May 10, 2011

Beware of Zeeland’s kissing cyclist

Filed under: Bicycles,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:33 pm

A whopping 41 women have reported being unwantedly kissed by a male cyclist in the Southern province of Zeeland, something that has been going on since 2009. The cops aren’t sure it’s the same guy and the women’s reports tend to differ. Call the alarm number (it’s 112 here) and snap a pic with your phone is the cops’ equivalent of ‘take two aspirins and call me in the morning’, as they can’t seem to catch him. The man asks cycling women for directions, kisses them and asks them where they live and I imagine has other propositions as well.

(Link: blikopnieuws)

Tags: ,

May 9, 2011

Dutch freedom of information process ‘slowest in the world’

Filed under: General,IT by Branko Collin @ 10:49 am

A report by the Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ) claims the Dutch government is the slowest in the world in processing freedom of information requests. FOI consultant Rob Vleugels pointed out to Binnenlands Bestuur that Dutch ministries typically only employ four civil servants each for dealing with the requests. In comparison, the UK employs at least 80 people per ministry for this task. The British, unlike the Dutch, also train their people for doing FOI work.

Journalist Brenno de Winter thinks the problems with the execution of the FOI law centre around an incompetent government when it comes to IT.

Recently I had to wait 56 days for three photocopies. I had asked to receive the copies digitally, but they were incapable of doing so.

The citizens now foot the bill for bad automation. For years I have tried to uncover the extent of the problem, but the government is actively sabotaging me. They send me bills despite the courts telling them that such things is illegal, they take much more time to respond than they are allowed to, they claim national security issues, and they sometimes even just refuse to respond.

The Freedom of information act is called WOB in Dutch (Wet Openbaarheid Bestuur), and making a WOB request is called wobbing.

(Photo by Dennis Macwilliam, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

May 8, 2011

The Dutch like Dutch children’s literature the best

Filed under: Literature by Branko Collin @ 2:11 pm

If you would ask us for our opinions about the best music (classic or pop), comics, films or literature, chances are the Dutch would come up with the names of British, American, Japanese, Belgian, French, German or Russian works. But when the Sargasso blog held a poll last month to determine the best children’s books, these were the results:

1. Thea Beckman – Crusade in Jeans (1973)
2. Roald Dahl – The BFG (1982)
3. Jan Terlouw – How to Become King (1971)
4. Paul Biegel – The Little Captain (1971)
5. Annie MG Schmidt – Tow Truck Pluck (1971)
6. Thea Beckman – Kinderen van Moeder Aarde (1985)
7. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince (1943)
7. J.R.R. Tolkien – The Hobbit (1937)
9. Johan Fabricius – De Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe (1923)
10. J.R.R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings (trilogy) (1954)
11. Tonke Dragt – De Brief voor de Koning (1962)
12. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

Note that the participants of this poll were most likely grown-ups, probably in full-on nostalgia mode. Curiously Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren (The Brothers Lionheart, Pippi Longstocking) is missing from the top ten. How Lisa Tetzner’s Die schwarzen Brüder could only land the 70th spot on a lefty blog like Sargasso will probably remain a mystery.

I was a child in the 1970s, and my Big Four of children’s literature were Paul Biegel, Guus Kuijer, Tonke Dragt and Miep Diekman. Biegel and Dragt wrote books with mystical elements, whereas Kuijer and Diekman were of a more realistic bent.

Currently Schmidt’s Tow Truck Pluck is being translated to English, and the Nederlands Letterenfonds has a glowing review of De Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe, which I guess means they are in the market for sponsoring translators.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

May 7, 2011

What have the Nazis ever done for you?

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 11:48 am

I grew up in Blerick, a town with a town hall but without the political body to inhabit it. See, in 1940 the town was added to the neighbouring city of Venlo by the Nazi occupier, which made the possession of a town hall moot.

Interestingly the previous municipality that Blerick belonged to, Maasbree, once had three different town halls, and the council would rotate among them until in 1904 the Blerick town hall was made the permanent one.

In celebration of Liberation day, daily De Pers summed up 6 of the changes the Nazis made that stuck:

  1. Child support (the Nazis wanted the Arian race to flourish)
  2. Corporate tax (funnily enough, these days our low corporate taxes make us a tax haven, according to the Berserker of Abbottabad)
  3. Central European Time (before that, we had our own sliver of a time zone)
  4. The Frisian islands of Vlieland and Terschelling (formerly of Noord Holland)
  5. Rent control and renter protection (including the right to live in a house forever)
  6. Job protection (including the right to keep a job forever)

In a number of these cases the occupier made into law what was already on the books. In other cases the law was kept because it made sense. For instance, with housing shortages being rather prominent after the war, it made eminent sense to protect renters from price gouging. In such cases the Germans had unwittingly produced both the diseases and the cures.

(Photo of the Blerick town hall by Wikimedia user Torval, some rights reserved)

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

May 6, 2011

Art student = 1, Louis Vuitton = the big goose egg, (O)

Filed under: Art,Design,Fashion by Orangemaster @ 10:42 am

The verdict is in: Amsterdam based Danish artist Nadia Plesner who attends the Rietveld academy in Amsterdam successfully defended herself against major French brand Louis Vuitton. Plesner used a depiction of an LV bag in a painting entitled Darfurnica for which Louis Vuitton tried to sue her for 5,000 euro a day for using their image.

“The court in The Hague ruled that Plesner’s right to freedom of expression through her work weighed more heavily than Louis Vuitton’s right to protect its property. The use of the bag in the painting is both functional and in proportion, the court said,” according to Dutchnews. Case closed.

(Link: dutchnews.nl, Photo: Nadia Plesner)

Tags: , ,

May 5, 2011

American film expert publishes book on Amsterdam cinemas

Filed under: Film,Literature by Orangemaster @ 10:44 am

Originally from Kansas, Jeffrey Babcock has been living in Amsterdam for over 20 years and often reminisces about how Amsterdam, the city were you could once do anything artistic, has become quite regulated in his time. However, if there’s one person keeping the dream alive and well as far as unknown films are concerned, it’s him. I myself watched a film shot partially in my hometown of Montréal and partially in Amsterdam that I had never ever heard of and was blown away. Babcock gives the audience an explanation beforehand, like the cool teacher at school that probably has the same extra curricular activities as you do.

Together with Rietveld Academy art student Agata Winska, Babcock has published a book entitled ‘The Illicit Cinemas of Amsterdam’, with stories and an interview about the more ‘undergound’ cinemas where Babcock presents films to small yet packed audiences around the city. They purposely made 300 copies of the book, hand bound in Poland and kept the price as low as possible, something Babcock believes in strongly with his easily affordable movie screenings. “Even if I were to up the price by a euro, people would come, but it wouldn’t be the same people. Polish squatters now talk to people from Dutch television station VPRO, which wouldn’t happen if the price went up.” Safe to say, it’s never about the money, it’s always about film.

Tags:

May 3, 2011

Louis Vuitton’s ‘valuable’ brands top trash pile

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 4:22 pm

Last Saturday I wrote that I love buying other people’s junk at the flea market, but I have my limits. One person was selling dozens of Louis Vuitton bags on Queen’s Day, heaped together as on a trash pile, unloved and unbought.

A dirty blanket on the upmarket Apollolaan held these ‘valuable’ branded products, yet none of the intellectual property lawyers living there seemed interested in suing the seller for causing the sort of “irreparable damage” and “serious detriment to the name and reputation of Louis Vuitton”* that the company is suing Danish artist Nadia Plesner for. The French company fined Plesner hundreds of thousands of euro last January with the aid of an all too willing Dutch judge.

Plesner of course appealed the decision, and a fresh decision from a fresh judge is expected to arrive tomorrow.

*) Quotes lifted directly from the court order that Louis Vuitton presumably dictated to judge Hensen.

Tags: , ,

Special font for dyslexics wins lucrative Dutch prize

Filed under: Design,General by Orangemaster @ 12:24 pm

(In Dutch, with enough English (Dunglish) info in the presentation)

Winner of the Future Minds Awards, presented on 28 April 2011, Christian Boer, graphic designer and dyslexic himself, has created a font that helps people with dislexia to be able to read better. He explains in the video that dyslexics see letters in 3D and not 2D, which gave him the idea to ‘ground’ letters with a shaded background. It really looks simple and you wonder why nobody thought of it before.

The real prize for me, is that it really works. Parents of dyslexic children have come to me in awe, because their child had been reading for over an hour, which never happened before. With the prize money (EUR 10,000) I intend to further develop the font. Some languages have different letters, such as the ß in German and accents in French, so I want to investigate that. Furthermore, I have always been working on a low budget, and with now I can work on a slightly bigger and faster scale.

(Link: depers.nl, blog.smart-urban-stage.com)

Tags:

May 2, 2011

Bicycle parking detectors in Utrecht

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 8:03 am

Writes Mark Wagenbuur:

In an attempt to free more spaces the Railways built an electronic system near the railway station of Utrecht. It monitors the time bicycles are parked so bicycles that are parked too long (more than 14 days) can be removed to make much needed room for other bicycles. This is a trial in Utrecht and Groningen.

The system seems to do more than just spot orphan bicycles though. It will also show cyclists which sections of a parking garage have the most free spots. If like me you have ever tried to find the empty spot in the bicycle parking garage next to Central Station in Amsterdam, the only one always seemingly on the fourth floor, you know how useful such a system could be.

(Video: Youtube / Mark Wagenbuur)

Tags: , , ,

May 1, 2011

Flickr set ‘Queen’s Day 2011’

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 10:39 pm

I added the rest of the photos we took on Queen’s Day to our Flick account: Queen’s Day 2011 set.

Tags: ,