September 26, 2013

A warm and fuzzy lamp without drilling holes in the wall

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 3:00 pm

My co-blogger Branko thought of me right away when he saw the Wooll-e, a lamp I could have in my way too dark office without drilling holes in the wall, which I’m not allowed to do.

No more need for screws or nails as wooll-e is a unique ready to hang lamp. The wooll-e is a lamp that doesn’t require any tools. Only a power outlet and blank wall space. Designed to be quick-‘n- easy. No more drilling holes in your walls. Simply stick the wooll-e discs on your wall and the wooll-e FIX will do the rest!

The felt sleeves of the wooll-e (hence the name is my guess) are handmade from 100% Dutch wool. Even the power cords come in different colours. For 5 euro of funding towards this Indiegogo crowdfunding project, you’ll get a thanks, and for anything starting at 95 euro, you get a lamp with combo packs going for up to 210 euro.

(Link: www.indiegogo.com, Photo of Lightbulb by Emil Kabanov, some rights reserved)

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September 25, 2013

Utrecht’s Hoog Catharijne shopping mall turns 40 today

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 1:45 pm

The Hoog Catharijne shopping mall in Utrecht, which encompasses the largest and busiest train station of the Netherlands, is turning 40 today. In 2016 it will also feature one of the world’s biggest bike garages.

Hoog Catharijne is currently being rebuilt, and a large part of the area around the train station is under construction. The buses below change places every couple of weeks and the traffic needs human help at street level to get going. Hoog Catharijne is one of the busiest Dutch shopping malls, and according to many, not one of the prettiest. When travelling across the country, popping out at Utrecht Central Station to go shopping for clothes or gifts without going outside in the pouring rain is a real plus.

Here’s the promotional video of what it will look like fully rebuilt in 2019 presented in Dutch is a sales pitch with a lot of ‘experience this’ and ‘discover that’. It has an all-white, fit and young cast as well, which doesn’t reflect reality. Sailing over the Catharijnesingel does sound cool: digging up canals is trendy because waterfront property is expensive. Charging up your electric car for free has to be a good thing although I can imagine that for the price of parking your car indoors, it isn’t a strong selling point.

Watch the old school 1970s promotional video for Hoog Catharijne in Dutch featuring key expressions as ‘oriented towards the future’ and mentions of Postwar rebuilding.

(Link: www.nrc.nl, Photo of Hoog Catharijne by Jeroen Bosman, some rights reserved)

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September 24, 2013

Festive aardvark celebrates the city of Arnhem

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 12:40 pm

Rotterdam’s Florentijn Hofman does it again in a big way, this time in a festive manner with the ‘Feestaardvarken’ (‘Party aardvark’) made mostly of metal and concrete.

The Feestaardvarken is a 30-metre-long concrete sculpture which looks like an abstract aardvark with a golden party hat. The work was made specifically for this site and commissioned by Burgers’ Zoo and is a present for the 100th year anniversary of the zoo to the city of Arnhem.

‘Party aardvark’ is a play on words of ‘feestvarken’ (‘party pig’ in Dutch), while aardvark is an Afrikaans word also used in English meaning ‘earth pig’.

(Link and photo: www.florentijnhofman.nl)

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September 23, 2013

More large-scale scientific fraud uncovered at Dutch university

Filed under: Science by Orangemaster @ 8:32 am

Diederik Stapel, the country’s most notorious scientific fraudster, has some competition. Stapel had some 36 cases of confirmed fraud when we wrote about him in 2012, up to 55 at some point.

And now a former professor of the VU University Amsterdam, Mart Bax, has apparently published at least 61 documents of fake research in 15 years. He was quite crafty and managed to recycle his work under fake names, lie about awards and surely more things that will be excavated soon.

The biggest difference so far is that Stapel was still working as a professor when he got caught and Bax has been away from his university for some 11 years.

Here’s a how to fake it when you’re a fraudster scientist.

(Link: www.dutchnews.nl)

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September 22, 2013

‘Underwater’ bridge for bicycles in Haarlem

Filed under: Automobiles,Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 3:24 pm

The city of Haarlem wanted to create a safer situation where a main road crossed another main road coming off a bridge.

For some reason all practical solutions turned out impossible (more likely someone couldn’t be bothered) so the city opted for a work-around, albeit a well designed one. They built a bicycle bridge that wraps around the underside of the other bridge and then partially submerged the bicycle bridge. The result is either a submerged bridge or an open air tunnel, your pick.

The bridge was designed by IPV who seem to be specializing in these sort of crazy work-arounds—check their bicycle roundabout hovering above Eindhoven.

Mark Wagenbuur, the bicycle vlogger, visited Haarlem and shot one of his trademark videos there.

(Photo: ipv Delft)

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September 20, 2013

Dutch Little Golden Books turn 60, publisher celebrates with ‘giga’ version

Filed under: Literature by Branko Collin @ 7:45 pm

The famous Little Golden Books, a series of children’s book originally published by Simon and Schuster in the USA, have always been popular in the Netherlands.

The booklets with the golden spine were first published in 1942. It took 11 years for the series to get its launch in the Netherlands with a translation of Little Peewee, or Now Open the Box. This year Dutch publisher Rubinstein celebrates the 60th anniversary of the series in the Netherlands with a large format release of the translated booklet.

According to Holly Moors, the success of the series in the Netherlands is due “largely because Annie M.G. Schmidt improved the American versions irreparably.” Moors has a photo of his 2-metre-tall son (?) Rik reading the book for comparison. The Giga Golden Book, as Rubinstein calls it, has 14 extra pages that were in the American original but not in the Dutch translation of 1953.

The early 1950s must have been a good year for American cultural exports to the Netherlands (so close after the war). In 1952 the Donald Duck weekly was launched in this country and that publication is also still going strong.

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September 19, 2013

The Netherlands is European prince of empty office space

Filed under: Architecture,General by Orangemaster @ 11:13 am

The Netherlands is a European market leader of being stuck with empty office space, with 15% of all office buildings being unoccuppied. Amsterdam clocks in at 18% all on its own, with only Athenes, Greece being worse off at 20%, making it the king.

Since the office buildings have a high value, they cannot be easily converted into much needed living space, which is still considered to be ‘urgent’. In Amsterdam North students live in containers when they could be living in converted office space.

According to the city of Amsterdam, a healthy office market should be around 4-8%, allowing for moving, renting and selling. The city claims it is trying to convince office building owners to transform their buildings into incubators for smaller businesses as well as limit the amount of new buildings being built.

(Links: marketupdate.nl, www.vastgoedmarkt.nl, Photo of Rotterdam, KPN building by Roel Wijnants, some rights reserved)

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September 18, 2013

Get married for free in Amersfoort on 11 December 2013

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:26 pm

For those of you shopping for a free wedding like the ones offered in Beuningen and Arnhem a few years back, the city of Amersfoort, Utrecht (where painter Piet Mondriaan was born) is offered free weddings on 11-12-13-14-15, or 11 December (12) 2013 (13) at 14:15 to five lucky couples.

The mayor himself, Lucas Bolsius, will be handling the ceremony and every couple can have their own reception for 12 people (the rest of the guests have to pay for their food and drinks) in fun places like the Amersfoort Zoo.

Mail the city at trouwen@amersfoort.nl and tell them why you should get a free wedding. The couples will be chosen on 9 October.

(Link: www.z24.nl, Photo by ValentinaST, some rights reserved)

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September 17, 2013

Dutchman breaks world cycling record at 133,78 km/h

Filed under: Bicycles,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 1:36 pm

Dutchman Sebastiaan Bowier has broken the previous 2009 record of Canadian cyclist Sam Wittigham by just 0.6 km/h by reaching a speed of 133,78 km/h, making him the fastest cyclist in the world. Students from the Delft University of Technology and the VU University Amsterdam joined forces to beat this record in a high-tech recumbent whizzing through the Nevada desert in the United States. The speeds were measured over a distance of 200 metres, after accelerating on an eight kilometre straight road. It’s the special coating of the recumbent that gave it 90% less wind resistance than a normal bicycle.

Wil Baselmans, the second cyclist of the Delft/Amsterdam team also reached a world class speed of 127,43 km/h, making him the third fastest man on earth, right after Bowier and Wittingham.

(Link: www.hptdelft.nl)

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September 16, 2013

The Netherlands has finally become a police state

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:18 pm

Rhetoric? Offensive sloganeering? Have I finally gone off the deep end? No, I am just getting a pun in there. Volkskrant reported last Saturday that the biggest employer in the Netherlands is the police.

In 2012 the police provided jobs to 63,778 people. They passed the military which was the biggest employer in 2011, but had to cut down their numbers due to budget cuts.

The top 5 large employers in the Netherlands are:

  • The police, 63,778 employees
  • The military, 61,749 employees
  • Rabobank, 41,402 employees
  • PostNL, 33,284 employees
  • Air France-KLM, 31,189 employees

According to Volkskrant their top 100 of companies employs about 1 million people in the Netherlands. Their distribution follows a power curve, the top ten employs a third of that million. According to Statistics Netherlands there were 8.68 million people working in the Netherlands in 2012 and 0.66 million unemployed citizens. The self-employed made up 1.25 million of people working. And there were 9.24 million jobs in 2012.

(Photo by FaceMePLS, some rights reserved)

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