Fitness First, a global health club chain, fitted a bus stop at the Weena in Rotterdam with scales and a display that shows you your weight. The big question buzzing around the Web is, is this a funny gimmick or an unacceptable shaming device? The campaign was designed by ad agency N=5, and the video report is by NOS Headlines.
March 15, 2009
March 14, 2009
Blogging from prison
A 56-year-old Dutch woman, Anna B. as she calls herself, was caught smuggling 8 kilos of “very good Dutch weed” into Italy, two years ago. Her lawyer managed to make it so that after a few months she could spend the rest of her 3 year 4 month sentence under house arrest. Friends got her an apartment in what appears to be a very idyllic village in Lombardia, and another stroke of luck made it so that she got two hours a day to go to the supermarket, time she uses to go hiking.
What does one do the rest of the day? Blogging (Dutch), taking pictures, making music, living on the Internet.
The lawyer called to tell me that next Monday, March 5, is the court date where we’ll again try and get me freedom of movement within the province between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m.
That’s quite a lot.
I really only wanted to sail a boat to the horizon for once. Or walk until I am tired. Or eat the daily special at the daily special restaurant at the top of the hill. Hmmm, nice.
Anna got her extra bit of freedom last week (Dutch).
Photo of Lake Como by ezioman, some rights reserved.
Tags: blogging, courts, gaol, Italy, marijuana, prison, smuggling
March 13, 2009
Companies to pay for employees’ (already paid for) music
Judge J.H. Huijzer has ordered in what must be one of the silliest court findings of recent times that companies whose employees bring iPods to work, must pay copyright collectives for the music.
In practice that means you’re going to pay several times for the music you listen to. Imagine you’re listening to the radio on your Digital Audio Player. First, the radio station had to pay for buying the medium. Then they have to pay for broadcasting the song. If they burn a back-up to CD, they have to pay for that too. If you bought your DAP in Germany you paid a copyright fee on the hard disk, and now when you listen to the radio at work your boss has to cough up some extra cash.
I wonder why people download their music so often instead of buying the CD. Hm…
The court’s very tortuous reasoning goes like this (Dutch):
4.3. The judge finds that the mere fact that employees are allowed to listen to music during working hours, even on an iPod or mobile phone, means that Suplacon [the defendant – Branko] has an interest in its employees listening to music. After all, happy employees work harder. This means that publication of music as defined in article 12 of the Auteurswet has taken place.
(The Dutch copyright law, Auteurswet, distinguishes between publication and copying, both acts forbidden by the law unless you have the author’s permission or unless you cross the palm of copyright collectives with some silver.)
BUMA, the rights organisation that brought the case, says (Dutch): don’t cry, the judge did not mean it like that, and we’re not going to collect money from companies where employees listen to their iPods. If the judge didn’t mean it like that, then why did he say it like that?
I imagine the next Eddy Murphy movie to be called The Nutty Judge, based on true events. Eddy, let your people call my people, I can have this peach of a script ready in no-time. All I ask is that you pay me upfront, and then when the movie is shown in theaters, and then when it is brought out on DVD, and then just because I feel like it, and then when it’s a Monday, and then when I see three pigeons in a day, and so on and on and on and on.
Via Iusmentis (Dutch) and others. Photo: Universal.
Tags: BUMA, copyrights, labour, law
March 12, 2009
Man gets 150 euro fine for sticking finger in ear
The headline may be a little misleading, because when the police stopped Simon de Bruin at an unknown date in Amstelveen and fined him 150 euro, it was for sticking a finger in his own ear. To be even more precise, the police thought he was making a phone call while driving a car which is only allowed if you do it hands-free. When De Bruin protested that he had just showered, that he was merely removing the last bit of water from his ear and that the police could check his phone logs, the officers were unimpressed and uninterested. “Tell it to the judge,” they told De Bruin.
Somehow this bit of news managed to crawl all the way to De Telegraaf (Dutch), where it doesn’t say whether De Bruin will indeed “tell it to the judge.” The only reason we found it is because we run a side-business turning the bones of old news into glue.
March 11, 2009
Rubber rhinoceros by Tom Claassen
Tom Claassen made this rubber rhinoceros in 2004 and put it in a sluice in Amsterdam’s newest neighbourhood, IJburg (reclaimed in true Dutch fashion from the water—the neighbourhood that is, not the rhino). Several questions spring to mind, such as “wha?” and “brrr?” and I wish I had thought of it. Amsterdam.nl provides some answers (English), such as “first public art in the neighbourhood” and “visibility depends on the water level.”
Photo: Tom Claassen. Here’s what IJburg looked like in 2004 (Wikipedia). Via Trendbeheer (Dutch).
Tags: IJburg, rhinoceroses
March 10, 2009
Electronic book with wifi or G3 announced by BeBook
Dutch e-reader manufacturer Endless Ideas recently announced an E Ink-based 6-inch book reader with a touch screen and either Wifi or G3 connectivity. The BeBook 2 was presented last week at CeBit, the largest computer exhibition in the world which takes place yearly in Hanover, Germany. Bright reports (Dutch) that the BeBook 2 will be sold starting this summer, price as yet unknown. The current BeBook sells for little over 300 euro.
The new BeBook also sports an RSS function, so that you can use the device to keep up on your news. E Ink is a technology that produces paper-like screens. These screens only need electricity to change contents: unlike say LCD screens which need juice to keep the picture up. Like paper E Ink is also reflective, which means it needs a natural light source to be readable. If you’ve never seen one, I suggest you go to your local Selexyz, Borders, or what have you where they’re likely to sell e-readers and ask to have one demonstrated.
Photo of a first generation BeBook in dappled shade by Andrew Kneebone, some rights reserved. The shepherd boy is in the almond grove just around the corner.
March 9, 2009
Stijn Peeters draws his friends
Stijn Peeters draws his friends from Myspace-like Dutch social network Hyves, and publishes the results there.
Via Trendbeheer (Dutch).
Tags: Hyves, portraits, social networking
March 8, 2009
Impromptu concerts by floating organ
I ran into the good ship Notedop today on the Zuideramstel Kanaal in Amsterdam. It’s basically a floating organ, and I can tell you from personal experience that it can be heard loud and clear dozens of meters away. The Notedop (nut shell) and its owner Reinier Sijpkens can be found wherever they have a canal and a bridge and where good cheer is in need. Sometimes even a swimming pool suffices.
On his website Sijpkens writes (Dutch/English):
I made a small boat, “de NOTEDOP”, designed a miniature church organ and had it built by Henk Smit. Next I created all kinds of mostly classical arrangements “in a nutshell” of 1 or 2 minutes for organ, trumpet and surprise instruments that sound well against a water city backdrop.
I brought odes to people on the bridges of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden, Delft, Gouda, Enkhuizen, Alkmaar, Venice, Oudewater, Bruges, Hoorn and many other cities. You can experience this yourself if you book my water concert or happen to run into me.
Thank god for URLs on the sides of boats. I had been so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I forgot to talk to Sijpkens when I had the chance.
March 7, 2009
Grootveld funeral
Today Robert Jasper Grootveld was buried in Amsterdam. The day started with a ‘happening’ at Spui square, followed by a service, after which Grootveld, one of the leaders of the 1960s Provo movement, was sailed to the Zorgvlied cemetery on top of a styrofoam raft for burial. 24 Oranges was present at the happening and also took photos of the boat ride to the cemetery.
At the Spui Grootveld was carried around the Lieverdje statue three times while people shouted “hi – ha – happening” and “uche uche uche” (cough cough cough). In the mid-Sixties Grootveld, self-proclaimed ‘anti-smoke magician’, would hold happenings in the square in which he would circle the statue that had been put there by cigarette manufacturer Crescent .
Later today I will upload more photos to our Flickr stream.
Update: photos have been added to Flickr.
Tags: Amstel, cigarettes, funerals, happenings, Provo, rafts, sailing, sixties, smoking
Oldest photo of the Netherlands
It’s not much to look at, a blotchy photo of a drawing of Johannes Enschedé III, but this is the oldest photo of the country according to De Pers (Dutch). To be precise, it’s the first daguerreotype photo sent to the Netherlands. It was discovered recently in the private museum of Royal Joh. Enschedé, the famous printers from Haarlem (1703) who amongst other things used to print the Dutch bank notes and passports.
The museum’s website reports (Dutch) that the photo was sent from France by Jeanne Enschedé – Dalen, who lived in Paris, to Haarlem where it arrived on October 4, 1839.
In De Pers’ article Andrea Roosen, an employee of the museum, calls the family a bunch of pack rats. When they discovered a note in Johannes Enschedé III’s 1839 diary about the payment for reception of the photo to the courier or mailman, “we knew that that photo still had to be around.” Daguerre had announced the invention of his type of photography only that same year.
The photo will be displayed as part of a larger exhibition of Daguerreotypes of the Enschedé family at photo museum Huis Marseille in Amsterdam from today until May 24.