April 11, 2013

Cooking with weed becomes fashionable and mainstream

Filed under: Fashion,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 3:16 pm

Well-known snack bar Manneken Pis on the Damrak, the first main street any tourist sees when they exit Amsterdam Central Station to walk towards the Palace, has started offering fries with a marijuana sauce as of today. Weed is usually quite pungent in food, which is why people put it in creamy or buttery substances, as it is not the easiest thing to cook with or digest for that matter. Yes, it can provide a very decent, slow buzz, thanks for asking.

Also in weed-related cooking, Dutch clothing company FreshCotton got the Arnold Amsterdam agency to produce a drug-based cookbook to promote the new range of Stüssy Amsterdam tees. “The cookbook, which references Amsterdam’s tolerance towards narcotics, demonstrates how to create dishes (very short video) using high-end ingredients and drugs – like marijuana and magic mushrooms – that can be legally obtained in the Netherlands.” It also contains some men’s fashion.

(Link: www.amsterdamfm.nl, www.campaignlive.co.uk)

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April 10, 2013

Art forger from Arnhem waiting it out in Thailand

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 2:48 pm

In 2003 an art forger from Arnhem ran off to Thailand with the 3 million euro he illegally made forging modern art, and all he has to do is wait until the statute of limitations runs out in 2018. Of course, he’s probably under the threat of being caught if ever he came back to the Netherlands (or the EU, I suppose), but he couldn’t care less.

The forger made a fortune – imagine what kind of luxury 3 million euro gets you in Thailand – making Alberto Giacometti statues, which were sold by two German art dealers. They got caught in 2009 and have been sentenced to 7 and 9 years of prison, respectively.

The Dutchman is living the good life in Thailand, calling his predicament ‘being imprisoned in paradise’.

Grab a beverage of choice and take a few minutes to read more about famous Dutch forger Han van Meegeren who was an excellent artist in his own right, but turned to the more lucrative business of forging paintings for rich Dutchmen who wanted to fool Nazis by selling them forgeries. And yes, it does remind me and some of you of the British television series ‘Allo ‘Allo whose plot often revolves around forgeries of the paintings ‘The Cracked Vase with the Big Daisies’ by Van Gogh and ‘The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies’ by Van Klomp.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl, Photo of Giacometti statues by jensm, some rights reserved)

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April 9, 2013

Remembrance of the Dead gets unsavoury German flavour

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 11:04 am

Remembrance of the Dead on 4 May is respected to commemorate all kinds of civilians and soldiers who died in WWII, Dutch or foreign, but since the 1960s it has also included other wars and major conflicts. And like last year, the controversies are starting up again.

The town of Bronckhorst, Gelderland, near the German border wanted to commemorate German soldiers buried in nearby Vorden last year, but the courts shot them down at the very last minute. However, the town has won its appeal and can celebrate as they see fit, providing it is done ‘with care’. They plan on having an alderman walk along the German graves to commemorate, well, Nazis.

I still believe that paying tribute to Nazis is blurring the lines between the good guys and the bad guys of WWII solely to provoke and get media attention. Younger generations, including myself, are not old enough to grasp the intensity and damage of war in Europe at that time, and to act like everybody was a victim today is extremely distasteful at the very least.

As well, much like the run of comments we had about good things the Nazis did and a neighbourhood built for Nazis in Heerlen, Limburg, sure it’s allowed to talk about anything in a free country including Hitler and Nazis, but we don’t have to approve of what Bronckhorst is doing.

(Link: www.refdag.nl)

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April 8, 2013

A day in the life of a parcel (video)

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 11:45 am

Ruben van der Vleuten, a Dutch student at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, wanted to see what happened to a parcel once it disappeared into the bowels of the Danish postal system.

He then made a parcel with a hidden camera in it and sent it through the mail repeatedly until he got a video that had the camera facing the right way all the time.

Van der Vleuten explains on his website: “The timer circuit was set to make a three-second video every minute and make longer videos while the box was moving, so as to not miss the ‘interesting’ parts.” There’s circuit board porn and technical explanations there and at the Vimeo page.

All that circuitry made the package look suspect. In an interview with Fast Company the designer admits that this had crossed his mind:

The second was based on the pics that showed the open box; that thing really, really looks like a homemade bomb (if homemade bombs look like they do in the movies). “To be honest this was my biggest concern as well,” Van der Vleuten admits. He included a note explaining that this was part of a student project with no criminal intent, but regardless, “Every time, I was bringing it to the post office with sweaty hands.”

(Link: Bright. Photo: crop of a still of the video)

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April 7, 2013

Anti-monarchal society almost doubles in size

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 4:23 pm

One of the two Dutch republican societies has seen an increase in membership from 1200 to 2000 since January, AD writes.

The Nieuw Republikeins Genootschap (New Republican Society) wants to replace the Dutch hereditary monarchy by a republic with an elected head of state. It was founded in 1998 in response to the existing Republikeins Genootschap which only admits new members through co-option and which believes that merely existing is enough to bring about the republic.

The society expects that the large increase in members is due to the ‘hype’ surrounding the abdication of Queen Beatrix and the ascension to the throne of her son Willem Alexander on 30 April.

According to TNS Nipo the monarchy continues to enjoy strong support among the Dutch. In 2011 a whopping 87% of the population supported the monarchy, 4 percentage points down from 1961, but 6 percentage points up from 2003.

The Netherlands was a republic from 1581 until 1806 at which point Napoleon Bonaparte made his brother king of the country. After Napoleon was defeted at Waterloo in 1815, Willem Frederik of Orange-Nassau became King Willem I of the Netherlands. Since then the country has been a monarchy.

(Photo: statue of William the Silent, he who both led the Dutch revolution that started the republic and who started the house of Orange-Nassau.)

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April 5, 2013

Napoleon letter praises the Pyramid of Austerlitz

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 10:15 am

A letter written by Napoleon Bonaparte 200 years ago has been found in an antique shop in the small town of Ermelo, Gelderland. It was written to General Auguste De Marmont, Napoleon’s adjutant, praising him for the building of the Pyramid of Austerlitz in Woudenberg, a tribute to Napoleon.

Apparently, it is the only letter in which Napoleon mentions the Dutch monument. The letter will be put up for auction eventually. Last December, another letter written by Napoleon in 1812 fetched 150.000 euro.

(Link: www.omroepgelderland.nl, Photo of Pyramid of Austerlitz by evil nickname, some rights reserved)

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April 4, 2013

Nineteenth century Netherlands plans to reclaim everything

Filed under: Architecture,Technology by Branko Collin @ 10:10 am

This map by Belgian citizen and inventor Jerôme Wenmaekers from 1876 shows his plans to reclaim the entire Zuiderzee, including the Wadden Sea.

According to De Verdieping van Nederland, Wenmaekers plans required the use of his own dike building machines, but the inventor would not release the plans for those until he got the reclamation concession. On the other hand, the minister of public works would not approve the plan as long as he could not see how the machines worked. Both parties remained in that deadlock and in the end it was Cornelis Lely whose plans were used.

Lely’s plan was much less ambitious, but still very ambitious—his Flevoland polder is the largest artificial island in the world by a wide margin.

The green inset in this second map from 1866 shows the area Wenmaekers wanted to reclaim. According to NRC, for 70 years (between 1850 and 1920) the Dutch discussed what to do with the country’s ‘wet heart’, which led to at least 581 publications. One plan even called for the reclamation of the North Sea.

(Source: Nationaal Archief, via Martin Wisse)

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April 3, 2013

Promo video for Rijksmuseum shows 17th century chase

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 2:57 pm

The Rijksmuseum (or Rijks Museum) in Amsterdam, home to many a Dutch master, has been partially closed to the public for renovations ever since 2003 and will be reopened on 13 April by Queen Beatrix in the last month of her reign.

Sponsor ING made this video in a shopping centre in Breda of a 17th century shop lifter being chased by the city watch. The tableau vivant at the end depicts Rembrandt van Rijn’s ‘Night Watch’, the most prominent work in the Rijksmuseum’s collection. (Rijksmusem means ‘state museum’—there are several Rijksmuseums in the Netherlands, but if there is no city name attached people assume it is the one in Amsterdam).

Yes, it’s that same ING, the Dutch bank too big to fail. Its managers are now complaining that their salaries are too low. But at least they get to play patron of the arts with my tax money. These are the same arts the government no longer had money for after they loaned 10 billion euro to ING. Welcome to neo-liberal Upsidedownia.

(Video: ING/YouTube. Image: crop from the video)

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April 2, 2013

Park-and-ride actually increases car use, an unintended effect

Filed under: Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 6:02 pm

Park-and-ride, which was meant for people to drive and freely or easily park near train and subway stations to then continue their commute apparently increases car use instead of decreasing it. Dutch researcher Giuliano Mingardo surveyed some 700 commuters at nine railway park-and-ride sports around Rotterdam and The Hague a few years ago at small and large parking lots. Adverse effects included people parking and then walking somewhere, technically using up a commuter’s spot, people driving or cycling to a railway station instead of commuting the entire way, and generally using the car more because parking was cheap or free.

According to Mingardo, he believes that park-and-ride facilities “do present a net increase in traffic volume rather than a reduction”.

In the Netherlands, parking in and around train stations that are not park-and-rides are either physically impossible (a car cannot actually stop anywhere), only for permit holders or terribly expensive. It is still socially acceptable to be late for work when public transport goes haywire like in the winter, but it is still very important and expected in many professions for people to arrive at work or at a client’s with their own car.

(Link: www.theatlanticcities.com, Photo of Park and ride sign, England by Ell brown, some rights reserved)

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April 1, 2013

Computer science unpopular in secondary school

Filed under: IT by Branko Collin @ 12:38 pm

Only 1 in 20 Dutch secondary school students choose to take a computer science course, Webwereld reports.

On average Dutch high schools have one computer science teacher who received their last training ten years ago.

I remember when computer science was introduced at my grammar school in the mid-1980s, the instructors were our regular maths teachers who often did not know what they were doing. The booklet that came with the course was flimsy—I had finished reading it before the semester started and spent the rest of my time programming games. What was worse was that the course was aimed at the few who were interested in programming, even though learning how to use a word processor and a spreadsheet would have been more useful to the majority of the pupils.

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