February 2, 2011

Bench follows the shape of the branch it was made with

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 8:52 am

Brench? Banch? Be your inner Mowgli without falling out of a tree.

Or as creator Floris Wubben writes, all business like:

This bench is made of polypropylene, wood and lacquered metal. The wavy polypropylene is attached to the wooden branch with metal rods. As a consequence, the shape of the polypropylene is given by the shape of the branch.

There’s also a video explaining how to sit on it. It’s not clear whether his designs are actually being produced.

Link: Floris Wubben, no. 3 bench. Photo: Floris Wubben. Via a BoingBoing story about Wubben’s willow stool.

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January 31, 2011

Even gossip queens have a right to privacy

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:47 am

The Court of Appeal in Den Bosch has recently ruled that the public prosecutor must start a case against broadcaster BNN reporters Sophie Hilbrand and Filemon Wesselink for spying on TV presenter Albert Verlinde and his husband, Onno Hoes.

Ironically, Albert Verlinde is one of the presenters of TV gossip programme RTL Boulevard, and Onno Hoes is the Mayor of Maastricht—between them they must have committed more privacy violations than all the hidden cameras in girls’ locker rooms the world over combined.

Volkskrant reports that reporters Sophie Hilbrand and Philemon Wesselink installed audio recording equipment in an award they presented to Verlinde, the ‘Golden Ear”, with which they successfully recorded a discussion Verlinde and Hoes had in the car on their way home. The public prosecutor had already fined the reporters, so that they now get punished for the same offence twice. For the record, double jeopardy—or ne bis in idem as it is called here—is illegal in the Netherlands.

(Photo of Albert Verlinde by Thomas van de Weerd, some rights reserved)

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November 27, 2010

Statue of angel with cell phone for Den Bosch cathedral

Filed under: Art,Religion by Branko Collin @ 12:02 pm

Sculptor Ton Mooy has revealed to Omroep Brabant that he is a working on a statue of an angel with a cell phone. (Photo and video)

The angel is to replace a worn out statue in the cathedral of Den Bosch. The cell phone will have just one button: for a straight line with God.

According to Mooy, he also wanted to give the angel jet engines, and a skirt instead of pants, but those ideas went too far for the church’s art committee, NOS Headlines reports.

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September 28, 2010

Which city will win as the Most Hospitable?

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:08 pm
Maastricht1

Based on criteria such as ‘friendliness and safety’ and ‘accessibility and Information’, five Dutch cities are up for the Most Hospitable Dutch City this year.

Just to put things in perspective, none of the main Randstad cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht) were nominated, so that you understand why the Dutch aren’t fond of these cities and tend to complain about them to others. I found myself explaining to Germans last week why the Dutch are not proud of their capital city and it wasn’t easy.

Breda (Noord-Brabant), Haarlem (just outside of Amsterdam, North Holland), Den Bosch (Noord-Brabant), Maastricht (Limburg) and Nijmegen (Gelderland) were given top marks this year “in the research for the 2010 Most Hospitable City in the Netherlands.” The winner of this year’s award will be announced in Haarlem, the Most Hospitable City of 2009, on 14 October.

Haarlem is generally upper middle class, Caucasian and quaint. Breda is a student city and much-loved by the people there (that’s where DJ Tiësto and Mentos come from). Maastricht, also a student city, is the ‘jewel of the south’ where people celebrate carnival and speak their own dialect. Den Bosch is just as cute as a button and I enjoy visiting it. As for Nijmegen, another student city, I lived there for three years and I know that the Roman ruins and architecture attract many visitors, including my own family.

My guess is that Nijmegen or Maastricht will win it this year. I’m leaning towards Nijmegen.

(Link: dutchdailynews, Photo: a shopping street in Maastricht)

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May 4, 2009

Cutter-suction dredger throws paleontologists a (mammoth) bone

Filed under: Animals,History,Science by Branko Collin @ 7:51 am

A special type of dredger used for mining sand in the Groote Wielen area of Den Bosch enabled amateur paleontologists Anton Verhagen and Dick Mol not only to add to their collection of bones, but also to keep track of the corresponding geological eras. The sand harvested by cutter-suction dredger Den Otter was to be used for building a new, nearby neighbourhood, and had to be scraped layer by layer in order to separate high-grade building sand from the rest. This method of dredging is slower, but because it separates out different types of sand early on, it’s apparently still cost-effective.

Besides bringing up sand neatly separated by geological period, the cutter-suction method has the added advantage of leaving smaller bones intact, reports De Telegraaf (Dutch). Since 2005, Verhagen and Mol found over 1,000 bones belonging to 15 separate mammals in this dig. Among them was the thigh bone of a mammoth.

Next Wednesday, Verhagen and Mol will be publishing a book called ‘De Groote Wielen: er was eens…’ (Once upon a time in De Groote Wielen) about their finds. A preview of the richly illustrated book can be found here.

(Photo: Wolfgang Staudt, some rights reserved)

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November 20, 2007

Dutch company buys Eiffel tower staircase

Filed under: Architecture,General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:37 am
Eiffel tower stairs

Erik Kurvers, owner of consulting agency Eiffel in Den Bosch, Noord-Brabant, bought this original piece of the Eiffel tower stairs yesterday in Paris for EUR 180,000. Kurvers also happens to be the chairman of the Den Bosch basketball club, the EiffelTowers. The 4,5-meter-high staircase is to be seen as a symbol for the company and club to ‘climb higher’ (aim higher really, but not miss the hoop). This piece of staircase connected the second and third storey of the original tower of 1889.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl, Photo: Frogsmoke)

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