March 22, 2008
Last week I promised that I would produce an accessible version of the 1919 Louis Couperus hit novel Old People and the Things that Pass if I were asked to. Somebody requested an HTML version, which you can now find at the Internet Archive: www.archive.org/details/oldpeoplethings1919.
The Dutch Book Week, which wraps up today, had a motto this year—Of Old People…—that was derived from the title of this psychological drama.
Tags: accessibility, novels, psychology
March 21, 2008
In Jasper de Beijer‘s work-in-progress The Riveted Kingdom, the photographer pays homage to “the sheer exuberance of the grand engineering projects of the Victorian era”. His method is to create papercraft models, then take beautiful photographs of them.
Tags: papercraft
March 20, 2008
![[photo of a sawn up chair, parts freely separated]](https://www.24oranges.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sawn_up_chair-ward_van_gemert.jpg)
Rotterdam-based artist Ward van Gemert takes furniture from Marktplaats (the Dutch eBay subsidiary), saws it up into interesting compositions and sells the resulting art pieces back at Marktplaats as a set of parts. The unusable chair shown here – hanging from invisible strings – was made for Van Gemert’s final art school exam.
These days, Van Gemert creates actual, usable furniture, but still according to the same principle of redesigning the familiar. The “stretch” table below was sawn up, then reconstructed into an actual table using see-through casting resin. His art/design may look familiar if you have seen the work of Paul Verode, the man who sawed up Ferraris, whom Van Gemert once studied under.
![[photo of a functional sawn up table]](https://www.24oranges.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sawn_up_table-ward_van_gemert.jpg)
Tags: chairs, Dutch design, furniture, Rotterdam, tables
March 17, 2008
Animals rights activists claim they have been sprayed with elephant urine by circus employees last Saturday in Hoogeveen. The activists said that employees of Circus Renz Berlin used water pistols to shoot at them. When the police arrived at the scene everything was quiet again, although a threatening atmosphere was still lingering in the air according to an unnamed police spokesperson. The police confiscated one water gun that contained a “foul smelling substance”.
(Illustration by Monroe. Used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2.)
Tags: activism, animal rights, circusses, Drenthe
March 15, 2008
When weight-loss icon Sonja Bakker touches something, it turns to gold. FEM/Business reports that brands that were recommended by Bakker had an increase in turn-over of 62 million euro last year. The old-fashioned, but typically Dutch beschuit—a crispy round dry biscuit served at breakfast with sweet sprinklings or strawberries—saw an increase in sales last year after a thirty year downward spiral. Bakker has also sold 2.2 million copies of her four books, almost overtaking J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, and grossing 28 million euro.
(Illustration by Serassot, distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2.)
Tags: books, dieting, Sonja Bakker
March 12, 2008
Today marks the start of the Boekenweek, the Dutch week to promote books. This year’s motto is “Of old people…,” after Louis Couperus’ classic 1906 psychological novel Of Old People and Things That Pass… The theme focuses on old age, both in people and books, and has already been criticised by those who feel that youngsters should be encouraged to read books, not discouraged.
More interesting for 24 Oranges readers may be that Alexander Teixeira de Mattos’ classic translation of Couperus’ masterpiece has recently become available in many formats at the Internet Archive. If anyone would like a version that is more accessible (plain text, HTML, PDF), let me know and I’ll try and post one here. The Dutch version is available from DBNL.org.
Of Old People follows a couple of murderers in their old age, and their children and grand children, and shows how one gruesome act committed many years ago is felt in the family today.
(Picture: Louis Couperus)
Tags: Louis Couperus, promoting, translations
March 11, 2008
The Limburg tourist board has chosen a different tack to lure visitors to the southernmost province of the country. “The rolling hills, the romantic little steam train, yada yada yada. Kids today don’t go for that stuff anymore.” So what can you expect from hospitable Limburg?
Via De Telegraaf (Dutch).
Tags: happy slapping, Limburg, tourism
March 10, 2008
Last week, a director working on a fake TV news item about racism in the Netherlands got caught with his pants down because a competing station happened to have a crew nearby filming the whole thing. The director had set out to film a piece exposing rampant bigotry by showing that people in Amsterdam will not stop and help a woman in need if dressed in a niqab.
In order to measure this bigotry, the crew’s reporter would drop a bag of oranges and see who would help her pick them up. After a while she would change to a niqab, a garb worn by some Muslim women that covers everything except the eyes, and repeat the exercise.
And it seemed the crew got exactly the sort of result they expected. When dressed as a Westerner, people would help the reporter pick up her oranges. But the moment she switched to the niqab, help was no longer forthcoming. The cold eye of the camera registered a forlorn woman, crouching in the middle of the street amidst her belongings, while passers-by took a wide berth around her.
Except that it was all staged. Local TV station AT5 was there, and filmed the whole thing. People who wanted to help the woman in the niqab were shouted at by the director who told them to move on. Even then that did not stop some of them to actually help. After 101 had streamed its program, AT5 contacted them for commentary. Originally, the youth channel denied that anything shady had been going on. They thought the attention was exaggerated, and that people only started to help when they saw the AT5 camera crew. But the station must have smelled a rat, because it later examined raw footage, after which it came out with a full retraction. Apparently, people had been trying to help the niqab-clad woman the whole time. “We ended our collaboration with this director,” the press release concludes.
Even in the 101.tv segment there are hints that not everything is as it seems. The host says that she herself has family members who wear a burqa except of course that she is not wearing a burqa but a niqab.
Via Wij blijven hier (Dutch). Source images: AT5 and 101.
March 9, 2008
This month restaurant Sucre will open its doors in Amsterdam, serving only desserts. The restaurant is owned by Martijn Machielse (of local caterer Mynth Events) and Eline Kok (of local restaurant Bloesem), while the man behind the pan will be Peter Scholte, formerly of Chateau Brakkestein in Nijmegen. Sucre will be the first of such restaurants in the Netherlands, although similar places in New York and Barcelona (Espai Sucre) have blazed the global trail.
“You can get four or five courses here, made entirely of desserts,” Machielse told the Zest blog. “We will have one non-sweet dish though.” The menu is still a secret, but Machielse ensured the restaurant would not take the molecular cooking route. “We will choose accessible dishes, but twisted! You may for example discover non-sweet ingredients in your sweet dishes. But you won’t find classics like crème brûlée on the menu.”
Tags: Amsterdam, Barcelona, desserts, New York, restaurants
March 8, 2008
TV music channel TMF (The Music Factory, owned by MTV) recently announced plans to include all downloads in the computation of its new hit parade called Superchart, both from legal and illegal sources. This week the station cancelled those plans, according to NRC (Dutch). Counting paid downloads in hit parades is a relatively new phenomenon. Two years ago, in April 2006, Gnarls Barkeley were the first act to top a major (UK) hit parade on the strength of downloads.
NRC lists no reason why TMF would change the format of their chart at the last minute, other than that the station considers downloading from an illegal source to be “wrong”. NVPI, Dutch representatives of the record industry, applaud TMF’s decision. “You are sending a fatal message if you count all downloads for your hit parades,” Wouter Rutten said. “It would be as if the music industry had accepted downloads from an illegal source.” Oh my.
(Why the unwieldy “downloads from an illegal source”? Because the Netherlands, like Canada and a few other countries, allow copies for private use. The phrase “illegal downloads”, recently gaining popularity in the Netherlands, may be snappier but is also incorrect.)
Via Dagelinks (Dutch).
Tags: downloading, hit parades, record companies, TMF
