May 12, 2014

Bearded women calendar from 1997

Filed under: Art,Photography by Branko Collin @ 1:18 pm

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Women with Beards (note: occasional nudity) was an art project that ran from 1997 to 1998 in which every month a photo and biography of a bearded ‘babe’ was added to a website. Ine Poppe and Jetty Verhoeff ran the project and the beards were applied by make-up artist Ellen Wenniger.

The artists write: “In former days women with beards were exposed as an aberration at fairs. In the 21st century female facial hair will be the ultimate of sexual seductiveness.” And elsewhere they add: “Several articles have by now appeared about our project: they raise questions about our playing with gender. We don’t have a cut-and-dried answer to these: we just want to amuse and entertain. Like Jetty said to a Dutch journalist: ‘In my imagination our calendar is pinned to the wall with scotch tape in a garage in Australia.'”

In 2008 the project was part of the Kiki on Steroids! exhibit (again, NSFW) which explored “the world of transgenderism and self-representation on the Internet”. In this exhibit photos of “hairy babes of the month” were displayed almost life sized over toilets and urinals.

(Illustration: cropped screenshot of the Women with Beards website)

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May 11, 2014

Netherlands has second best beer-to-income ratio

Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 4:39 pm

beer-income-reddit-adiluReddit user Adilu made this fun map of Europe which shows how many beers the legal monthly minimum wage buys you in Europe.

It turns out the well-paying beer-loving countries are the Germanic ones—no surprises there. The minimum wage of a Belgian buys you 1028 pints of beer, whereas the Dutch can purchase at least 761 pints with their monthly salary. Germany comes in third with only 521 beers.

Adilu based their pint prices on a crowd-sourced database aptly called pintprice.com, according to PolicyMic, which has a thing or two to say about purchasing power and minimum wage if you’re interested.

(Illustration: Reddit user Adilu)

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May 9, 2014

Guy fined for showing his junk at junk food chain

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am

A 25-year-old guy was dared by his friends to show his cock and balls to the girls of the local rowing club while eating at the same junk food chain. The act is not only vulgar and asocial, misogynistic even, but it’s forcing children and others to see something they didn’t ask for, which is why it’s illegal.

Poor bastard, an off duty cop was dining there and hauled him down to the police station, where he was eventually slapped with a 350 euro fine for exhibitionism.

(www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of burger by huppypie, some rights reserved)

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May 8, 2014

A bit like football: UK afraid of the Netherlands

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 12:41 pm

First the Dutch media spat on it, then others like me joined in the chorus. But once ‘Calm before the storm’ sung by duet The Common Linnets made it through to the Eurovision Song Contest finals last Tuesday, the Dutch press fashioned reasons to like the song, one of which makes sense: the most economic use of guitar chords for the biggest amount of win. Newspaper Metro UK says, “The song is perhaps the most simple ever seen at the Eurovision Song Contest. It has just three chords and the first half of the song is shown in a single camera take.”

Maybe austerity will finally hit Eurovision. Then again, maybe this is just the ‘pride before the fall’.

UPDATE: Hey, the Dutch won second place.

(Dutch country music to hit song festival, Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

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May 7, 2014

New satellite images of the Netherlands

Filed under: Photography,Science by Orangemaster @ 3:10 pm

imagesentine

This image over the coast line of the Netherlands is one of the early radar scans taken by the Sentinel-1A satellite, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on 3 April, which is said to be able to provide imagery under any weather conditions, day or night.

You can see Amsterdam on the centre-right side of the image, and in the lower part there’s Rotterdam, with its huge port extending to the left. As well, “Sentinel-1’s radar will also be used for monitoring changes in agricultural land cover – important information for areas with intensive agriculture like the Netherlands”.

(Link: phys.org, Photo: ESA)

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May 6, 2014

Dutch cartoon illustrates creative writing book

Filed under: Comics,Literature by Orangemaster @ 9:48 pm

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Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte provided drawings for “Thrice Told Tales: Three Mice Full of Writing Advice,” by Catherine Lewis, a creative writing professor, publish in August 2013 and aimed at young readers. Lewis set out to explain literary elements through variations on the classic nursery rhyme, “Three blind mice ran after the farmer’s wife. She cut off their tails with a carving knife.” Yes, good nursery rhymes have always been pretty rough.

What’s the farmer’s wife doing with heals on? Here’s what Swarte had to say:

“How do I make her a farmer’s wife? Well, I drew a farm, so the man holding a pitchfork is a farmer and the woman his wife. I gave her farmer’s overalls, but I had to put her in high heels to make her a lady—otherwise you’d have seen a long-haired guy.”

Look closely: one of the mice is female.

We’ve also told you about Joost Swarte designing a pair of glasses.

(Link and image: www.newyorker.com)

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May 5, 2014

Rise and fall of a Netherlands theme park in Japan

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 1:36 pm

huis-ten-bosch-japan-veroyama

Michael Palin once said (as quoted by Spike Japan): “There is something almost transcendentally surreal about seeing a woman dressed in a large white bonnet, dirndl, black stockings and clogs riding a bicycle and at the same time playing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on a trombone.”

Huis ten Bosch (Hausu Ten Bosu) is a theme park near Nagasaki “more than three times the size of Tokyo Disneyland and still bigger than Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea combined”. Its theme is The Netherlands – all of it. Many of the famous buildings of the Netherlands have 1:1 replicas there that function as hotels and betting houses.

The park was built during an economic boom and consequently opened during a crisis. It has struggled ever since. Spike Japan visited it in 2010 and wrote an engaging, meandering and well illustrated three part ‘long read’ that will keep you entertained for an hour or so.

Softened by the passage of time and the accumulation of research, Huis ten Bosch is now in retrospect my most beloved example of a favorite kind of place, one like Seagaia that clings tenaciously by its fingertips to the cliff of life, against all odds. Of one thing we can be certain, though: until Huis ten Bosch, the greatest artifact by far of those crazy eighties years, finally fails or flourishes, the boil of the Bubble will not have been lanced from the body of Japan for good.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

(Link: Metafilter/MartinWisse; photo by Veroyama, some rights reserved)

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May 4, 2014

Proposal Base is a public art factory and exhibition space

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 2:06 pm

proposalbase-flickrIf you are an artist or somebody with artistic aspirations but lack the means to make your art a reality, a new initiative just north of Arnhem promises to make your ideas come true.

Proposal Base lets you pitch ideas for public artworks to be both built and exhibited at its location in the wooded hills near Arnhem. If a proposal generates enough funding and doesn’t break a small set of rules (it may not pollute, be racist and so on), it will get built.

There seems to be two catches. One is that the area will only be reserved for this purpose for a few more years and the other is that visitors aren’t allowed except during events.

Currently the site shows a list of sample proposals. A Street View-like Flickr page shows a map of locations where you can imagine your artwork. The folks behind the project describe themselves as a 3D printer for art projects.

(Illustration: screenshot of the Flickr page; link: Trendbeheer)

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May 3, 2014

Measuring rain with smart umbrella invented by Rolf ‘MacGyver’ Hut

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 11:32 am

umbrella-55laney69Rolf Hut from Delft University of Technology wants to turn umbrellas into devices that help scientists measure rain, BBC reports.

Apparently measuring the old fashioned way using rain gauges has become too expensive. Dr Hut’s umbrellas will be outfitted with a piezo sensor stuck under the canvas to measure vibrations caused by falling rain and with Bluetooth capabilities.

The inventor told BBC: “Eventually every umbrella would come with this technology, or at least premium umbrellas would. And if you wanted to be involved, the moment you opened the umbrella, it would start sending data to your phone which uploads it to the cloud.”

It strikes me that there are all kinds of statistical problems with this idea. You’d first need to know when owners use their umbrellas. Some people may stay in during heavy rain regardless of whether they own an umbrella or not, some will use umbrellas in drizzles, some will use umbrellas in the sun.

In fact for a moment I thought this was a belated April Fools’ joke, especially considering the ‘uploading rain to the clouds’ comment above, but apparently the umbrella was presented in a Pooh bear prototype form to the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union which took place last week.

Dr Hut says on his university profile web page that his colleagues have dubbed him the ‘MacGyver scientist’ for coming up with innovative ways of measuring weather using off-the-shelf technology.

(Link: Bright, Photo: 55Laney69, some rights reserved)

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May 1, 2014

Cycling in Utrecht, video by Morten Koldby

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 3:20 pm

cycling-utrecht-morten-koldbyDanish photographer Morten Koldby shot this video of Utrecht over the course of a few weeks in March.

The historic inner city of Utrecht has many traffic calmed streets that are closed to cars but open to cyclists.

(Photo: crop of the video)