January 17, 2008

Golden age collections showcased in Wonder Stage of Nature

Filed under: Art,History by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

No Dutch Golden Age (17th century) collection of obscure and exotic trinkets and specimens appears to have survived, as heirs tended to sell off these collections to foreign collectors. However, we still have books that illustrate them at least. As Bibliodyssey writes:

The collection obsession of Early Modern Europe, that saw people stocking cabinets of curiosities […] with obscure and exotic trinkets and specimens from the worlds of ‘artificialia’ and ‘naturalia’, emerged in Holland under a local profile of influences.

Unlike most of their European counterparts, the Dutch republic lacked both a royal court or any sizeable aristocracy, so collecting was a hobby cultivated by regular citizens. […]

[There were numerous collections] built up by Dutch carpenters, merchants, tradesmen and artisans. The enthusiasm for collecting, in Holland at least, could be seen at all levels of society, but with the most notable collections owned by burghers and regents, in contrast to the kings, nobles and prelates of other European countries. And there is the rub. It was customary for families to sell off these ‘rariteitenkabinets’ and divide the spoils following the death of the collector. Accordingly, most Dutch collections of significance left the country, purchased by foreign nobility and no intact collections have survived; adding an interesting element of documentary detective work to scholarly assessments.

But at least a documentation of these collections has survived. The wonderful Bibliodyssey for instance liberally quotes a picture book by Levinus Vincent (1658-1727) called “Wondertooneel der Nature” (Wonder Stage of Nature).

Via BoingBoing.

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January 13, 2008

Most visitors still to Efteling; loses number 1 brand spot to Ikea

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 6:51 pm

Illustration: Houses at Efteling in Anton Pieck style, photo by Danny Haak. Some rights reserved. 

Amusement park Efteling is still the most visited attraction in the Netherlands according to RTL (Dutch). The zoos at the number two and three spots of 2006 changed places last year; Blijdorp came in second, and Burgers third. Burgers feels the swap can be explained by the extra attention Blijdorp got after gorilla Bokito escaped there.

Efteling suffered a blow in another ranking though: that of strongest brand of the Netherlands. Where it led two years ago, now it has to let foreign companies Ikea (1st) and Google (2nd) ahead. The amusement park based in Noord-Brabant comes in fourth, according to the ad agency Consult Brand Strategy (Dutch, PDF), after Cliniclowns (care clowns).

In 1952 Efteling opened its doors to the public. The park was designed by Anton Pieck, whose pictures of small winding streets with crooked, cosy houses found a welcome echo in the park’s architecture and landscaping. Originally little more than a tea house in green surroundings, the park soon added its fairy tale forest with life size depictions of well known fairy tales (trick question: name three of the seven dwarfs from Snow White), and from the 1970s onwards it acquired all the usual amusement park traits such as dark rides, fast rides, a hotel and a golf course.

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January 12, 2008

Gameboy shaped bricks

Filed under: Design,Gaming by Branko Collin @ 5:12 pm

Web developer / musician / VJ Gijs Gieskes made these Gameboy shaped ceramic bricks that you can buy for the, er, challenging price of 20 euro a piece, according to BoingBoing. A bit steep perhaps if you were planning to do an entire wall with them, but they could still work as the occasional ornament.

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January 10, 2008

25 years of wine barrels as hotel rooms

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 9:30 am

The Vrouwe van Stavoren hotel in Stavoren, Friesland, has been offering Swiss wine barrels as hotel rooms for the past 25 years. The barrels with a volume of 14,500 litres are furnished with two single beds, a small living room with TV, and a bathroom with a shower and a toilet. They are located on the porch of the main hotel. Owner Bauke Kolk copied the idea from a foreign hotel. It has been so successful that there’s an actual waiting list for those who want to stay in one of the barrels.

Good news for the hobbit wannabees among us though: Kolk has bought 8 more barrels, French ones from the château Corcelles that were used to store Beaujolais. These will have room for a double bed; Kolk believes that these are more suited to young couples. The French barrels are currently located at a carpenter’s in Stavoren, where they are presumably being made rock-proof.

The hotel is named after a legend (Aarne-Thompson index 736A) that explains the decline of the once proud city of Stavoren into a mere village (though the real reason is really more prosaic).

Via Zibb (Dutch).

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December 29, 2007

Dolphins outperform market analysts

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 4:15 pm

Dolphins perform better at the stock market than market analysts do, a recent experiment at the Harderwijk Dolfinarium suggests. The animals got to pick five balls that represented companies. Five stock analysts got to pick five companies that they thought would do well in the market. After a year, the dolphins’ stock had increased 27% in value, but that of all but one of the analysts had decreased in value. The one analyst that made a profit only made 10%.

In previous years similar experiments were done with a gorilla, with similar results. The gorilla got to pick from a number of labelled bananas that represented companies, and made a profit of 15% above market index. Obligatory joke: they had to switch to dolphins because the gorilla kept eating the bananas.

Link: Eamelje.net.

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December 28, 2007

Branko’s favourite 24 Oranges articles of 2007

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

Below are some of the 24 Oranges posts of 2007 I like best.

  1. Robotic library seat to follow patrons around – I for one welcome our robotic underlords
  2. National government bans electronic voting for now – not my government, but this they did right
  3. Prostitutes offer deflowering service for nerds – rates are IT level
  4. Priest fined for ringing bell at ungodly hours – this month he won in court though
  5. Canon of Dutch movies – Haanstra, Verhoeven, Maas
  6. 150 Parliamentarians micromanage job seeking strategies of a few dozen unemployed – let’s get these lazy do-nothings to work, the voter must have thought
  7. KLM’s flight personel get baby-making breaks – there goes the Mile High Club
  8. HEMA’s famous sausage exposed as just another Unilever product – a nation mourns
  9. Bird-friendly lighting for oil rigs – less distracting to flying critters
  10. Driver replacing driver who got stopped for drunk driving after replacing driver who got stopped for drunk driving, got stopped for drunk driving – I think I am dizzy now
  11. Floating luxury hotel made from rescue pods – don’t use these to rescue a relationship

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December 27, 2007

Court finds for noisy Tilburg pastor

Filed under: Religion by Branko Collin @ 2:55 pm

A court in Breda has found that Tilburg priest Harm Schilder is allowed to harass his neighbours by ringing his church bells far too loud at early hours. Although the court (LJN: BB8689) recognized that the city had the authority to impose fines and make rules limiting the noise levels its citizens are allowed to reach, it also pointed out that there is state law that overrules city law in this case. Specifically, the “Besluit woon- en verblijfsgebouwen milieubeheer” (Decision Housing and Living Buildings Environmental Management) states that churches are allowed to make as much noise as they want when calling the flock (“1.1.2. Excluded from determining the noise levels are […] the sound required to call one to practice their religion or life philosophy”).

Call me a cynic, but I’ve got a funny feeling that this ruling won’t stand long once the first mosque starts making use of this privilege, and the usual demagogue crowd will start howling “terrorism”.

Via BN/DeStem.

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Zone 5300, winter 2007

Filed under: Art,Comics by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

Once again the macabre is represented in the fourth and last issue of Zone 5300 this year. Death and decay play important roles in respectively a Molluskhead story by Fufu Frauenwahl and in Floor de Goede’s Deathboy.

[illustration] Simon Spruyt reminisces about the time when he took little Lizzy for a tour of his comics plant (illustration). In doing so he gives the reader rare insights in the cold, hard economic realities of making and selling comics. No, it’s not what you think it is. No, not that either. Yes, you’re warmer with zombies, but you’ll have to read the story yourself to find out.

[photo] New physical media give publishers an enormous opportunity to sell to you what you already own: DAT tapes to replace your LPs, CDs to replace your DATs, and so on ad infinitum. But what happens to the discarded carriers? Rotterdammer Matrijs van Merg takes care of them. He builds organs from diskettes, videotapes from LPs, and more, and Zone 5300 interviews him. Photo: race track made from LPs.

Another article is the long interview with 1970s underground comics icon Paul Bodoni, whose albums have such imaginative titles as The Story of the Story and Other Stories, and Two Alfredos on a Green Coyote.

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December 26, 2007

Foekje Dillema: Schrödinger’s gender cat in the polder

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 6:25 pm

Photo: a young girl running. By Nevit Dilmen. Released under the GFDL license 1.2.

How do you know who is a man and who is a woman? Schrödinger would say: through observation. But what if that observation takes place in a black box and its results are never reported? One of the great secrets in Dutch track and field are the results of a “sex test” the somewhat manly looking Frisian short distance runner Foekje Dillema had to undergo. On July 13, 1950, the Dutch athletics union KNAU brought together a group of female athletes for a sex test. As a result Dillema was banned for life from competing in athletics, her times were stricken from the books, and she was condemned to a life of shame. But get this: the union never published the results of the test.

Now, a week after her death at age 81, KNAU has recalled the ban and restored her times, although the union did not want to “go as far as to” apologize for the controversial sex test.

That the union set Dillema up for a fall was clear from the onset. The other athletes tested were presumably only there to make up the numbers, so that it did not seem so obvious that the union was targetting Dillema. Some of the subjects were already mothers at the time of the test. For a year after the test, Dillema would not leave home during the day, and she spent the rest of her life in relative seclusion.

The K in KNAU stands for “koninklijke,” literally “royal,” a title an organization is only allowed to carry if it is of unblemished character. You have to wonder how the KNAU’s K is allowed to stand.

Via Hetkanwel.

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Fonts based on tooth paste, ketchup

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

What do you get when you empty a tube of toothpaste or a bottle of ketchup? Free fonts of course, according to Utrecht based design outfit Autobahn. You can find more pictures of the process and fresh squeezed Truetype font files (Tomatica, Gelvetica and Heldentica) at their website.

Via Trendbeheer.

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