August 16, 2010

Amsterdam through the eyes of its photobloggers

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).

Others you may wish to check out:

  • Milo Vermeulen
  • Peter de Wit (Facemepls, whose Creative Commonsed photos we often use at 24 Oranges)
  • Marc van Woudenberg makes things easy on himself by photographing people when they look their best: on stately Dutch bikes.

Did I miss anyone?

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August 15, 2010

Zoo lures reporters with monkey see, monkey do story

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 4:43 pm

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.

(Photo by McSmit, some rights reserved)

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August 14, 2010

One in five elderly bullied by peers

Filed under: Science by Branko Collin @ 3:05 pm

elderly_manA study showed last year that 1 in 5 senior citizens in retirement homes are bullied by their fellow residents.

Hester Trompeter, student behavioural sciences at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, interviewed 121 residents. According to Trouw, the bullying took the shape of ignoring people, gossiping and systematically shutting others out from common activities. Study coordinator Ron Scholte added that since the interviewees represented the people willing to talk, the real problem might even be bigger.

Last week the Ouderenfonds (National Fund for the Elderly) called for a protocol for dealing with bullying among the elderly. On the fund’s website its director Jan Romme gave a harrowing example of a man who was afraid to leave his room for seven years and finally died in complete loneliness.

Romme sees as one of the causes of the bullying problem that the elderly no longer can choose which retirement home to live in. “Bullies are put in the same homes as their former victims, and have the advantage of having all the time in the world now, and of having been able to perfect their techniques.”

(Photo by Frank Mayne, some rights reserved)

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August 13, 2010

Rotterdam park gets gay sex signage

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:11 pm
homoplek

The city of Rotterdam has felt it necessary that the Kralingse Bos, a big park, get these colourful signs to warn families and the likes that gay men are getting busy (think closeted or married gay hooking up). The direction of the feet in this pictogramme is a bit confusing to those in the know. If gays are caught outside the marked zone in Rotterdam, they will be fined. The sign also implies that lesbians stay at home and watch telly. That was sarcasm.

Ironically, many of the places where straight couples and parties of three or more have sex in the woods or near the beach are illegal, and people just get fined. They should stay home and watch telly as well.

The person in charge of this typical show of Dutch tolerance was quoted as saying, “everybody has the right to have fun”. Straights, however, don’t have their own signs or special party places. Interesting reverse discrimination.

(Link and photo: rijnmond.nl)

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August 12, 2010

Beer bike too large for the road

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 11:16 am
beer_bike

The verdict is in: the beer bike is too wide to be on the road as a bike and cannot be wider than 1,50 metres. A recent accident in Amsterdam involved a beer bike that was 2,20 metres wide and made it more of a vehicle than a bike, which is illegal.

People do have to peddle it to move it forward:

(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo of Beer bike by Taco Witte, some rights reserved)

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August 11, 2010

Golden Cockroach for dirtiest Rotterdam district

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:29 am
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Political party Leefbaar Rotterdam plans to start a black book of the dirtiest places in Rotterdam. The scuzzy places will receive the Golden Cockroach award. Naming and shaming is apparently still considered a good way to get people to clean up their trash, but that remains to be seen — literally.

People from Rotterdam can send in pictures of oveflowing rubbish bins, rubbish on the street and whatever else fits the bill. Leefbaar Rotterdam plans to post the pics on its website. Mmm!

I snapped this rubbish bin on Queen’s Day in Amsterdam a few years back. Notice how small the rubbish bins are. Plastic and glass bottles can easily be recycled at the supermarket, but not cans. Cans here are mostly made of steel and a bit of aluminium and are fished out before the rubbish goes to the incinerator.

I can tell you that these bins fill up very quickly with beer and cola cans, especially if there’s a party going on.

(Link: telegraaf.nl)

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August 10, 2010

The battle to outlaw poker rages on

Filed under: Gaming,General by Orangemaster @ 10:57 am

Back in July, an organiser of a Texas Hold’em poker game in The Hague was found not guilty, as his tournament was considered a game of skill rather than a game of chance. This, of course, irritated the Attorney General who wants to outlaw these poker games and is appealing the decision. Since the government has a monopoly on games of chance, it is missing out on this poker money.

In the mean time, while the Dutch have been months without a government (we had elections, but the parties can’t agree who will form the coalition), a café in the town of Glane in Twente is playing poker to its heart’s content. The current (‘demissionary’) Minister of Justice told the café to stop, but the court ruling is still on the café’s side: poker is currently considered a game of skill and not a game of chance.

So, the question still stands: will poker games be outlawed or will the appeal work? First, a new government and then we’ll see.

(Link: depers.nl)

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August 9, 2010

Psychiatric patients get a bit of privacy back

Filed under: Health by Branko Collin @ 8:25 am

healthcareA court ordered last week that the national care monitor NZA can no longer demand of psychiatrists that they provide details about their patients’ mental health problems.

Nationale Zorg Autoriteit, which monitors the application of the health care laws and sets prices where necessary, bases its rates for psychiatric care on so-called ‘diagnosis-treatment combinations’ (DBCs) and requires psychiatrists to report the DBCs they have used for specific patients.

The court (College van Beroep voor het bedrijfsleven, i.e. ‘college of appeal for businesses’) held on August 2 that since insurance company employees who were not bound by medical confidentiality had access to the DBCs, the NZA had not given enough weight to the privacy interests of patients.

NZA now gets to go back to the drawing board and come up with new plans for a rate structure that does not (or to a lesser extent) compromise patients’ privacy.

Last year, political blog Sargasso already pointed out that once these data are out from under the protective umbrella of medical confidentiality, they can easily be abused by for instance the government, which could, for example, decide not to hire somebody as a civil servant based on their detailed medical history.

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August 8, 2010

Gr’omnibus, Groningen’s underground comics talent collected

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 10:54 am

Martin Wisse has got a good tip:

A can’t miss bargain to be had at De Slegte in Amsterdam right now: copies of Gr’omnibus, a treasure trove of sequential art from Groningen, the Athens of the North; an invaluable treasure now yours for only two euro fifty! Why you should bother? Because you get to sample some 40 odd (some very odd) Dutch (as well as the occasional furreign) cartoon talents, culled from the pages of one of the most consistent of Dutch underground comix zines, Gr’nn.

Groningen (Grunn in the local dialect) is one of [the interesting cities outside the Randstad], a university town big enough not to be overwhelmed by it with a decent local art scene and night-life, a city in which over the years a thriving alt-comix scene has been established.

In 1996 a few of them started Gr’unn, which since then has published a lot of up and coming cartoonists. People like Barbara Stok, Mark Hendriks, Amoebe, the Lamelos collective, Marcel Ruijters, Reinder Dijkhuis, Berend Vonk, all had strips in Gr’nn. […]

So if you’re in Amsterdam and you want a cheap way to sample a huge chunk of the contemporary Dutch comix scene, go get Gr’omnibus from de Slegte. It’s in the middle of Kalverstraat so even tourists should be able to find it.

He is right you know, and today I grabbed myself one of the last four copies. You guys need to hurry!

De Slegte is a chain store for second hand and remaindered books, and very popular in this book-mad country.

Illustrations: cover artist unknown, Vlerk, Jan Krol, and Nico Visscher respectively.

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August 7, 2010

Get your Dutch history from a Dutch vending machine

Filed under: Design,History by Branko Collin @ 2:23 pm

The Amsterdam Historical Museum and Mediamatic have teamed up to do something different. Rather than have you look at historical objects from a safe distance, they will let you buy them for 1 or 2 euro each.

The organisers have set up a vending machine for this purpose just inside the museum’s front entrance (you don’t have to pay an entrance fee). Blogger Kim Phu has already spotted the first people who merely swung by to shop. Apparently, the tea towels are a steal at two euro a piece.

Some of the objects on display / for sale:

  • Delftware kissing boys
  • Cheese slicers
  • Music cassettes
  • Miniature Amsterdammertjes
  • Nuclear missile protest badges
  • Etc.

The exhibit lasts until August 29, and is accompanied by a really nice website where the background of every object is explained in a video. There are 40 different objects for sale.

See also:

(Photo of an ‘automatiek’ by Fabio Bruna, some rights reserved)

Update 16:57: Since I had to be in the neighbourhood today I popped around and shot a couple of photos:

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