Filed under: Animals,Sports by Branko Collin @ 9:01 am
Yesterday Wiel Kuypers set the new world endurance record for recreational fishing at 160 hours.
Kuypers had started the Sunday before at fishing pond De Bus of his home town Mill in Noord-Brabant with his daughter Marjolein and his son-in-law Rick who both quit their attempts during the week. According to Omroep Brabant, an inflammation in Kuyper’s foot nearly threatened a happy end to the record attempt on Friday night.
After his successful attempt Kuypers went home to catch some sleep. He and his buddies had made plans to get up bright and early today, to go fishing. “By now I am pretty sure I know how to.”
The past week Kyteman manager Niels Aalberts has been posting and annotating a six part e-mail correspondence with Caro Emerald producer David Schreurs about how they got to their respective successes.
One of the most remarkable ideas in the stories of both Kyteman and Caro Emerald as noted by internet marketeer Erwin Blom is the one of developing success outside the framework of traditional record companies. Schreurs mentions that this makes it easier to make quick decisions (you don’t have to keep track of everybody’s agendas), and that since your money is not disappearing into the deep pockets of the share holders of the likes of Sony, you can allocate resources for expensive projects more easily.
Kyteman is young jazz musician Colin Bender’s project, a hip hop orchestra containing 12 instrumentalists and 10 MCs. Their debut album The Hermit Sessions (2009) has been in the Dutch Album Top 100 for the past 79 weeks, and has sold 60,000 copies so far. Earlier this year the orchestra won the Popprijs.
Caro Emerald (Caroline van der Leeuw) is a jazz singer whose A Night Like This shot to the top of the charts, and whose album Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor easily took over the record for most weeks at number 1 in the Dutch Album Top 100 (30 and counting)—the previous record was held by Michael Jackson’s Thriller (27 in 1982). In the second quarter of this year, Deleted Scenes accounted for 10% of all album sales in the Netherlands.
Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 9:43 pm
‘Klaas’ from Zwolle does everything right. His car has a handicapped parking card clearly visible under the window, valid and dated, and yet the police keep ticketing him for illegal parking in the lot in front of his house. Since April of this year he has received over 40 parking tickets with a combined worth of nearly 3,000 euro.
Rather than paying his tickets, he has decided to stick it to the man. He has been decorating his car with the tickets, and with drawings, post cards and a real pirate flag.
In an interview with newspaper De Stentor the man who wishes to remain anonymous—even though everybody in Zwolle probably knows who he is by now—explains how it all started: “The first guy who ticketed me treated my like a little dog. That’s when I turned my back on him. Since then the big boys have been coming over here daily to book me.”
“I own more than one car. As somebody confined to a wheel chair I like things on wheels. [...] I will have every ticket contested in court, one by one. That way the city will have to pay tons of court costs.”
The city of Zwolle responded to the newspaper, but considering they would have towed his car away after the third or so ticket if they actually were in the right, I don’t think printing their answer here is going to tell you much.
In 2006 this poster was elected best political poster of the Netherlands of the past 90 years. It was used in 1971 by the Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP), one of the predecessors of GroenLinks, for the lower house elections. The caption reads ‘Disarming PSP’.
The photo was originally taken for sexual reform magazine Sekstant, but designer George Noordanus surmised that it could also help create a storm of protest among Christians whose political parties supported the Vietnam war, but opposed innocent nudity, thereby exposing their hypocrisy.
Although it did just that, the raised profile did not help the PSP as it lost half its seats in the lower house after the elections. Support for the poster was also divided within the party, as some members considered it sexist. Ironically enough, it was the sexist argument that in the end helped seal the deal. As one member put it, “workers like naked chicks.”
Both Ayaan Hirsi Magan (ex VVD, liberal) and Femke Halsema (GroenLinks, ‘green left’), political opposites, see the poster as a symbol of their ideals.
See also this site about election posters in the Netherlands.
The second Dutch football league may not exactly be known for the defensive capabilities of its teams, but when the oldest Dutch professional football team Sparta Rotterdam (1888) relegated last year they probably did not expect the red carpet either.
The second division is called Eerste Divisie (‘first division’) because the first division is called Eredivisie (‘honorary division’).
Henk Schouten scored nine goals for Feijenoord in 1956, in what was then still called the Hoofdklasse. The Eredivisie and Eerste Divisie were introduced a season later. All time top scorer for a single match in the Eredivisie is Afonso Alves (Heerenveen) with 7 goals in a match against Heracles in 2007. The previous record holders for the Eerste Divisie were Jerry Taihuttu (1997) and Ugur Yildirim (2003), with 6 goals each. Both players went on to play in the top tier the next season.
Naarden design studio Brand van Egmond (William Brand and Annet van Egmond) came up with these chandeliers. Their website doesn’t say if and where you can buy them. Check out the Milan video, it shows the chandeliers in use.
ProRail, the Dutch railway network operator, wants to diminish the number of suicides committed by people jumping in front of a moving train. The organisation aims at a reduction of 5% over the next four years. Currently, 200 people kill themselves by jumping in front of a moving train, which is 12% of the total number of suicides, the highest ratio in the region.
According to ProRail, about half of all suicides are committed by people who are undergoing psychiatric care. The network operator has already experimented by placing gates near psychiatric hospitals and by turning level crossings into viaducts.
The current policy of the Dutch Association for Psychiatry (NVvP) is to advise its members to send the suicidal out into the street. This policy is much to the dismay of the Union for Train Drivers and Conductors (VVMC) who point out that people jumping in front of moving trains are very traumatic experiences for their members.
Our first video report. It’s got a few glitches as we are trying to get used to a new medium. Enjoy.
Today Sail Amsterdam 2010 started with the traditional parade of tall ships. Led by the clipper Stad Amsterdam, 30 tall ships and a lot of small boats entered IJ harbour, which is wedged between Java Island and Piet Heinkade.
Sail Amsterdam was first organised in 1975 and has since been held every five years. The festivities will continue for the next three days, and include live music and theatre. On Friday a parade of barely floating home-built boats will be held in the canals of Amsterdam, the so-called Pieremachocheltocht. Most of the tall ships can be visited for free between 10 am and 4 pm.
This year’s event drew criticism from ship owners, who feel they have to pay the organisers too much money. They think it is wrong that so much of the proceeds of an event that is heavily sponsored by the government disappear in the pockets of a nebulous agency, Sail Arrangementen. The latter replied in newspaper De Pers that they do not understand what all the hoopla is about, as the ships’ owners still sell a lot of tickets.
Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 8:00 am
Meet Amsterdam.
Perhaps all cities have photobloggers, but if that is the case, I seem to have missed them. However, the documentary photographers of Amsterdam pop up on my radar all the time. These men—always men?—aim to bring you at least one portrait of the city a day, slowly recording its history in extreme close-up.
Thomas Schlijper is perhaps their leader. A professional photographer, he nevertheless seems to find plenty of time for photographs taken just for fun. Shown here a fountain on Frederiksplein at dusk, and somebody else trying to capture the moment.
Marien van Os wants to become a better photographer, so he practises by publishing (at least) one photo a day at 1pictureaday.com. In this photo a heron stalks a fisherman on the Amstel river, waiting till the right moment.
This photo is by René Louman who often just leans out of his window to take a picture. I approve of this, because it would be a shame to waste a good window. Louman likes people. I don’t know exactly where this photo of a waitress wrestling a huge parasol was taken, but with all the fresh brick in Louman’s photos, I would guess the Oostelijk Havengebied (Eastern Harbour).
Ouwehands Dierenpark, a zoo in Rhenen near Wageningen, has successfully managed to lure reporters to its new orangutan enclosure with a story about behavioural conditioning.
The reporters’ banana took the shape of gymnast Epke Zonderland (silver medalist at the 2009 World Championships), who performed a couple of exercises on the parallel bars. The zoo had told the press it hoped Zonderland’s example would spur the orangutans on to use the climbing ropes in their new compound.
Reporters of amongst other BBC (video), Reuters and RTL Nieuws showed up last Friday to record footage of a lacklustre ape taking its first tentative steps on a tightrope. Seven trees in the enclosure contain a food lift that will carry fruit and other snacks upstairs as an incentive for the orangutans to walk their tightropes. In doing so the apes will alleviate both themselves and their human visitors of boredom, the zoo hopes.
Yesterday Wiel Kuypers set the new world endurance record for recreational fishing at 160 hours. 
The past week Kyteman manager Niels Aalberts has been posting and annotating a 
‘Klaas’ from Zwolle does everything right. His car has a handicapped parking card clearly visible under the window, valid and dated, and yet the police keep ticketing him for illegal parking in the lot in front of his house. Since April of this year he has received over 40 parking tickets with a combined worth of nearly 3,000 euro.
The second Dutch football league may not exactly be known for the defensive capabilities of its teams, but when the oldest Dutch professional football team Sparta Rotterdam (1888) relegated last year they probably did not expect the red carpet either.
ProRail, the Dutch railway network operator, wants to 
Ouwehands Dierenpark, a zoo in Rhenen near Wageningen, has successfully managed to lure reporters to its new orangutan enclosure with a story about behavioural conditioning. 
