May 13, 2011

ACAB is not an insult, Dutch court rules

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:31 am

Back in 2009 we told you about a man arrested for having an insulting, tattooed abbreviation, which was ACAB that stands for All Cops Are Bastards. Another man was convicted in the same year for wearing a jacket with the text ACAB on it.

In 2009 a lower court thought ACAB was worth a fine, but last year a higher court ruled that the abbreviation was not in itself an insult and told the lower court to take another look at the case, which is probably Dutch legalese for ‘move on already’.

Dear Dutch cops, if you can’t take an English (!) abbreviation, you’re just sad. As they say in Dutch, go out and catch some thieves.

We also reported in 2010 on seven men arrested for wearing the number 1312, which if you decode it, is ACAB once again. And then there’s the cute version ‘Appel Citroen Ananas Banaan’ (Apple, Lemon, Pineapple, Banana), which was a trending topic on twitter a few days ago (#appelcitroenananasbanaan), turning this whole thing into a big joke.

(Link: depers)

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May 12, 2011

Art Amsterdam 2011 sneak preview

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 10:37 am

It’s true, this year’s edition of Art Amsterdam held at the RAI exhibition centre was indeed very international, with galleries from all over the Netherlands as well as ones from Paris, Montréal, Seoul, Berlin and more. 24oranges was lucky enough to walk around on VIP night before the fair opens to the general public today, running until 15 May, courtesy of a sponsor of art site Trendbeheer.com.

Instead of just selling art like the other galleries, Trendbeheer are doing something cool, they call ‘For The Love of Money’. Managing Director Niels Post, an artist himself (we saw his stuff in the 1500 euro or less art lounge) explained the plan to sell 150 unique works at 150 euro a pop with a frame and box. The works themselves (seen in the pic) are hi-resolution pictures taken of works of art at the fair with a red dot, meaning they have been sold. Photographers are taking turns running around the fair ‘dot hunting’ and snapping pics of sold works, printing them out, framing them and then selling them. Almost all the ones in this picture were sold and from the moment they started, it was going fast.

Of all the stuff I saw, this German work of art from I totally forgot to write it down shame on me caught my eye, probably because it had words on it.

If you’re up to buying art for your office or design studio, you have to check this art fair out. They also have books and there are presentations and even tours of the exhibition. If you just want to look at cool stuff, this is not quite the right venue, but it will give anyone with artist’s block some good ideas.

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May 11, 2011

Buy an electric car, get a free parking spot in Amsterdam

Filed under: Automobiles,Bicycles,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 4:34 pm

The goal of this ploy is to get residents of Amsterdam to buy an electric car so they can get a free parking spot with a free electricity charger near their house until 2012, which could be extended. Getting an actual designated parking spot in Amsterdam can easily be a 5-year to 10-year affair.

Amsterdam wants 5% of cars to be electric by 2015, which would be about 10,000 cars. The city’s freebies cover electric cars but won’t cover hybrids until the electric–only range of hybrids rises above 60 kilometres.

I wouldn’t get an electric car just yet, I’d keep biking, roller skating, taking public transport and walking like I already do.

Amsterdam’s green ethos seems very much intact. But one unintended consequence: in it’s enthusiasm for electric vehicles, the popularity of electric bikes is undermining pollution goals, as owners of foot-powered bikes upgrade to electric models.

The same way this implies that electric bikes are trumping electric cars, the fact that I work at home and don’t travel for work makes me less green than owning a car and not using it, which is plain stupid defeats the purpose.

(Link: smartplanet via presurfer)

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May 10, 2011

Beware of Zeeland’s kissing cyclist

Filed under: Bicycles,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:33 pm

A whopping 41 women have reported being unwantedly kissed by a male cyclist in the Southern province of Zeeland, something that has been going on since 2009. The cops aren’t sure it’s the same guy and the women’s reports tend to differ. Call the alarm number (it’s 112 here) and snap a pic with your phone is the cops’ equivalent of ‘take two aspirins and call me in the morning’, as they can’t seem to catch him. The man asks cycling women for directions, kisses them and asks them where they live and I imagine has other propositions as well.

(Link: blikopnieuws)

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May 9, 2011

Dutch freedom of information process ‘slowest in the world’

Filed under: General,IT by Branko Collin @ 10:49 am

A report by the Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ) claims the Dutch government is the slowest in the world in processing freedom of information requests. FOI consultant Rob Vleugels pointed out to Binnenlands Bestuur that Dutch ministries typically only employ four civil servants each for dealing with the requests. In comparison, the UK employs at least 80 people per ministry for this task. The British, unlike the Dutch, also train their people for doing FOI work.

Journalist Brenno de Winter thinks the problems with the execution of the FOI law centre around an incompetent government when it comes to IT.

Recently I had to wait 56 days for three photocopies. I had asked to receive the copies digitally, but they were incapable of doing so.

The citizens now foot the bill for bad automation. For years I have tried to uncover the extent of the problem, but the government is actively sabotaging me. They send me bills despite the courts telling them that such things is illegal, they take much more time to respond than they are allowed to, they claim national security issues, and they sometimes even just refuse to respond.

The Freedom of information act is called WOB in Dutch (Wet Openbaarheid Bestuur), and making a WOB request is called wobbing.

(Photo by Dennis Macwilliam, some rights reserved)

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May 8, 2011

The Dutch like Dutch children’s literature the best

Filed under: Literature by Branko Collin @ 2:11 pm

If you would ask us for our opinions about the best music (classic or pop), comics, films or literature, chances are the Dutch would come up with the names of British, American, Japanese, Belgian, French, German or Russian works. But when the Sargasso blog held a poll last month to determine the best children’s books, these were the results:

1. Thea Beckman – Crusade in Jeans (1973)
2. Roald Dahl – The BFG (1982)
3. Jan Terlouw – How to Become King (1971)
4. Paul Biegel – The Little Captain (1971)
5. Annie MG Schmidt – Tow Truck Pluck (1971)
6. Thea Beckman – Kinderen van Moeder Aarde (1985)
7. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince (1943)
7. J.R.R. Tolkien – The Hobbit (1937)
9. Johan Fabricius – De Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe (1923)
10. J.R.R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings (trilogy) (1954)
11. Tonke Dragt – De Brief voor de Koning (1962)
12. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

Note that the participants of this poll were most likely grown-ups, probably in full-on nostalgia mode. Curiously Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren (The Brothers Lionheart, Pippi Longstocking) is missing from the top ten. How Lisa Tetzner’s Die schwarzen Brüder could only land the 70th spot on a lefty blog like Sargasso will probably remain a mystery.

I was a child in the 1970s, and my Big Four of children’s literature were Paul Biegel, Guus Kuijer, Tonke Dragt and Miep Diekman. Biegel and Dragt wrote books with mystical elements, whereas Kuijer and Diekman were of a more realistic bent.

Currently Schmidt’s Tow Truck Pluck is being translated to English, and the Nederlands Letterenfonds has a glowing review of De Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe, which I guess means they are in the market for sponsoring translators.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

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May 7, 2011

What have the Nazis ever done for you?

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 11:48 am

I grew up in Blerick, a town with a town hall but without the political body to inhabit it. See, in 1940 the town was added to the neighbouring city of Venlo by the Nazi occupier, which made the possession of a town hall moot.

Interestingly the previous municipality that Blerick belonged to, Maasbree, once had three different town halls, and the council would rotate among them until in 1904 the Blerick town hall was made the permanent one.

In celebration of Liberation day, daily De Pers summed up 6 of the changes the Nazis made that stuck:

  1. Child support (the Nazis wanted the Arian race to flourish)
  2. Corporate tax (funnily enough, these days our low corporate taxes make us a tax haven, according to the Berserker of Abbottabad)
  3. Central European Time (before that, we had our own sliver of a time zone)
  4. The Frisian islands of Vlieland and Terschelling (formerly of Noord Holland)
  5. Rent control and renter protection (including the right to live in a house forever)
  6. Job protection (including the right to keep a job forever)

In a number of these cases the occupier made into law what was already on the books. In other cases the law was kept because it made sense. For instance, with housing shortages being rather prominent after the war, it made eminent sense to protect renters from price gouging. In such cases the Germans had unwittingly produced both the diseases and the cures.

(Photo of the Blerick town hall by Wikimedia user Torval, some rights reserved)

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May 6, 2011

Art student = 1, Louis Vuitton = the big goose egg, (O)

Filed under: Art,Design,Fashion by Orangemaster @ 10:42 am

The verdict is in: Amsterdam based Danish artist Nadia Plesner who attends the Rietveld academy in Amsterdam successfully defended herself against major French brand Louis Vuitton. Plesner used a depiction of an LV bag in a painting entitled Darfurnica for which Louis Vuitton tried to sue her for 5,000 euro a day for using their image.

“The court in The Hague ruled that Plesner’s right to freedom of expression through her work weighed more heavily than Louis Vuitton’s right to protect its property. The use of the bag in the painting is both functional and in proportion, the court said,” according to Dutchnews. Case closed.

(Link: dutchnews.nl, Photo: Nadia Plesner)

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May 5, 2011

American film expert publishes book on Amsterdam cinemas

Filed under: Film,Literature by Orangemaster @ 10:44 am

Originally from Kansas, Jeffrey Babcock has been living in Amsterdam for over 20 years and often reminisces about how Amsterdam, the city were you could once do anything artistic, has become quite regulated in his time. However, if there’s one person keeping the dream alive and well as far as unknown films are concerned, it’s him. I myself watched a film shot partially in my hometown of Montréal and partially in Amsterdam that I had never ever heard of and was blown away. Babcock gives the audience an explanation beforehand, like the cool teacher at school that probably has the same extra curricular activities as you do.

Together with Rietveld Academy art student Agata Winska, Babcock has published a book entitled ‘The Illicit Cinemas of Amsterdam’, with stories and an interview about the more ‘undergound’ cinemas where Babcock presents films to small yet packed audiences around the city. They purposely made 300 copies of the book, hand bound in Poland and kept the price as low as possible, something Babcock believes in strongly with his easily affordable movie screenings. “Even if I were to up the price by a euro, people would come, but it wouldn’t be the same people. Polish squatters now talk to people from Dutch television station VPRO, which wouldn’t happen if the price went up.” Safe to say, it’s never about the money, it’s always about film.

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May 3, 2011

Louis Vuitton’s ‘valuable’ brands top trash pile

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 4:22 pm

Last Saturday I wrote that I love buying other people’s junk at the flea market, but I have my limits. One person was selling dozens of Louis Vuitton bags on Queen’s Day, heaped together as on a trash pile, unloved and unbought.

A dirty blanket on the upmarket Apollolaan held these ‘valuable’ branded products, yet none of the intellectual property lawyers living there seemed interested in suing the seller for causing the sort of “irreparable damage” and “serious detriment to the name and reputation of Louis Vuitton”* that the company is suing Danish artist Nadia Plesner for. The French company fined Plesner hundreds of thousands of euro last January with the aid of an all too willing Dutch judge.

Plesner of course appealed the decision, and a fresh decision from a fresh judge is expected to arrive tomorrow.

*) Quotes lifted directly from the court order that Louis Vuitton presumably dictated to judge Hensen.

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