Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 1:15 pm
A 38-square-metre house for low income families in The Hague was converted into this studio apartment by Robert-Jan de Kort (RDKA) and Teun van den Dries (Eckhart).
It can be rented for 155 euro a night, smoking and shoe-wearing not allowed (Maff provides you with fluffy slippers). The price per night goes down the longer you rent the apartment. Facilities include a car park, wifi, coffee, and a library of 100 films.
We try to stay away from politics, but when candidates come up with cool posters like this, it’s hard to ignore them.
Philip Akkerman made this. He is an artist and a ‘list pusher‘ for the Stadspartij of The Hague. Municipal elections take place every four years, and the next one is on March 3. Several 24 Oranges commenters, by the way, will be running for office this year.
Filed under: Animals, Food by Orangemaster @ 11:50 am
Every year around the holidays some of the same complaints rear their ugly heads and every year nothing is ever resolved except for the papers having something to polarize readers about. Although many people do celebrate Christmas in the Netherlands, the real gift-giving was last week, and as one person mentioned on Twitter, it’s time for lists of the best this and that and counting down until 2010.
Back by popular demand, animal activists whining about foie gras in restaurants. Ah yes, the decadent French and their foie gras. They mistreat animals and not serving it in the Netherlands is taking a stand. Why isn’t it banned then? Get on with it. And then list all the other bad things we do to animals and move on and leave Christmas alone!
Not being sure about putting up a Christmas tree in the lobby of a higher vocational school in The Hague because that’s not the best choice for a multicultural society. Excuse me? Nonsense. And it was nonsense, and misinterpretated and the Minister of Education, Ronald Plasterk apparently has time for this nonsense, too.
And in regional news, how about the city of Nijmegen digging a big hole to plant Christmas right in front of your store for Christmas as a recession gift? I can imagine that the big store is not amused with the city’s idea of decorating the square in front of it. The store found out in a letter sent on 3 December that was not even addressed properly.
Companies are apparently going to keep their Christmas parties cheap and I bet the traditional Christmas packages employees receive (I get people’s leftovers, I’m self-employed) won’t have anything special in them, never mind some employees having to drive to their office headquarters (!) to pick up the orange-flavoured powdered hot chocolate and the tuna with tomato and veggies in it.
Here’s a Web 2.0 plea that says ‘always update your intel’.
Yesterday in The Hague, the immigration police raided a hostel for mothers and children in the wee hours, suspecting it was being used by illegal immigrants (read = mostly men). The big scary screaming men busted down the front door, banged on bedroom doors and apparently freaked out little children.
“Junior justice minister Nebahat Albayrak, who was with the police on a fact-finding mission, witnessed events and helped comfort the children.” Why the cockup? Police used old information from the population registry. How stupid can you be? Some 20% of that information in every large Dutch city is false, everybody knows that.
This pic is the corner of my resident’s permit, as I thought the rushing bull was fitting.
I just turned away from the lock-picking talk, as the tent was absolutely packed (me being 5 minutes late). I don’t know how many people fit in these convention tents, hundreds, perhaps thousands, but that is the amount of people that after tonight may know how to break every lock you own.
Earlier today I was at the talk with possibly the smallest amount of listeners of this 4-day exercise, you might even say the attendants resembled Cantor Dust. OK, lousy statistical jokes aside, this talk was by statistician Richard Gill of the University of Leiden and dealt with the Lucia de Berk case.
I had heard of the case before. In 2001, a nurse from The Hague was accused of having murdered dozens of patients, and the strange thing was that most of her guilt was determined by statistics: she had been near the victims at the time of their deaths, and although a direct link with the accused in the form of a confession or evidence could not be established, the court found that the statistical likelihood of her being near all these victims at the time of death was so minute, she must have done it.
At the time I thought this reasoning seemed silly, but I have learned early on in life never to argue with statisticians. So imagine my surprise: here was a statician who argued that the court’s reason had indeed been extremely silly, and that an innocent woman had gone to jail.
I won’t bore you with repeating the entire lecture: author Maarten ‘t Hart summarized Gill’s position excellently in this article from NRC (Dutch). Gill’s paper on how likely the chance is that a nurse was on active duty during all deaths concludes that one in nine nurses would have gone to jail (PDF).
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.)
Panorama Mesdag, the largest cylindrical painting in Europe, located at the Panorama Mesdag museum in The Hague, is going to be digitised. It was painted by Hendrik Willem Mesdag, his wife Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, along with help from G.H. Breitner, T. de Bock and B.J. Blommers. It is apparently one of the world’s finest and largest surviving panoramas. The visitor’s platform is a dune, creating the illusion of being back at the nearby Scheveningen beach in 1880.
The panorama is 120 metres long and about 14 metres high, of which every brush stroke will be photographed. A total of 10,000 details of an exceptionally high resolution will be taken using a specially designed tripod.
The museum believes that this project, which will last for months, will provide countless possibilities for studies and restoration.
Here’s one to help you slide into the weekend with outward poise and heart aflutter. A girl from The Hague called Anouk shot this home video with two of her buddies while in what appears to be a hotel room in New York.
Recycled furniture – furniture clearly made from recycled materials – got very popular in the Netherlands sometime in the 1990s when an artist found out that a regular cupboard made from new materials would easily net multiple times the price if made from recycled wood. Despite the over-saturation of this market I like this staircase made by Jan Korbes from the Hague by turning old floorboards of Schloss Wiesenburg (Wiesenburg Castle) in Germany into boxes.
Last Sunday the 18th edition was held of Kâhwe Klâhwe (The Hague dialect, lit. cold claws), the gasoline and pea soup fueled Puch tour through Scheveningen and The Hague. Haags Allerlei’s Gera Nieland was there to take photos. You can enjoy them all at Flickr.
Puch was a legendary moped brand and very popular in the Netherlands. This popularity could not prevent the closing down of the two-wheeler production line though. The company still produces four-wheelers.
I just turned away from the lock-picking talk, as the tent was absolutely packed (me being 5 minutes late). I don’t know how many people fit in these convention tents, hundreds, perhaps thousands, but that is the amount of people that after tonight may know how to break every lock you own.
Last Wednesday a car thief in The Hague was in the possession of 10,000 euro without even knowing it, 
Last Sunday the 18th edition was held of 