September 30, 2012
Artist and inventor Dave Hakkens was fascinated by the fact that porcelain shrinks when you bake it. He used that notion to create a series of jugs where each jug formed the basis of a cast for the next one.
Starting out with a 5 litre jug he ended up with 14 jugs, of which the smallest has a volume of 10 millilitres. The jugs are for sale.
See also: Two inventions—a charger in a safe, and a power strip in a book (and a bonus invention)
(Link: Bright. Photo: Dave Hakkens)
Tags: Dave Hakkens, jugs, porcelain
September 29, 2012
Jan-Dirk van der Burg curated an exhibition called Censorship Daily which is on display now at the Persmuseum.
It shows the handiwork of Iran’s censors with regards to Dutch newspapers. NRC has a selection at their Inbeeld website.
Van der Burg is a photographer whom we wrote about before.
Tags: censorship, Iran, Jan-Dirk van der Burg, NRC, Persmuseum
September 24, 2012
A two-metre-tall wooden penis was found to be insulting by a judge in Breda last Wednesday. Artist Peter de Koning of Steenbergen in Noord Brabant had made the statue to protest the way a police officer had treated his daughter. The officer had allegedly groped the girl from his car under the pretext of searching for marijuana late last year.
A note attached to the statue read “Protest statue, Nico van den Wijngaard, Steenbergen police”. Insulting the police is illegal in the Netherlands.
The court has sentenced De Koning to a suspended fine of 1,000 euro and also declared that the statue should be returned to its maker, BN De Stem reports. The police have yet to comply with that part of the verdict, according to Algemeen Dagblad.
In the meantime Van den Wijngaard has been transferred to a different patrol territory, for the second time in two years.
(Photo by Alan Woo, some rights reserved. Video: YouTube / Omroep Brabant)
Tags: Breda, Peter de Koning, police, statues, Steenbergen
September 23, 2012
De Veilige Veste (‘the Safe Fortress’) in Leeuwarden is an old police station repurposed as a shelter for young women who have become the victims of ‘lover boys’ (young pimps), abuse, human trafficking and the likes.
KAW Architects write: “these girls used to be hidden from view, but modern media hound them. That is why shelter organisation Fier Fryslân came up with the idea of ‘visible but safe’.”
The building will house up to 48 women aged 15 to 23, and still have room for 1600 square metres of office space. Visitors will have to pass four security measures to get in. Fier Fryslân figures these measures will hardly be necessary, as the perpetrators typically don’t want to come out in the open anyway.
If you don’t understand what they say in this video by Omrop Fryslan, don’t worry, neither do we. It is presented in Frisian, although the interviews are in Dutch.
(Link: Inhabitat. Image: KAW Architects)
Tags: domestic violence, Friesland, Frisian, human trafficking, Leeuwarden
September 22, 2012
Meet Hector, a robot developed by Dutch company Smart Homes (with the help of a lot of partners across Europe). His task is to help dementia sufferers around the home, and as a result help them be able to live at home longer.
Hector is an in-home caregiver for elderly people who have mild cognitive impairment. It provides reminders for everyday tasks, like taking medications, calling people back and storing grocery lists. For individuals experiencing occasional memory loss, it’s no doubt useful to have Hector collect wallet and keys. Hector can even detect falls and respond to verbal commands. He’s like a walking, talking smartphone, with a much larger touch screen and smarter “brain.”
Hector works by presenting his owner with reminders from time to time. It also monitors the owner’s health.
Not unrelated: researchers from the Radboud University in Nijmegen have called for a rethink of end-of-life care due to the ageing population, BBC reports.
(Source image: screenshot from the video. Video: Youtube / Smart Homes.)
September 19, 2012
Two weeks ago a man from De Meern near Utrecht was found dead in the crawlspace of his neighbour’s house.
According to the Utrecht police, the 46-year-old had electrocuted himself trying to steal his neighbour’s electricity. He had dug a tunnel underneath the foundation of both houses. The police had to cut out the neighbour’s floor to retrieve the corpse, which they believe had been lying there for no more than a day.
Parool adds that the man was a marijuana grower, which would explain why he had been looking for ways to lower his electricity bills, as weed growers use high powered lamps.
Earlier this year a 23-year-old weed grower from Oss in Noord Brabant was also electrocuted while working in his marijuana nursery.
Tags: crawlspaces, crime, electricity, houses, marijuana, public utilities, theft, thieves, weed
September 17, 2012
This cute video by filmersblog.nl shows Dutch people aged 1 – 100 tell their age.
It’s been doing the rounds on the Internet for a couple of weeks, but if you haven’t seen it yet, you should. Linguists have already discovered the video and noted that different age groups pronounce words differently (the people were all filmed in Amsterdam, so that variation wasn’t regional).
(Video: Vimeo / Filmersblog)
Tags: Amsterdam, linguistics
September 15, 2012
De Telefoongids to fire hundreds of employeesThe phone book company that is trying to silence Alexander Klöpping is planning to fire 30% of its 800 employees, Z24 reports.
According to European Directories, the ‘restructuring’ is necessary for a print-to-online transition. The company has also declared that it plans to continue distribution of its paper phone book, despite opposition of Dutch parliament, amongst others.
Klöpping had registered the domain sterftelefoongidssterf.nl (‘die, phone book, die’), which he redirected to the presumed cancellation page of the phone book.
Snack producer Royaan can no longer use its famous brand Van Dobben in supermarkets if it wants to continue its merger with Ad van Geloven (of amongst other the Mora brand).
The Dutch anti-monopoly agency NMa has determined that Royaan must license the brand for supermarket use to another manufacturer during a period of six years according to NOS. After that the brand must be discontinued. The brand may still be used in snack bars; according to NMa there are still enough players in that market to keep it healthy. The intended merger of the snack giants was announced in November 2011.
Krokets or croquettes are a Dutch snack that consists of ragout deep-fried in a breadcrumb jacket.
A recent, nationwide experiment in which dentists could determine their own rates must be stopped the court in The Hague said last Wednesday.
According to Z24, dentists’ rates had risen 6% since the start of the experiment. When Dutch parliament indicated in July it wanted to have the experiment stopped, the association for dentists sued the caretaker minister for public health, but lost. The experiment started in January of this year and was to run for three years.
Tags: business, competition, croquets, croquette, dentists, free markets, kroket, krokets, markets, monopolies, Mora, phone books, shorts, Telefoongids, Van Dobben
September 10, 2012
Amsterdam Central Station is getting a new bus terminus, and architects Benthem Crouwel have decided to adorn the terminus’ roof with the word ‘Amsterdam’ in giant red glass letters.
Famous Dutch graphic designer Piet Schreuders is worried that the letters may not be spaced correctly (kerned, as typographers call it), and watches the roofing process like a hawk, sharing his observations at Typographica.org.
Today, in September 2012, the middle section of the roof is still missing, so all we can see is AM…RDAM. (The letters STE won’t be inserted until 2013, when construction of the underground North-South tram line at this location is expected to be finished.)
Being worrisome by nature, we typographers can’t help expressing some concerns: did the architects and roofers calculate everything exactly right? Will the missing letters fit into the remaining space? And did the roofers adhere to proper kerning specifications?
Fact: the word AMSTERDAM starts and ends with the letter combination AM. The first worrisome fact: the space between the first A and M is five windows … but between the second A and M—oh, horror—it is only four.
Earlier this month the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam presented its new logo which had too much space in it, right at a position that suggested a case of ‘English disease’, as the Dutch call it—the habit of putting spaces in compound words. That space caused a lot of buzz on the Internet—I doubt Benthem Crouwel’s typography will yield a similarly rich word of mouth.
(Illustration: Benthem Crouwel Archtitects)
Tags: Amsterdam Central Station, Benthem Crouwel, English disease, Piet Schreuders, typography
September 9, 2012
Consumer watchdog Consumentenbond has compared two types of broadband Internet in the latest issue of its magazine Digitaalgids, and concluded that cable and fibre optic are equals.
Fibre-optic providers have apparently been claiming that their product is better than that of cable Internet providers.
Webwereld quotes Digitaalgids:
Consumentenbond is quick to point out a couple of advantages of fibre optic compared to cable. Theoretically, fibre can reach 1 gigabit per second, and it offers upload speeds that are as fast as download speeds. The average Internet user currently has no use for those speeds, which may be why fibre adoption is going fairly slow at the moment. Consumers may also have real choice of providers in the future, whereas cable networks are typically controlled by a single provider.
(Photo by Jacek Szymański, some rights reserved)
Tags: cable, Consumentenbond, fiber, Internet
