July 11, 2008

Virtual train compartment for restless elderly

Filed under: Art,Design,Health by Branko Collin @ 10:28 am

Earlier this year the inmates residents of a nursing home for the elderly called De Bieslandhof in Delft got a virtual train compartment to lounge in. The compartment which consists of a number of seats and screens placed in portrait position was commissioned by the home itself in cooperation with SKOR (Foundation for Art and Public Space). The screens show a Dutch landscape of tree-lined meadows gently rolling by.

Says SKOR:

Groups of residents can have a cup of tea or coffee in De coupé [the name of the objet d’art, translates as The compartment—Branko] as well as receive a hot meal. Moreover, the work seems to have an added therapeutic value since the more restless residents who used to constantly stand in front of closed doors because they wanted to escape from the nursing home, are now calmly enjoying a few hours in De coupé instead.

And the artists, Lino Hellings and Yvonne Dröge Wendel, document the process (Dutch) in their online diary:

We now have a good idea of what the video should look like. 80 % sky with cumulus clouds and 20 % underexposed landscape, preferably rows of trees. The view should be filmed in landscape mode, then cut in two, and twice recorded vertically. The same image is shown mirrored on the other side.

We discover an old steam train between Hoorn and Medemblik. The windows are perfect, as is the speed. We use old socks filled with coffee beans as a camera stand.

Via Toby Sterling. Photo by SKOR / Gert Jan van Rooij.

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July 10, 2008

Students prefer Donald Duck magazine over serious newspaper

Filed under: Comics,Weird by Branko Collin @ 7:43 am

Left-leaning newspaper of record De Volkskrant came to a shocking discovery (Dutch): it’s no longer the students’ darling. Instead, university students are flocking to a magazine they know from their elementary school years, Donald Duck.

The “merry weekly” is the most popular periodical among students, beating magazines and newspapers like Intermediair and NRC.next which consider students and former students to be part of their target audience. So says the Nationaal Studentenonderzoek (National Student Survey) held by marketing agency StudentServices from Rotterdam. The agency questioned a whole campus worth of students (1,775 to be precise).

Editor-in-chief of Donald Duck magazine Thom Roep is not surprised though. “An earlier study already showed that we’re passing magazines like Playboy as a popular men’s magazine,” he told De Volkskrant.

When I was a student our house was subscribed to the Volkskrant. In a “red-pink” town like Nijmegen a subscription to a lefty paper was almost mandatory. As it happened I also read Donald Duck magazine quite a lot but that was because I considered it homework, as I was trying to sell comics scripts to the magazine.

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Baby panda fed by cat in Artis zoo

Filed under: Animals,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:32 am
Baby panda

A baby panda rejected by its mother has been adopted by a domestic cat which is suckling the animal along with its own young, Amsterdam’s Artis zoo said yesterday. “The young panda is doing well under the circumstances. For it to survive, it needs to get enough food and grow. We will see if this is the case over the next few weeks,” the zoo said in a statement.

The animal, an endangered red panda, would need to be suckled by the cat for at least a few weeks, it said, adding that it was not unique for a wild animal to be adopted by a domestic one. The panda and another sibling were initially accepted by their mother but a day later were found to have been abandoned. They were also suffering from hypothermia.

“A cat belonging to one of the zookeepers had just given birth and so we decided to try to get it to suckle the pandas,” the statement said. The second panda, was too weak when it was placed with the ca and did not survive. Red pandas, which are only slightly larger than domestic cats, are an endangered species found mostly in the eastern Himalayas. Many zoos around the world have breeding programmes.

(Link: news.yahoo.com, photo cyberpresse.ca)

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July 9, 2008

Biggest indoor golf venue to be built “somewhere in the Netherlands”

Filed under: Architecture,Sports by Branko Collin @ 7:42 am

One John S. Standing is planning on opening the world’s largest indoor golf centre in 2010, “somewhere in the Netherlands.” The building, shaped like a golf club, is designed by architects Zwarts & Jansma from Amsterdam who’ve worked on large sports venues before. The “head” would house the golfing facilities whereas the “shaft” would contain a hotel.

Some 20 golf simulators, a rooftop driving range with 34 bays, a restaurant, a shop, and 14,000 square meters of synthetic grass to practice one’s short game complete the picture. The centre would be called Indoor Golf Arena. According to Gizmag.com, “the location of the center has not yet been finalized, but […] talks are underway with local councils in The Netherlands […] to establish a site for the facility which is expected to attract up to 150,000 visitors a year.”

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July 8, 2008

Computer key shaped candy

Filed under: Art,Design,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 7:04 am

Unfortunately, this cool keyboard candy is already sold out, although both the geek and salty black liquorice lover in me are screaming “me want”! My dentist would undoubtedly agree with Amsterdam based artist Peter Luining and his decision to limit his run though — I remember pulling my own milk tooth once with black liquorice, it’s that good, by which I mean bad. Trading under the name Ctrl Alt Del, Luining seems to have limited his packages to exactly those three keys. Which seems a pity. I am sure I am not the only one who could have eaten a whole keyboard.

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July 7, 2008

Germans students in NL cost millions of euro

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:16 am
Grad hat American style

According to a report published last week in het Financieele Dagblad (FD), the Netherlands pays about 100 million euro for German students to study at the university level in the Netherlands, while Germany pays but a fraction of the costs as few Dutch students study in Germany. In 2007, some 16,000 German students were studying here while some 1,700 Dutch students did the same in Germany. Back in 2002, there were some 5,000 German students. The FD explains that German students study in the Netherlands for the quality of the education and because classes are given in English. The Dutch avoid German schools because classes are given in German. Studying abroad is also more prestigious and the Dutch universities attract a better class of student by offering degrees in English. But yeah, that’s a helluvalot of cash for knowledge that won’t even profit the Dutch economy afterwards.

And there I go off on a tangent and leave you with the question that haunted my university studies: is a student the product or client of a university? If you’re a product, then you should find the best possible study as you will be judged for the university you attended, not just your diploma. If you’re a client, as in you pay big to go to school, you have the right to tell the university what you want exactly and get it.

(Link: fok.nl)

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July 5, 2008

Zone 5300, Summer 2008

Filed under: Comics,Weird by Branko Collin @ 1:43 pm

Who’s heard of Lian Ong recently? The comics artist received aclaim with her album Horizon in 1998, winning an award at the Stripdagen Haarlem. The comics book took 8 years to create, and she didn’t feel like repeating that stunt again, so she became a Tai-Chi teacher.

Another (sigh) autobiographical story by Simon Spruyt, this time about his carreer as a comic artist-god (illustration right). Revealing.

Fool’s Gold is looking for subsidies to bring out a CD with their large collection of gay songs, and are asking readers who know which ways to walk toward the state’s purse to help them out. This issue was the first time in years that Fool’s Gold writes something I’d read about before on the web (the phonautogram), a clear indication of what a good nose the two editors have for the weird and the wonderful—or a clear indication that I surf the wrong websites.

10 bonafide ways to lose your punk credibility. Number 7: Run for mayor of San Francisco (Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedies). Finish behind a drag queen called Sonic Boom Boom.

Graphical biography in which the devil tells the life story of American writer and explorer W.B. Seabrook, alleged eater of man flesh, sexual deviant, inventor of the word “wow,” and popularizer of zombies. Written and drawn by two of the magazine‘s editors, Tonio van Vugt and Marcel Ruijters.

Detectives should stay away from time travel (illustration left), that would save us a lot of problems. In Joshua Peeters’ De Rechtvaardige Rechters (The Just Judges) our heroes who do not look like another staple of Flemish comics—and we’ll keep denying it till you believe us—try and retrieve the famous panel by the Van Eyck brothers.

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July 4, 2008

Phone booth to disappear from streets

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:02 am

Having gotten permission from the government, KPN, the Dutch phone company, is going to reduce the number of its already less familiar green triangular phone booths, reports Blik op Nieuws (Dutch). Until now the government obliged the former state monopolist to provide one phone booth per 5,000 citizens in towns with more than 5,000 inhabitants.

Use of the KPN phone booths dropped about 76% between 2000 and 2006. A whopping 95% of the people have stopped using the booths altogether, preferring to use one of the 17 million mobile phones instead (out of a population of 16 million), according to the news site.

I remember phone booths being ubiquitous, square and something other than green (bright red or yellow, I forget—this was in the 1970s). To me it never seemed there were many of the newer models to begin with. KPN is apparently going to keep a couple of booths around, for instance where they believe the elderly still need them.

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July 3, 2008

Sixties slaughterhouse film saved from oblivion

Filed under: Animals,Film,Food & Drink,History by Orangemaster @ 8:01 am
Meat

Dutch television station VPRO has found an old film from the 1960s in their archives depicting the live slaughtering of cows in an Amsterdam abbatoir. The film ‘Vleesch’ (old Dutch spelling of ‘vlees’, which means ‘meat’) is a five-minute film made by vegetarian filmmmaker Wim T. Schippers, who is known for many things including the voices of Ernie, Kermit and more on the Dutch version of Sesame Street.

Long story short, the film was originally banned because it was not suitable for children. It was postponed a few times and again deemed unsuitable for children. Eventually, some child psychiatrists viewed the movie and said it was fine to let kids watch it. However, the film was never shown. Until now.

‘Vleesch’, made on 9 October 1967, is now being shown for the very first time. The VPRO has also brought out a DVD with this and other lost bits of archives from the same era, albeit surely less straightforward.

Before anyone starts a discussion about how horrible this is you’ve been warned: a cow is being killed in this film so that people will eat it. I glanced at the film myself.

See the film for yourself: Vleesch

(Link: vleesmagazine.nl)

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July 2, 2008

RSI not related to excessive computer use

Filed under: Health,Technology by Branko Collin @ 7:34 am

Geeking out does not necessarily lead to repetitive strain injury. A study by Stefan IJmker at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam shows that it doesn’t matter how long or often you sit behind a PC, these factors do not lead to RSI. Instead, a combination of factors that are all members of bad job syndrome, such as little appreciation and little variation, are the great sick-makers. A history of RSI also significantly increases the chances of the injury returning.

IJmker tracked 2,000 office workers for two years using forms and software that registered how much time subjects spent on tasks.

Earlier studies did show a connection between the amount of computer use and RSI, but almost all of these studies relied on having subjects report on their own usage patterns. IJmker’s research also shows that people who got RSI tended to overestimate how much they used the computer. The researcher will defend his thesis today.

Source: Blik op Nieuws.

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