Filed under: General,Shows by Orangemaster @ 11:36 am
Dutch comedian Arjen Lubach, known for his comedy show Zondag met Lubach (‘Sunday with Lubach’), was a guest on the Seth Meyers show in New York City last night.
In a good game of Zoek de Nederlander (‘Find the Dutch person’), Lubach has been getting more and more international attention with his punchy, satirical videos, which are very much compatible with American-style humour, such as the ‘American First, Netherlands Second’ video, voiced by Amsterdam-based American-Dutch comedian Greg Shapiro, who in turn did the rounds himself on Dutch talk shows after the video went viral back in January 2017. Oh, and Lubach also did that hilarious video about the NRA (Nonsencal Rifle Addiction).
Why Seth Meyers? Seth Meyers was based in Amsterdam at Boom Chicago back in the 1990s where Shapiro was also a regular. This also goes for Amber Ruffin, an American writer for Seth Meyers, a comedian in her own right and a Boom Chicago member at one point.
Name dropping aside, there’s no legal video to be shared about it yet, but Dutch news site nu.nl has a nice clip of it. I know how we all get excited when someone speaks Dutch on telly in the US.
After a few cities in Canada, it’s now the turn of the United States to embrace the building of a ‘woonerf’, a typical Dutch construct from the 1930s, an area where drivers, cyclists and pedestrians have to share the same space, but where pedestrians always have the right of way.
Ithaca, New York is building what they call a ‘living yard’ (‘woonerf’), with a low speed limit of no more than 10 or 12 mph (16 km/h to 19.2 km/h). Today in the Netherlands the woonerf speed limit is 15 km/h, although a few years ago it was still referred to as ‘stapvoets’, which is a old term from when people rode horses at a slow pace, which would be 6Â km/h if it was really a horse, but not actually possible by car or bike without consequences. However, 15 km/h is still slower than what Ithaca has decided, which to me sounds too fast.
“The whole point is to encourage human interaction; those who use the space are forced to be aware of others around them, make eye contact and engage in person-to-person interactions.” As a North American, the car is always king of the road, but the woonerf forces drivers to realise that it’s not always their space just because there’s a road, which I think is a good thing to learn.
The New Netherland Museum in Albany, New York will soon be saying ‘bon voyage’ to their Half Moon (‘Halve Maen’) replica, originally a Dutch ship from 1609. Owing to financial difficulties, the city of Hoorn, North Holland that already serves as a retirement home for many old vessels, has agreed to care for the 1989 replica, with the museum retaining ownership.
The Half Moon was used for educational purposes, teaching people about explorer Henry Hudson who came to the New World in 1609 for the Dutch East India Company on board the Dutch ship. Nobody knows yet how the ship will actually cross the Atlantic.
“From the moment the keel of the Half Moon was laid, it has been my ambition to see the Half Moon sail in Dutch waters,” said Andrew A. Hendricks, founder and chairman of the New Netherland Museum/Half Moon Replica. “After 25 years of service as the unofficial flagship of the state of New York, the Half Moon will have the opportunity to sail in the Netherlands.”
A reporter from Surinam daily De Ware Tijd has discovered that the document in which former Queen Juliana recognised the independence of Surinam in 1975 has been lost.
Home Affairs Minister Soewarto Moestadja, has started a search and is focussing on three leads. The document that signifies the birth of a nation may be in the vault of the national bank, it may be in the national archive, or it may have been lost to the flames of the fire that destroyed the Ministry of General Affairs during the 1980s.
The Netherlands still has its own copy of the deed of recognition, somewhere.
In 1667 the Netherlands ‘traded’ New York (then New Amsterdam) for Surinam in a treaty that concluded the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In reality both colonies had already been conquered by respectively the English and the Dutch, and the treaty merely cemented the status quo. The independence 318 years later was accompanied by the same lack of dramatics, as Surinam asked for independence in 1973 and received it two years later.
In 2006, Laarman’s Bone Chair revolutionized the design process by using an algorithm to translate the complexity, proportion and functionality of human bone and tree growth into a chair form. The algorithm, originally used by the German car industry, enabled him to reduce and strengthen his designs by optimizing material allocation, weight and stability, while minimizing material input. In his own words, he sculpted “using mother nature’s underlying codes.”
The upcoming exhibition is the culmination of five years of trial and error, exploratory material research and his continuous quest to translate science into functional objects of beauty, now on a monumental scale. His new body of work expands on his core investigations; it includes Skyline Storage, Fractal Bookshelf, Stair Cabinet, and Half Life Lamp, a sustainable lamp made from living cells.
The upcoming exhibition will start March 4 at Friedman Benda in New York.
Four hundred years ago this month, Henry Hudson sailed on a Dutch ship into what became New York Harbor, a journey that inspired traders from the Netherlands to become the first immigrants to New York and establish a tolerant, motley Dutch settlement called New Amsterdam.
[…] While many New Yorkers are unaware of the festivities […].
Times have changed since previous anniversary celebrations. In 1909, there were two weeks of events, forming what was then the biggest citywide celebration New York had seen with millions of participants.
In 1959, the current queen of the Netherlands, then Princess Beatrix, came to New York for the 350th anniversary of Hudson’s arrival, and celebrated with a ticker tape parade.
“The world then was a different world,” Dutch Ambassador Renée Jones-Bos said. “Now there are far more countries. You have to work harder as a country to show what you can do and raise your profile.”
Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 8:15 am
With 16 million people occupying a mere 14,526 square kilometres, the Netherlands is considered a densely populated country. For world-famous architect Rem Koolhaas that isn’t dense enough though. He imagined what the country would look like if the Dutch population density was that of Manhattan (shown here) or Los Angeles.
Strange maps doesn’t seem to mention where they got these images.
Filed under: Art,Nature,Shows by Branko Collin @ 11:07 am
The Keukenhof flower exhibition, what Wikipedia calls “the world’s largest flower garden,” turns 60 this year. Last Wednesday Queen Beatrix opened this sixtieth edition, according to Blik op Nieuws (Dutch), which is themed ‘USA, New Amsterdam – New York, 400’ in honour of the claiming of the region by Henry Hudson in 1609, followed 15 years later by the foundation of New Amsterdam, which is now called New York.
Part of the exhibition is a giant flowerbed depicting the Statue of Liberty, which is not in bloom yet.
Here’s one to help you slide into the weekend with outward poise and heart aflutter. A girl from The Hague called Anouk shot this home video with two of her buddies while in what appears to be a hotel room in New York.
You may have heard yesterday that New York City is celebrating is 400th anniversary and Amsterdam’s Mayor Job Cohen was there to give a speech. You may also have heard about the gift the Dutch are going to build in the form of a pavilion called New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion, designed by Ben van Berkel. It will be built in Battery Park, the Southern most point of Manhattan and “be shaped like a flower or a windmill, depending on your perspective.”
“Pioneers from Amsterdam settled into the Manhattan area and planted the seeds of democracy, entrepreneurial spirit, freedom of expression and freedom of religion in what we now know as New York, the unofficial capital of the world,” Mayor Cohen of Amsterdam said. “Amsterdam and New York share a commitment to quality of life. Amsterdam and New York share the same DNA.”
It doesn’t matter at all that Henry Hudson was an English explorer who just happened to be on a Dutch vessel trying to find a passage to Asia. Location, location, location.
A reporter from Surinam daily De Ware Tijd has discovered that the document in which former Queen Juliana recognised the independence of Surinam in 1975 has been lost. 
With 16 million people occupying a mere 14,526 square kilometres, the Netherlands is considered a densely populated country. For world-famous architect Rem Koolhaas that isn’t dense enough though. He imagined what the country would look like if the Dutch population density was that of Manhattan (shown here) or Los Angeles.
The Keukenhof flower exhibition, what Wikipedia calls “