May 7, 2012
Eindhoven based design studio Hey Hey Hey came up with this intricate mobile device called Melvin the Machine. It stamps postcards. No, that is not a Dutch post box you see in the end (at least not a current one, to my knowledge), although that is a real Hema alarm clock starring in the clip.
Via The Pop-Up City. Video: Hey Hey Hey.
Tags: Eindhoven, Hey Hey Hey, postage stamps, postcards, Rube Goldberg
May 6, 2012
Bright reports about an inner city shipping company that uses an actual ship in Amsterdam.
The electronic freighter of Mokum Mariteam, the magazine writes, “replaces five trucks, and is quieter and cleaner.” (The company’s estimate is more conservative: “a boat of 20 by 4.25 metres, [and a] nett volume […] of 85 cubic metres (four compact trucks)”.) The batteries can power the boat for an entire day.
The canals of Amsterdam were dug originally at least partly for transport, but that function seems to have fallen into disuse, until recently. Bright adds that German logistics company DHL (originally American) has been using a canal boat for delivering packages “for years”. (Since October 1997, Binnenvaart.nl adds.)
The text on the side of the City Supplier, ‘vracht door de gracht’, simply means ‘freight through the canal’. The word ‘Mokum’ in the company name refers to the Yiddish name for Amsterdam, Mokum (Alef), literally meaning ‘city A’.
(Photo: Mokum Mariteam)
May 4, 2012
The Netherlands’ two biggest photo agencies, ANP and Hollandse Hoogte, have set up the website Eerlijke Foto (‘Fair Photo’) allowing people to legally download their news photos for use on social media sites at reasonable prices.
The idea behind the site is a lot like the one behind music sites like Spotify and iTunes: if people can pay a fair price (a couple of euro) as opposed to an exuberant one, they’d be more inclined to buy than to steal. Yes, even though many of us collectively post pictures we have no legal right or permission to use on the Internet, it’s legally and technically stealing, whether you get caught or not.
It’s one thing and a lot of hard work to try and sue all the people that use your photos illegally both agencies say, so they are making their photo database available to others all while stepping up the nailing of anyone who uses their photos illegally. In fact, as 24oranges found out once, they are even baddies (copyright trolls) who will try and represent copyright owners illegally, try to sue you and scare you into giving them large sums of cash.
(Link: www.z24)
Tags: copyight
May 3, 2012
As if there weren’t enough weird bans and rules in Amsterdam, the Labour Party is seriously considering talking to snack bars and asking them not to sell fries to high school children. Some party member was shocked to find out that on a day to celebrate healthy foods at school, some school in the Nieuw West district was serving kebabs and Turkish pizzas, in other words, unhealthy food.
The Nieuw-West district has many children of ethnic origin that are overweight according to the telly. There is even a school in that district where 42% of the children are overweight, many of which eat junk food every day, and their parents thinks that’s fine.
Although Dutch children are also quite healthy compared to other European and North American countries, they drink too much soda and do not eat enough fruit. They are in the middle range in terms of exercise and sports.
And then I still love this picture about healthy eating with utter crap in the vending machine. Some adult doesn’t know right from wrong here either. The breakfast ginger cake the kid is eating in the picture has acrylamide in it, a cancer-causing agent that isn’t even mentioned on the packaging and eight different kinds of sugar.
To get back to the ban: banning won’t help, it will hurt business and annoy ordinary citizens.
Stop protecting uneducated people from themselves and educate them about food. Stop the nannyism already.
(Link: www.volkskrant.nl)
Tags: Labour Party
May 2, 2012
A group of nine pilots from the 99th RAF Squadron arrived in Landsmeer near Amsterdam today after four days of cycling from the UK. They were welcomed with a fanfare by the mayor like heroes. Every year they go to the monument to commemorate their deceased Squadron members. And since the British army is cutting back on expenses, the nine men couldn’t fly over and so they decided in true Dutch style to bike 750 kilometres.
The first question RTVNH (Radio and Television North Holland) had for one of them in true British understatement style was “how are your buttocks?”.
(Link: www.rtvnh.nl, Photo of Memorial by Bjorn V., some rights reserved)
May 1, 2012
First, there was the banning of a poem about a teenage boy’s SS uncle deemed inappropriate to be read at the annual Amsterdam ceremony, now the town of Vorden, Gelderland, which has one of the only graves in the Netherlands with German soldiers buried in it that wants to commemorate them. Basically, it’s fashionable to blur the lines between victim and perpetrator: it’s cool to be on the wrong side of things. And there’s so much bad taste going around these days, you need to pick your battles.
The Remembrance of the Dead on 4 May is to commemorate civilians and soldiers of all kinds who died in WWII, Dutch or foreign, but since the 1960s it has also included other wars and major conflicts. The boy’s poem was also meant to commemorate a Dutch volunteer who ended up on the wrong side of things, but after much commotion from Jewish organisations and the public at large, it was pulled. The teenager did well in winning a contest with his poem, but it’s too bad he’s being dragged in the mud for it. Only one line of the poem points to the man being on the German side, it’s not a big pro-Nazi rant or anything.
However, paying tribute to German soldiers flat out is losing the plot in my opinion. Or amnesia. Or dementia.
Tags: Gelderland, Nazism, Vorden, WWII
April 30, 2012
Orangemaster and I celebrated Queen’s Day together today, as we so often do, and we even brought friend and blogger Jeroen Mirck along to share in the fun of hunting for literature and music on what surely must be the greatest garage sale in the world.
Just walking around our neighbourhood took us hours, but it paid off in books and singles and CDs.
Until yesterday every day of the year had been either cold or overcast, today Amsterdam was bathed in sunlight and warmth, which made up for the entire dreary month of April in my view.
Here’s a very short photo impression, more should show up on our Flickr account in a few hours.
Update: I have uploaded the Queen’s Day set to Flickr.
Tags: balloons, cans, Delft bue, gables, orange, pancakes, tins
April 29, 2012
The international press have been giving a lot of attention lately to a nursing home for dementia sufferers near Amsterdam that tries to give its inhabitants a sense of living their ordinary lives.
The 152 patients living in De Hogewey, Weesp still go to the supermarket, the hairdresser and to a café, even though they generally have no idea what is going on.
Writes the Daily Mail in an extensive report:
A brainstorming process began and by early 1993 they had the answer. Yvonne says: ‘In life, we want to live with people like ourselves. We want to be surrounded by people we would choose to be friends with those with similar values, similar jobs and with similar interests.’
The result was a ‘village’ with several lifestyle options. The job of doctors and carers is to make those seven worlds as real as possible: through the way the home is decorated, the food, the music, even how the table is laid.
The lifestyles reflect the world outside the gates. The ‘Gooise’, or aristocratic Dutch; the ‘ambachtelijke’, or working class; the ‘Indische’, or those of Indonesian origin who migrated to Holland from the former colony; the ‘huiselijke’ or homemakers; the ‘culturele’ who enjoy art, music and theatre; the urban sophisticates who relish city life, and the ‘Christelijke’, for whom religion is paramount – whether Christianity or another faith.
[…]
The posher ‘residents’ dine off lace tablecloths on a table laid with fine glass and porcelain; meals are brought to the table by ‘servants’ who remain on standby in the kitchen. Their relationship with the residents is deliberately formal and submissive. Conversely, the working-class residents prefer meals to be casual, taken with their helpers or ‘family’, maybe in front of the TV.
See also this German video by 3Sat:
Although it costs approximately 5,000 euro per month to stay at De Hogewey, most of that is paid for by the insurer, dementia being covered under Dutch universal healthcare (there is a small copay of 100 euro per month, according to the video report).
Note: stays at nursing homes are generally covered by a nationwide policy (PDF, Dutch) that lets homes charge for extras such as cable television, laundry services and so on. I imagine the same goes for De Hogewey. In other words, there may be extra costs, but these are typically and easily covered by the state pension that everybody over 65 gets (AOW).
See also:
(Photo by Frank Mayne, some rights reserved)
April 28, 2012
Utrecht based computer science professor Wolfgang Hürst shot this video last year of the party boats in Amsterdam during Queen’s Day. It’s definitely my favourite video of that day. I think the images combine very well with the music (“Ashes of Time” by Fool’s Chaos).
I will be enjoying Queen’s Day (April 30) myself as always by dipping into the nation-wide garage sale, and hope to score some glass for my camera. Specifically, any wide-angle lenses for under ten euro will get my attention.
Tags: Queen's Day, video
April 27, 2012
Some 19 coffee shops and several interest groups went to court to fight the government’s plan to introduce a ‘weed pass’ to prevent foreigners (actually, non-residents of the Netherlands) to buy marijuana at coffee shops and lost. The weed pass will come into force on 1 May in the southern provinces and eventually be rolled out throughout the country. The lawyers representing the coffee shops plan to appeal the decision, and even the Mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard Van der Laan is opposed to the pass and wants to work out a compromise.
Besides the fact that coffee shops in big cities are major tourist attractions, they felt they were being forced to discriminate against certain clients, as a weed pass can only be obtained in the city where one resides. Collecting personal information about clients brings up a lot of privacy issues as well.
The original plan was to stop drug tourism in border regions like in Maastricht, but that doesn’t apply at all to cities like Amsterdam. Coffee shops will basically become private clubs with membership open only to Dutch residents and limited to 2,000 per shop.
Discriminating between EU citizens on the basis of where they live is apparently illegal, making coffee shop owners responsible for drug enforcement sound like a burden, and who’s to stop me for going into a coffee shop and buying joints for somebody else? I don’t see the point of this, besides the government owning a database of people who smoke marijuana. I think drug dealers will make a small fortune selling bad quality weed to tourists and I don’t see how that looks like stopping criminality.
In the mean time, the people who can’t be bothered to get a pass down south will buy their drugs up north or start growing more of their own, which is perfectly OK as long as it’s limited to a few plants.
And for the record, smoking marijuana is illegal in the Netherlands, but it is tolerated.
Here’s a famous Dutch song about ‘nederwiet’ (Dutch weed) by megastars Doe Maar:
(Links: www.coffeeshopnieuws.nl, www.nu.nl, Photo of Joint by Torben Bjørn Hansen, some rights reserved)
Tags: Amsterdam, coffeeshops, Maastricht, weed
