May 15, 2011
Here’s a video of the Key Town Cruisers (Leiden), the Rollin’ Daddies (Leiderdorp) and Chopaderos (“worldwide drinking club with a bicycle problem”, Amsterdam) on their yearly bock beer tour.
I had no idea choppers still existed. It seems they’ve not only survived the 1970s, but have gotten fashionable in the interim. These mean machines look like they could take on a bakfiets!
May 14, 2011
In March of this year the Jonker family of Kerkrade in Limburg seemed to have struck gold when father Jos (47) reached sixth place in an online poker tournament, netting him a cool 370,000 euro. The happy story turned sour quickly when 17 year old son Jimmy was found boasting in online forums that it was him that had been playing the finals, drawing the attention of organisers PokerStars.
Yesterday PokerStars decided that since it was against the rules for the underaged to play, it would not pay out the sum to either of the Jonkers, opting instead to donate the prize to an organisation that tries to promote responsible gambling by battling, amongst others, gambling by the underaged, AD reports.
Jimmy Jonker had been participating in the tournament using his father’s account, and the handle Zeurrr (Whiiine). The Jonker family refused to comment to the newspaper.
The Sunday Million tournament had almost 60,000 people compete for 11,825,600 US dollar in prizes.
(Link: PokerStrategy.com. Photo by Jam Adams, some rights reserved)
These colourful plastic cupcake cups, called Sweet Cakes, are 70 cm in diameter. Apparently they are meant as all-purpose containers, and can even be bought with a pillow for your cats to nap on—first take the toddler and the water out though. Designer Beerd van Stokkum sells them on his own website in most colours of the rainbow for 150 euro a piece.
(Photo: Beerd van Stokkum)
May 13, 2011
Back in 2009 we told you about a man arrested for having an insulting, tattooed abbreviation, which was ACAB that stands for All Cops Are Bastards. Another man was convicted in the same year for wearing a jacket with the text ACAB on it.
In 2009 a lower court thought ACAB was worth a fine, but last year a higher court ruled that the abbreviation was not in itself an insult and told the lower court to take another look at the case, which is probably Dutch legalese for ‘move on already’.
Dear Dutch cops, if you can’t take an English (!) abbreviation, you’re just sad. As they say in Dutch, go out and catch some thieves.
We also reported in 2010 on seven men arrested for wearing the number 1312, which if you decode it, is ACAB once again. And then there’s the cute version ‘Appel Citroen Ananas Banaan’ (Apple, Lemon, Pineapple, Banana), which was a trending topic on twitter a few days ago (#appelcitroenananasbanaan), turning this whole thing into a big joke.
(Link: depers)
May 12, 2011
It’s true, this year’s edition of Art Amsterdam held at the RAI exhibition centre was indeed very international, with galleries from all over the Netherlands as well as ones from Paris, Montréal, Seoul, Berlin and more. 24oranges was lucky enough to walk around on VIP night before the fair opens to the general public today, running until 15 May, courtesy of a sponsor of art site Trendbeheer.com.
Instead of just selling art like the other galleries, Trendbeheer are doing something cool, they call ‘For The Love of Money’. Managing Director Niels Post, an artist himself (we saw his stuff in the 1500 euro or less art lounge) explained the plan to sell 150 unique works at 150 euro a pop with a frame and box. The works themselves (seen in the pic) are hi-resolution pictures taken of works of art at the fair with a red dot, meaning they have been sold. Photographers are taking turns running around the fair ‘dot hunting’ and snapping pics of sold works, printing them out, framing them and then selling them. Almost all the ones in this picture were sold and from the moment they started, it was going fast.
Of all the stuff I saw, this German work of art from I totally forgot to write it down shame on me caught my eye, probably because it had words on it.
If you’re up to buying art for your office or design studio, you have to check this art fair out. They also have books and there are presentations and even tours of the exhibition. If you just want to look at cool stuff, this is not quite the right venue, but it will give anyone with artist’s block some good ideas.
Tags: Amsterdam, exhibition, RAI
May 11, 2011
The goal of this ploy is to get residents of Amsterdam to buy an electric car so they can get a free parking spot with a free electricity charger near their house until 2012, which could be extended. Getting an actual designated parking spot in Amsterdam can easily be a 5-year to 10-year affair.
Amsterdam wants 5% of cars to be electric by 2015, which would be about 10,000 cars. The city’s freebies cover electric cars but won’t cover hybrids until the electric–only range of hybrids rises above 60 kilometres.
I wouldn’t get an electric car just yet, I’d keep biking, roller skating, taking public transport and walking like I already do.
Amsterdam’s green ethos seems very much intact. But one unintended consequence: in it’s enthusiasm for electric vehicles, the popularity of electric bikes is undermining pollution goals, as owners of foot-powered bikes upgrade to electric models.
The same way this implies that electric bikes are trumping electric cars, the fact that I work at home and don’t travel for work makes me less green than owning a car and not using it, which is plain stupid defeats the purpose.
(Link: smartplanet via presurfer)
May 10, 2011
A whopping 41 women have reported being unwantedly kissed by a male cyclist in the Southern province of Zeeland, something that has been going on since 2009. The cops aren’t sure it’s the same guy and the women’s reports tend to differ. Call the alarm number (it’s 112 here) and snap a pic with your phone is the cops’ equivalent of ‘take two aspirins and call me in the morning’, as they can’t seem to catch him. The man asks cycling women for directions, kisses them and asks them where they live and I imagine has other propositions as well.
(Link: blikopnieuws)
May 9, 2011
A report by the Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ) claims the Dutch government is the slowest in the world in processing freedom of information requests. FOI consultant Rob Vleugels pointed out to Binnenlands Bestuur that Dutch ministries typically only employ four civil servants each for dealing with the requests. In comparison, the UK employs at least 80 people per ministry for this task. The British, unlike the Dutch, also train their people for doing FOI work.
Journalist Brenno de Winter thinks the problems with the execution of the FOI law centre around an incompetent government when it comes to IT.
Recently I had to wait 56 days for three photocopies. I had asked to receive the copies digitally, but they were incapable of doing so.
The citizens now foot the bill for bad automation. For years I have tried to uncover the extent of the problem, but the government is actively sabotaging me. They send me bills despite the courts telling them that such things is illegal, they take much more time to respond than they are allowed to, they claim national security issues, and they sometimes even just refuse to respond.
The Freedom of information act is called WOB in Dutch (Wet Openbaarheid Bestuur), and making a WOB request is called wobbing.
(Photo by Dennis Macwilliam, some rights reserved)
Tags: freedom of information, journalism, politics, WOB
May 8, 2011
If you would ask us for our opinions about the best music (classic or pop), comics, films or literature, chances are the Dutch would come up with the names of British, American, Japanese, Belgian, French, German or Russian works. But when the Sargasso blog held a poll last month to determine the best children’s books, these were the results:
1. Thea Beckman – Crusade in Jeans (1973)
2. Roald Dahl – The BFG (1982)
3. Jan Terlouw – How to Become King (1971)
4. Paul Biegel – The Little Captain (1971)
5. Annie MG Schmidt – Tow Truck Pluck (1971)
6. Thea Beckman – Kinderen van Moeder Aarde (1985)
7. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince (1943)
7. J.R.R. Tolkien – The Hobbit (1937)
9. Johan Fabricius – De Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe (1923)
10. J.R.R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings (trilogy) (1954)
11. Tonke Dragt – De Brief voor de Koning (1962)
12. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
Note that the participants of this poll were most likely grown-ups, probably in full-on nostalgia mode. Curiously Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren (The Brothers Lionheart, Pippi Longstocking) is missing from the top ten. How Lisa Tetzner’s Die schwarzen Brüder could only land the 70th spot on a lefty blog like Sargasso will probably remain a mystery.
I was a child in the 1970s, and my Big Four of children’s literature were Paul Biegel, Guus Kuijer, Tonke Dragt and Miep Diekman. Biegel and Dragt wrote books with mystical elements, whereas Kuijer and Diekman were of a more realistic bent.
Currently Schmidt’s Tow Truck Pluck is being translated to English, and the Nederlands Letterenfonds has a glowing review of De Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe, which I guess means they are in the market for sponsoring translators.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Tags: Annie M.G. Schmidt, children's books, Guus Kuijer, Jan Terlouw, Johan Fabricius, Miep Diekman, Paul Biegel, Thea Beckman, Tonke Dragt
May 7, 2011
I grew up in Blerick, a town with a town hall but without the political body to inhabit it. See, in 1940 the town was added to the neighbouring city of Venlo by the Nazi occupier, which made the possession of a town hall moot.
Interestingly the previous municipality that Blerick belonged to, Maasbree, once had three different town halls, and the council would rotate among them until in 1904 the Blerick town hall was made the permanent one.
In celebration of Liberation day, daily De Pers summed up 6 of the changes the Nazis made that stuck:
In a number of these cases the occupier made into law what was already on the books. In other cases the law was kept because it made sense. For instance, with housing shortages being rather prominent after the war, it made eminent sense to protect renters from price gouging. In such cases the Germans had unwittingly produced both the diseases and the cures.
(Photo of the Blerick town hall by Wikimedia user Torval, some rights reserved)
Tags: child support, children, housing, jobs, Limburg, Nazism, rent control, Terschelling, Venlo, Vlieland, World War II
