December 25, 2009

Oxenaar exhibit in Museum for Communication, The Hague

Filed under: Design,History by Branko Collin @ 1:57 pm

The name may be unknown to foreigners, or even to the Dutch themselves, but the designs of Ootje Oxenaar are deeply familiar to any Dutch person over the age of 10. It was Oxenaar who designed the Dutch banknotes between 1966 and 1985.

Unlike the drab money used in most of the rest of the world his designs were extremely colourful. Where Oxenaar could go for aesthetics instead of respectability, it appears to have been mostly because the Dutch bank, after some initial run-ins, let him be just a designer.

In this video he talks about his relationship with the Dutch bank, rejected designs, and the many Easter eggs he put in his banknotes. The exhibition at the Museum for Communication in the Hague runs until 10 April, 2010. It focuses on both his money and stamp designs.

Oxenaar’s Euro note designs were rejected, but can still be found on the web. Oh, how I would have loved to have unicorns on our bills!

See also:

(Source video: Youtube user spykeroles. Link: Bright)

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October 24, 2009

Dutch banknotes partially made from fair trade cotton

Filed under: General,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 11:55 am

In 2007 the Dutch mint started with a pilot project that made it the first in Europe to print money using cotton for which the producers have not been exploited. So far, the 20 and 50 euro bills produced by De Nederlandsche Bank have contained 10 to 14% fair trade cotton.

Paper factories prefer blends of cotton, and according to the mint (PDF, Dutch) “currently there is not enough good fair trade cotton to make up 100% of a bill. But the fair trade cotton market is growing spectacularly.”

The use of fair trade cotton in Euro notes is the result of a bet that the youth chapter of Christian union CNV made in 2005 with the Minister of Finance at that time, Gerrit Zalm.

(Via the print version of De Zaak.)

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June 8, 2009

Three treasures discovered in same month in same city

Filed under: General,Science by Branko Collin @ 9:36 am

Last month, three coin treasures were found in Groningen during archaeological digs. Don’t get all excited though, as a coin treasure is defined as anything over five coins, or as Blackadder character Baldrick would have it, some coins. The biggest find was a collection of half-stuivers, stuivers and double stuivers (a stuiver is the Dutch equivalent of a shilling or a nickel) in a jar, estimated to be worth three monthly salaries at the time they were minted, reports Blik op Nieuws (Dutch).

So who gets the loot? After a find of celtic silver and gold coins near Maastricht two years ago, archaeologist Wim Dijkman of the city of Maastricht told Z24 (Dutch): “According to the law, half of the estimated value goes to the owner of the land, the other half to the finder. Since this find has become an official one, the finder is the city of Maastricht.” That find was estimated to be worth several hundred thousand euro, and since Maastricht wanted to keep the coins for its own collection, it had to pay the land-owners from its own purse.

(By the way, the coins in the picture were found in my own wallet and are not an official treasure.)

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May 12, 2009

Car thief forgets 10,000 euro

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:34 pm

Last Wednesday a car thief in The Hague was in the possession of 10,000 euro without even knowing it, reports Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch). The man, a known offender, was addressed on the Broekslootkade by two passing cops who just wanted to have a chat. In response he bolted, leaving behind a purse which he had, as it later turned out, stolen from a car a day earlier together with a navigation system. The purse contained 10,000 euro in cash, unknown to the 36-year old thief.

(Photo of the arrest of a Rotterdam bicycle thief by Flickr user Hellobo, some rights reserved. The police officers are the ones wearing dark trousers.)

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May 6, 2009

Humour more important than sex, food, money

Filed under: Food & Drink,Shows by Branko Collin @ 9:17 am

Najib Amhali is the country’s funniest ‘stand-up’ comedian, followed by Herman Finkers, according to a poll held by Intomart for Comedy Central. The two comedians switched positions in the Netherlands Humoronderzoek 2009, with Finkers leading last year, writes NOS Headlines (Dutch). Hyperactive comedian Jochem Myjer came in third, and fourth André van Duijn, who is the most famous Dutch comedian with a 98% recognition score.

What I call stand-up here is for lack of a better English word. Although stand-up comedy Anglo-Saxon style is performed in the Netherlands, the most popular theatrical form of comedy and the one performed by Amhali, Finkers and so on is called cabaret or kleinkunst, which typically means one, two or a small group of persons on a large stage telling jokes, complemented with songs and serious moments, all the while sticking to a story line.

The funniest TV show was held to be De Llama’s, which is funny indeed because the show stopped last year.

The Dutch appreciate family friendly jokes the best. Jokes about minorities or jokes that are insulting are held in the least regard. According to the report that Intomart will release in about a week, people also indicated they feel humour to be more important than sex, good food, or economic security. Only health and family are considered to be more important.

The following is Jochem Myjer showing that he’s quite capable of impersonating eight different people in two minutes:

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April 27, 2009

Anatomy of an ATM skimmer

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 8:39 am

Last December, Paul Wiegmans from Alkmaar discovered an ATM skimming device (Dutch) attached to an NS ticket vending machine (Nederlandse Spoorwegen, i.e. Dutch railways). Being a hacker, he pulled the device loose and photographed it extensively before turning it in to the police. Marvel at the diminutive size of these things!

The Nederlandse Bank estimates that skimming at train stations and banks results in ten million euro in damages per year, reports Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch). The NS told the same daily that approximately two skimming accidents occur per day at its train stations. That’s a rather small amount compared to the number of ATM transactions taking place per day there—200,000.

Update: Meanwhile, Salima Douhou and Jan Magnus of the University of Tilburg claim that skimming would become almost impossible if banks incorporated code that would verify the way people type their PIN codes, reports De Telegraaf (Dutch). Apparently, nobody does that quite the same way, making your punch as distinct as your signature. The article unfortunately doesn’t mention what the percentage of false positives is with this method, and calls the method “almost unhackable”, which in this reality means the same as positively hackable.

(Photo: Paul Wiegmans.)

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January 14, 2009

Dutch to profit from German bailout plan

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:43 am

Angela Merkel’s 50 billion euro plan for propping up the German economy might very well benefit the Netherlands, Z24 analyst Mathijs Bouman argues. The German Prime Minister’s plan consists mainly of Keynesian measures that should let money trickle up: tax cuts and insurance premiums cuts and inceased child support are all part of it. There will also be a car wrecking premium of 2,500 euro for cars older than 9 years which is supposed to help the famous German car industry, but which also sounds like a recipe for car theft to me. Still, I guess it is a lot better than giving the money straight to the people who got us into this mess, as some countries do.

According to Bouman, similar measures would be less useful for the Netherlands, since we are a trading country and much of the money our government would pump into the economy would simply flow across the border. However, Germans spend much of their money domestically, but Bouman believes that still plenty of it will end up abroad. And with 25% of all Dutch trade conducted with its large neighbour Germany, Bouman figures that plenty of the German bailout cash will end up here.

Bouman quotes economist Wim Suyker of the Centraal Planbureau (CPB) who estimates that a 50 billion euro plan in Germany leads to a growth of 0.6% of the Dutch economy.

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December 20, 2008

Tour company profits from financial crisis

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:49 pm

Tour company Amsterdam Excursies has decided to profit from the financial crisis by organizing themed guided tours of the financial history of Amsterdam. It’s Crisis Tour starts at the Zeedijk, where the first share in the world was traded in 1606, and ends on the Spuistraat at De Keuken van 1870, the oldest and only still extant soup kitchen of the city. Other crises touched upon during the tour are the collapse of Tulip Mania in 1637, and the end of the Dutch Golden Age.

Via the print edition of NL20. Photo of the VOC HQ (East India Company) by Josh, distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

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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.

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November 1, 2008

Geeked out coin wins design comp

Filed under: Architecture,Design,Dutch first by Branko Collin @ 4:18 pm

Stani Michiels, artist by day and Python hacker by night, created a five euro coin using only free software for a design competion issued by the Dutch mint, and won. The coin, commemorating a rich Dutch architectural tradition, should be available nowish.

The coin’s obverse consists of a portrait of the queen made up out of the names of famous architects, and the reverse displays an outline of the country that doubles as a skyline made by positioning architecture books in a circle.

Michiels — a Belgian responsible for SPE-IDE, a Python IDE, and Phatch, a photo editor — outlines all the little design details in a long blog post, including the software he used (Python, of course) and the calculations and Google search results that went into this design. Unfortunately the mint would not allow Michiels to release the designs under the GPL license.

The Netherlands has a long tradition of meaningful and elaborately designed money, as we touched upon earlier.

Via LWN.net.

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