November 3, 2013

Documentary De Nieuwe Wildernis draws 400,000 visitors

Filed under: Nature by Branko Collin @ 1:33 pm

Dutch nature documentary De Nieuwe Wildernis has managed to lure 400,000 people to the cinema in just a month, Vroege Vogels wrote last Monday.

The documentary about wildlife in the Oostvaardersplassen (‘the lakes of those who sailed to the East’) was released on 26 September 2013. For feature films 400,000 visitors is considered pretty successful, but for a documentary it’s practically a miracle. As a comparison, last year Hollywood blockbuster The Hunger Games took the number 13 spot with 458,816 visitors.

Part of the attraction of Ruben Smit’s De Nieuwe Wildernis may be that there is very little original nature left in the Netherlands. Biodiversity is at an all time low in this country, the Mean Species Abundance having dropped from 40% in 1900 to 15% in 2000. The average MSA for Europe is 40%.

The nature reserve Oostvaardersplassen came about by accident. It is situated on the north end of Flevoland, the largest artificial island in the world. Originally reclaimed in 1986, the area was to be bordered by another artificial island, Markerwaard, and intended for housing business parks, but in 1986 the national government decided not to build the extra island. With businesses also staying away, nature took over. In 1986 the area was designated a national nature reserve.

See also: Searching and capturing that elusive horse wind.

(Photo: crop from the video)

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Dave Hakkens partners with Motorola for Phonebloks

Filed under: Design,Sustainability,Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:01 am

Mobile phone manufacturer Motorola has announced it will be working with Dave Hakkens on his modular phone project Phonebloks.

More precisely, Motorola has been working on its own modular system in the past year called Project Ara, which is designed to be “a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines.”

The manufacturer will now be “engaging with the Phonebloks community throughout [Project Ara’s] development process.” The idea behind Phonebloks is to create a modular phone to combat electronic waste—instead of throwing out an entire phone because a component is broken, you swap out the broken component instead. Phonebloks is looking for manufacturers who want to work in their ecosystem.

Motorola was once a major player on the mobile phone market. It was recently acquired by Google. Dave Hakkens is a 2013 graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven.

(Via The Verge)

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October 28, 2013

Runner’s chip took away the need to cheat

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 3:31 pm

On Sunday 17 November the 30th edition of the Seven Hills Run in Nijmegen will be held.

About 20 years ago I was a volunteer for the event and I had to guard one of the four starting cages, which taught me a thing or two about human nature.

The Seven Hills Run was and is an immensely popular race along 15 kilometres of undulating roads in and near Nijmegen. Both the global running elite and recreational runners take part. To ensure that the latter would not rob the former of fast finishes—the outdoor world records for 15 kilometre runs have been set at the Seven Hills course for both men and women—the runners were divided into four cages before the start, with the fastest group in the first and the slowest in the last.

At the start of the race, the cages would be opened back and front. The inevitable result was that the slower runners would not pass the starting line until minutes after the start, so that their official time would be composed of their running time and then some. My job at cage three was to make sure that only the people with the right starting number were allowed in and to redirect the others to their cage.

I received threats of violence that day and at one point a runner was so livid that he blocked the entrance to the cage and refused to go away. Thirty runners (my personal count) were sure that the faster cage was their rightful place. I got to redirect exactly one runner to a faster cage—I assumed that she was genuinely mistaken.

Around that time a company was founded by several students of the local university that produced an RFID transponder, the ChampionChip, that would make skewed race times a thing of the past. A computer would register the runners both when they passed the starting line and when they passed the finish line, and immediately spit out the right times. During the 25th anniversary of the race, the organisers even used the ChampionChip transponder (now owned by MYLAPS from Haarlem) to honour the 250,000th runner right after her finish.

I imagine that getting one’s exact time took some of the edge off the aggression and the need to cheat of some runners.

(Photo by Peter van der Sluijs, some rights reserved)

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October 27, 2013

Théophile de Bock, the tree photographer

Filed under: Art,Photography by Branko Collin @ 3:08 pm

Théophile de Bock was a 19th century Dutch landscape painter whose current claim to fame is that his makes such a good street or school name.

He was also a landscape photographer and interestingly it appears that he was the only Dutch landscape photographer at the time. Arjan de Nooy explains:

Customers were not interested and [landscape photography] was apparently not attractive to photographers. In comparison with international nineteenth-century landscape photographers (such as Timothy O’Sullivan, Carleton Watkins, Gustave Le Gray) De Bock’s photos are more intimate and small-scale. He was, literally, close to his favourite subject, the trees and in particular his tree trunk photos are unique in nineteenth-century photography.

De Bock was only a photographer for a short time and it seems that his photos were only recently rediscovered. De Nooy believes that the success of his paintings put a stop to De Bock’s photography.

De Nooy has curated an exhibit at Walden Affairs in The Hague until 22 November. (The exhibit is open during the weekends and on appointment.)

(Link: Trendbeheer)

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October 25, 2013

Your life on a jumper by Olga van Zeijl

Filed under: Design,Fashion by Branko Collin @ 2:15 pm

One of this year’s graduates from the Design Academy Eindhoven, Olga van Zeijl, created personalised knitted jumpers for her graduation project called KnittID.

She takes aspects of a person’s life then incorporates them into the pattern of the sweater. Shown here for instance is Debby, age 26, from Dordrecht: “The parachute symbol stands for my biggest life experience. During one of my jumps the parachute didn’t open and I was falling down to earth, luckily I could use my spare parachute.”

Van Zeijl suggests on her website that she was inspired by fishermen’s jumpers which apparently incorporated personal details. You can get your own KnittID jumper by Van Zeijl or order one of the existing ones if you don’t mind walking around with somebody else’s life covering your torso. Bright reports that an existing pattern will set you back 150 euro.

(Photo: OVZDesign.com)

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October 21, 2013

NPR remembers Bert Haanstra’s Zoo (1962)

Filed under: Animals,Film by Branko Collin @ 4:13 pm

In 1962 Dutch cinema’s golden child Bert Haanstra visited the zoo of Amsterdam, Artis, during a sun-filled period and filmed the visitors as they were laughing, yawning, scratching themselves, chatting and taking naps. Then he filmed animals doing the same thing and edited the result to contrast the two groups and perhaps to say “we are not that different, you and I”.

The result seems comedic, making fun of the little people that are closer to the animals that they themselves seem to believe. The film itself is not too clear about which position its maker chooses. The editing and some of the videography is clearly done for comedic effect (ostriches’ heads popping up, the walk of the penguin), but the powerful walk of the tiger and the jazz music by Pim Jacobs do not fit the label ‘comedy’.

American broadcaster NPR seems to like the humane explanation the best:

Magically, [the film] makes the cages, the trenches, the walls disappear, and what you get is a real zoo — a mix-it-up porridge of animal life, where all the animals, the mischievous little boys, the oh-so-shy monkey, the proud baboon, the wide-eyed girl and the yawning lady trade moods, glances, worlds — our differences melt into little moments of us being like them, them being like us.

The name Artis was originally the zoo’s nickname. It came from a text written over the gates, “Natura Artis Magistra” (meaning “Nature is the teacher of art”). You can watch the video on the NPR page or by buying the complete works DVD set.

Thanks Fred Yoder for the tip.

(Photo: screenshot of the documentary)

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October 20, 2013

Dokter Corrie teaches fifth graders about sex on TV

Filed under: Health by Branko Collin @ 12:24 pm

Dr. Corrie is a fictional character who talks on public TV to 10- and 11-year-olds about topics such as how to French kiss, what it’s like to be in love, what to do when you’ve got an unwanted erection, and so on.

She uses a lot of humour and I think this is why a group of ‘concerned parents’ has started a website called Stop Dokter Corrie!—the show normalizes sexuality and there are people who don’t want that. The action committee believes it’s not the government’s task to raise children. The group claims it is not tied to any religion, so it must be especially painful for them that only Christian media seem to be spreading their message.

All episodes have a famous Dutch person talking about some early experience with love or sex. Dokter Corrie is played by comedian Martine Sandifort.

An example of an episode that the group objects to is the one about kissing. The broadcaster’s description says “it is important that you only start with kissing when you are ready. Don’t do it just because somebody else wants you to.” Children seem to like the show.

(Photo: screenshot of the show from YouTube)

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October 19, 2013

Fence surfing and the jet blast decision

Filed under: Aviation by Branko Collin @ 1:23 pm

A popular tourist activity on the Caribbean volcano island of Sint Maarten is fence surfing.

As you can see in the photo the runway of Princess Juliana International Airport starts right behind Maho Beach. Fence surfing is holding on to the fence that separates the runway from the beach and waiting for planes to take off in order to experience the jet blast.

In 2000 a Swiss woman by the name of Hartmann was blown onto a rock and injured. Instead of accepting that exposing yourself to the forces of a Boeing 747’s engines may not be the smartest thing she could have done, she sued the airport. Part of her complaint was that the signs which read “Warning! Low flying and departing aircraft blast can cause physical injury!” weren’t clear enough. Dutch courts usually have little patience with stupidity and so the complaint was rejected.

Mrs Hartmann took the case all the way to the Dutch Supreme Court which surprisingly agreed with her on the issue of signage. In what came to be known as the Jet Blast Decision the Supreme Court argued that “in order to decide if a warning can be considered a sufficient protection against a certain danger, it has to be determined if the warning will lead to either an action or the abstinence of an action that will avert the danger”.

The sign has been changed since then. Law professor Edgar du Perron points out in a recent online lecture at Universiteit van Nederland (a cross between MIT OpenCourseWare and TED Talks) that a further problem, one the new sign shares with the old one, is that the sign is attached to the fence—when people see warning signs attached to fences, they assume that the danger is on the other side of the fence.

Recently a curb was added to the beach because the jet blasts were eroding it. Although this prevents tourists from slamming into the rocks directly behind the wall, these days the tourists slam into the wall (warning: graphic video and stupid comments).

(Photo by Alljengi, some rights reserved)

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October 14, 2013

Sultana cookie not the tastiest, says Dutch judge

Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 5:47 pm

Who better to judge which cookie is the tastiest than the inventors of the word ‘cookie’, the Dutch. But taking a competitor to court and asking a proper judge to come up with an answer is perhaps taking things a bit too far.

Global cookie monster Mondelez, the producer of Liga cookies, took Verkade to court over the latter’s claim that its Sultana cookies are the tastiest according to a test. “What test?”, Mondelez wanted to know and Verkade came up blank. If you cannot show test results, you cannot claim you are the tastiest, the judge said.

Verkade’s lawyers put in a counterclaim saying that Mondelez shouldn’t state that its Liga cookies were ‘chosen for fruity flavour and crispiness’, but Mondelez could show the court the results of an actual study that apparently proved its flavours are fruity and its textures crispy. The company gets to keep its slogan.

(Story via De Gelderlander, photo by Maëka Alexis, some rights reserved)

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October 13, 2013

Merch tip: short haired Barbie sells the least

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 10:42 pm

The Dolly Dots were a Dutch girl band from the 1980s with a string of hits. At the height of their success the six singers had their own sitcom, feature film and even their own Barbie dolls which, according to the I’m Like: ‘Oh My God!!!’ blog, were not very life-like.

The Ria doll at least included her trademark short hair. “All the dolls were hits, except the Ria one […] because it had short hair. You cannot comb a Ken hairdo.”

In this video from Avro’s TopPop Ria still had long hair—she is the one with the purse:

Having found only one source I have no idea whether this story is actually true, but it sounded too good to have it stay at the Dutch language part of the web.

(Photo by TROS, some rights reserved)

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