Not only the cabinets shown here were made out of paper pulp by Debbie Wijskamp, but also the assorted ‘crockery’ on the shelves.
The colour of the vases and plates is determined by the amount of ink there was in the newspapers Wijskamp recycled for this project.
The 2009 Artez graduate writes on her website: “Experimenting with the re-use of wastepaper resulted in a material with its own characteristic appearance and structure. As well, it is a very versatile material with many possible applications.”
Against heavy odds, a poker tournament organiser was declared not guilty by the criminal court of The Hague last Friday, Algemeen Dagblad reports.
Earlier judgements, including one of the Dutch High Court had, held that poker is a game of chance. The defendant, who had organised a Texas Hold’em tournament in The Hague in 2006, argued successfully to the contrary.
The three judges weighed expert opinion, the opinions within the poker community (the prosecution had claimed that poker was generally considered a game of chance), and the opinion of the defendant. The court also held that a general principle of law such as presumption of innocence had to be adhered to: the prosecution was expected to show scientific evidence that poker is not a game of skill.
Finally when looking at the little scientific evidence available, the court favoured the research by Peter Born and Ben van der Genugten (2009) over psychologist W.A. Wagenaar’s study. The latter argued that whether a poker game is a game of chance also depends on the individual players’ perception of the game. The judges felt that this made Wagenaar’s model unsuitable for predicting whether a specific game or tournament is a game of chance.
In the Netherlands, the government has the monopoly over games of chance.
Are there any lawyers in the house willing to predict what this verdict will mean for future poker tournaments in the Netherlands?
Florentijn Hofman, the artist who gave us huge cuddly dolls and huge rubber ducks, now has some very colourful yet huge ‘folded paper boats’ (made of metal) on display in Rotterdam, installed just a few days ago.
There are tons of pictures showing all five boats of different colours, even a pink one.
IBM just published a survey they did called the Commuter Pain Index, which measured how bad traffic actually is in major cities around the globe. Lo and behold, it’s not as bad in the Netherlands as we thought. It always sucks to be in traffic, but hey, the Netherlands has not yet heard of flexible working hours – I kid you not.
My dad use to have to travel from the South shore of Montréal to the island of Montréal. That meant taking a tunnel or one of the many bridges. My dad left to go to work around 6 am with light traffic to get to work at 7 am, work his 8 hours and head home on an almost empty road. By working those hours, he didn’t spend his last working years in traffic. And Montréal has less traffic than Amsterdam. Coincidence?
On a list of 20 major cities around the globe, Amsterdam, with its congested A10 ring road, comes in quietly at 13.
Here’s the list:
1. Beijing
2. Mexico City
3. Johannesburg
4. Moscow (I’ve seen this in 35 degree weather, it’s insane)
5. New Delhi
6. Sao Paolo
7. Milan
8. Buenos Aires
9. Madrid
10. London (scary but calm enough)
11. Paris (1 km took 1.5 hours last Christmas)
12. Toronto (nasty, all those 4-5 lane highways)
13. Amsterdam (it feels worse than it is)
14. Los Angeles
15. Berlin (not that bad, but that was once)
16. Montreal (avoid the Lafontaine Tunnel!)
17. New York (avoid the Holland Tunnel!)
18. Houston
19. Melbourne
20. Stockholm
Filed under: Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 12:04 pm
And he we go with yet another edition of ‘Zoek de Nederlander’ (’Find the Dutch person’), albeit a very entertaining one, with music and a happy ending. Sixteen-year-old Simeon Mulder who lives in Orlando, Florida made it to the next round of America’s Got Talent, which will be held in Las Vegas sometime this year.
He has the playfulness of a Glenn Gould trying to play like a young Mozart (maybe not the technical skills, it’s telly after all), the wardrobe qualities of actor Tom Hulce who played Mozart in the 1984 film ‘Amadeus’, some serious piano skills and some nice, dry Dutch humour.
There is a lot of cheese adverts in the Netherlands, but this cheese brand usually has beautiful Caucasian/Dutch people frolicking in the fields, with glimpses of breasts.
Here’s how this advert goes:
“In an ideal world, the Netherlands would be one big village.”
– ‘Morning!
– ‘Morning!
Then it goes on to say what farmers and farm girls would look like, emphasising they’d of course be young and have hair, not be old and balding. And eat said cheese brand.
Then we see farm girls, then we name the girls (typical farm region names), then Fatima. The narrator says “Fatima? Ooh, that’s good too!” implying that because she’s pretty, it’s OK. A giggle ensues.
In a time of political backlash against anything not perceived as being traditionally Dutch or Frisian with blond hair and blue eyes, this brand does a good job of throwing in ‘Fatima’ for good measure. The problem is, since the Dutch stereotype is highly exaggerated, throwing in a normal looking, non-exaggerated Fatima just doesn’t work and makes her an anomaly.
In many other Western countries, it’s downright normal for people of different cultures to be lumped in to the identity of a country. I’ve seen Spanish adverts with blonds, Italian ads with redheads and Asian-looking people in adverts of all kinds . They all belong there, but in this case, Fatima just doesn’t.
The message here is that Fatima was put there ‘as a joke’ and doesn’t belong there. Had they exaggerated her, it might have worked. Fatima is an oddball that unfortunately reinforces the Dutch stereotype of what is Dutch and what is not. Remember: 20% of the 16.5 million people in this country just voted for a right-wing, racist and anti-Muslim party in the last national elections.
In my ideal Netherlands, everybody counts, young or old, cheese or not, Fatima or not.
Not only does Hogeschool Rotterdam test its students, it is also planning to ‘test’ its teachers. After having received many complaints from students about having to wait too long to get their test scores, the school will now evaluate its teachers based on the turnaround time for grading exams, according to De Telegraaf.
If a teacher takes longer than 20 working days to come up with a grade for any given test, they will be denied a raise at the end of the year, writes Algemeen Dagblad.
Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 2:50 pm
Smack in the middle of China on the Yangtze Kiang river lies the huge capital of Hubei province, Wuhan. Nicknamed one of the ‘four furnaces’ of China because of its oppressive humid heat in the summer, the city will become home to this lily shaped tower, shaped so that it can stand in its own shade.
Soeters Van Eldonk architects designed the building in collaboration with Grontmij engineering for Wuhan University, and it will house the New Energy Centre. Since it is to become an environment for studying new energy technologies, Soeters van Eldonk hope to have the tower both emit zero carbon and use zero energy. The huge roof consists of solar panels and a solar chimney for cooling.
At the end of its 15th anniversary celebrations, glossy underground mag Zone 5300 decided to publish a humour special. Comic strips, what a concept! Dutch comic giant Peter de Wit accepted a guest editorship, and included the first long story of his flagship gag strip Sigmund in the magazine.
Lots of space is devoted to what De Wit likes and how De Wit thinks. (“Mocking the diminutive psychiatrist and his patients day in day out doesn’t work. I stopped doing that after six months because it became too predictable. Now I let the jokes do the heavy lifting.”) De Wit also visits the Heinz Museum in Amsterdam, all about the local cartoon cat, and talks an interesting five pages long about his favourite cartoonists (1).
Figure 2: “Dammit! Todd’s woman is hotter than mine! That is just wrong, Debs…”
Also: Pennsylvania-born Groninger Charles Guthrie’s De Sporters (The Jocks) follows the sadistic adventures of Luke Skywalker-lookalike Dick Quick and his blonde bombshell girlfriend and punching bag Debbie Doe. (2)
Figure 3.
Robert van Raffe’s four-page comic God’s Pupil uses a wide array of visual techniques in just a few frames, but the bland colours and pencilled background also give the strip an unfinished look. Two people on their backs in the grass, gazing at the moon, while one draws a lazy finger over its surface to outline a rabbit that he says is what the typical shape of the moon’s face stands for: this is the start of a succinct exploration of the nature of God. It is also a clear invitation to explore more of Van Raffe’s work. (3)
Filed under: Design,Sports by Orangemaster @ 10:19 am
In a game of ‘Zoek de Nederlander’ (‘Find the Dutch person’) and a story we should have run a while back, Radio Netherlands informs us that a Dutch woman at Adidas is behind the design of the World Cup football ball, better known in Zulu as Jabulani.
Senior Designer Football Janneke van Oorschot who works in Germany for Adidas has been around the block when it comes to designing all kinds of high profile balls. Have a look at the Jo’bulani, a gold variant of the Jabulani that will be used in the finals in Johannesburg, also known as the City of Gold (and Jozi, Joburg, etc.)
As for the usual negative comments about every World Cup ball, the Jabulani got its share of criticism to which most people, including Van Oorschot, basically says ‘this too shall pass’.
Have a look at this video with your kids. It’s great to see how these balls are made.
Against heavy odds, a poker tournament organiser was declared not guilty by the criminal court of The Hague last Friday, 
