February 7, 2011

Six step tutorial for dechurching yourself

Filed under: Religion by Branko Collin @ 3:10 pm

Diederik Willemsen has put up a page outlining how to get rid of being labelled a church member. Apparently, it’s not as easy as one would think. You need to convince the following organisations to stop counting you as a church member:

  • Local municipality
  • National church body
  • SILA (register for all churches)
  • Local parish
  • Baptism register (also local parish)
  • Bishopric (if you’re a Roman Catholic)

Willemsen believes it’s important that the number of registered members reflects the actual number of members, because churches apparently enjoy certain benefits for having many members.

Recently, 23,000 people have cancelled their membership to the Roman Catholic church in protest of its child abuse practices, NOS Headlines reports. Statistics Netherlands shows that in recent years the number of people that call themselves religious is in decline. This appears to be a function of age—the older age groups are more religious, and as their members die the percentage of religious people decreases.

(Photo by Johan Wieland, some rights reserved)

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February 6, 2011

Gerco de Ruijter’s vertical, geometric landscapes

Filed under: Art,Photography by Branko Collin @ 9:36 am

This is what you get if you dangle a camera off a kite over something like a vineyard or a tree nursery. Says BLDG|BLOG:

Dutch photographer Gerco de Ruijter recently got in touch with an extraordinary series of aerial photographs called Baumschule—some of which, he explains, were taken using a camera mounted on a fishing rod.

The series features “32 photographs of tree nurseries and grid forests in the Netherlands.”

De Ruijter first tried to find geometric patterns in natural landscapes, but later switched to “the hyper-artificial landscapes of tree farms and nurseries in the Netherlands”.

De Ruijter’s work is currently exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.

Photo: BLDG|BLOG/Gerco de Ruijter.

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February 5, 2011

Tombstone becomes property of survivors

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:35 pm

Tombstones will remain the property of those who bought them in the first place, Minister of the Interior Piet Hein Donner announced last Monday. Until now, cemeteries would assume ownership once the stone was placed on the grave.

Cemeteries, Uitvaart.nl reports, now have to contact the survivors once the grave rights run out. Survivors can then opt to collect the tombstone.

Grave rights in the Netherlands typically last 10 or 20 years. The new regulation enters in force on 1 March, having already been in force since 1 January 2010 for new graves.

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February 4, 2011

A Dutch bike path with solar panels

Filed under: Bicycles,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 2:26 pm

In 2012, the town of Krommenie, North of Amsterdam, will have cool bike paths made up of solar panels. And there’ll be roads with solar panels as well.

Developed by the Province of North Holland, the Ooms Avenhorn Group and Imtech, the solar bike path will be constructed with a concrete base, topped with a 1 cm thick layer of crystalline silicon solar cells. The solar cells will then be protected by a thick, heavy-duty glass surface strong enough to drive a truck over it. The SolaRoad is estimated to generate 50 kw hours of electricity per square meter per year which will be used to power street lights, traffic systems, and perhaps even households along the SolaRoad system.

(Links and photo (thanks Jay!): metaefficient.com, tno)

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February 3, 2011

Stop smoking by blackmailing yourself

Filed under: General,Health,Online by Orangemaster @ 9:12 pm

Ah yes, trying to stop smoking. I’ve heard that’s really tough.

And now there’s trying to stop smoking 2.0 using a Facebook app, created for the Dutch anti-smoking council, called ‘Blackmail yourself’. And before you go ‘pfff’, think of all adverts in your country making people feel guilty by showing blackened lungs and yellow teeth, or teenagers trying to act cool and all those ads that never ever worked.

I have a problem with the video’s narration, telling you to pick a controller (friend) and “giving him permission to post your picture if he ever spots you with a cigarette again.” I don’t understand why such a presumably important message is in English (speaking of trying to be cool) and assumes everyone is a ‘he’, as women smoke too and probably also want to quit.

I dare to suggest that there is no such thing as an anti-smoking campaign that works. In recent years banning smoking in public places and in bars and cafés in the Netherlands seemed to be the only thing that has had some effect.

(Link: amsterdamadblog)

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February 2, 2011

Bench follows the shape of the branch it was made with

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 8:52 am

Brench? Banch? Be your inner Mowgli without falling out of a tree.

Or as creator Floris Wubben writes, all business like:

This bench is made of polypropylene, wood and lacquered metal. The wavy polypropylene is attached to the wooden branch with metal rods. As a consequence, the shape of the polypropylene is given by the shape of the branch.

There’s also a video explaining how to sit on it. It’s not clear whether his designs are actually being produced.

Link: Floris Wubben, no. 3 bench. Photo: Floris Wubben. Via a BoingBoing story about Wubben’s willow stool.

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February 1, 2011

Utrecht graffiti artist KBTR, the new Keith Haring?

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 12:46 pm

The past years these depictions of angry gnomes have been popping up all over Utrecht, and now people are comparing the artist’s work to that of the Keith Haring.

The artist goes by the name KBTR, ‘kabouter’ with the vowels taken out. Kabouters are a type of gnome typical for the Netherlands which look like garden gnomes or like original depictions of leprechauns, i.e. fellows with pointy hats and long flowing beards but not to be confused with “hipsters” or “freds”.

As the video shows, one guy managed to get two private kabouters by leaving a couple of crates of beer and a mention of when he would be away on holiday at a local bike shop. More of KBTR’s work can be seen at streetfiles.org. To me, the kabouters of KBTR have a distinct likeness to Belgium’s angry cartoon gnome Kabouter Wesley.

(Photo by Aarnoot, some rights reserved)

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