: the entire 24 Oranges editorial team has shared alcoholic beverages with Perik, so our conclusion that he’s a good egg might be somewhat clouded by the aforementioned beverages.

What Dutch space travel would look like

(From a 1983 ad for pot plants.)

Via Trendbeheer. Disclaimer: we’ve also shared alcoholic beverages with Trendbeheer contributor Jaap Verhoeven. At the same parties! What can I say? We like our drinks, and we go to the right parties.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,