Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Art Shivers in the Recession

While the Western world is still facing a recession, so does also Old Master art in a mixed up way.  "Not that buyers are pulling out; it is the art owners who are reluctant to part with their pictures.", reports The New York Times. Oddly enough, record prices are set as well as lowest prices:
 "The first of five world auction records was set with a marine by Willem van de Velde the Younger. “Dutch Men-o’ War and Other Shipping in a Calm” was last seen at auction at Phillips London, on June 1, 1822, when it was bought by Abraham Wildey Robarts. ........... Like virtually all his paintings, the Van de Velde Jr. is in mint condition, with its glazes intact. This is a major consideration in the making of a price, particularly in the case of the Dutch artist’s marines. His mastery in rendering luminous skies and their reflections in the sea is only revealed in its full glory when all the nuances are spared the alteration of pigments. The Van de Velde sold for £5.91 million, double its high estimate."
 "A world auction record also was set for Jan Steen when an interior scene featuring card players in frivolous company brought £4.86 million — the price did not even match the low estimate. Such blatant overestimation was not due to some inexplicable hubris on the experts’ part........... It is a dangerous game at which Christie’s and Sotheby’s take turns. If the drying up of supplies continues, auction houses will anyway have to hold only one major sale a year, not two. And that might altogether signal the end of the auction market in this field, because for auctions to attract bidders, a certain pace is indispensable. Otherwise, interest just withers away."  Read more.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Dutch Seek Space for a Growing Appetite for Pork

The Netherlands, a country half the size of the state of Maine with over 16 million people, is home to a pig population of 14 million. To put this in perspective, the U.S. has approximately a population of 65 million pigs in a country with 300 million people.  The New York Times reports about the  space and environmental challenges the Netherlands is facing, being Europe's leading pork producer.
  
"Like pork producers everywhere, Dutch farmers are fighting rising costs by resorting to ever bigger herds and barns, a trend that is reinforced by the petite size of the Netherlands. In recent years, an architectural firm in Rotterdam even proposed skyscrapers for pigs, high-rise barns capable of taking in thousands of animals in very small space. They would even come with balconies so that the hogs could occasionally enjoy fresh air, unlike the pigs in most Dutch barns, which spend their lives indoors."
  
Wyno Zwanenburg, President of the Dutch Pig Farmers Union says " Farmers have no choice but to expand, noting that since 1990, the number of Dutch pig farmers has steadily declined from about 28,000 and is expected to reach about 2,000 in the next few years.

“We’re facing a global challenge,” he said. “And in this emotional discussion, there is some criticism that bigger is always worse than smaller.”  To which I say, if people say there is no other choice than getting bigger, we're having  a major problem.

 Read more.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Academic Fraud by Dutch Researcher

Ships in the Road/Willem van de Velde the younger
The New York Times reports about the academic fraud by noted Dutch psychologist, Diederik Stapel at Tilburg University.


"The psychologist, Diederik Stapel, committed academic fraud in “several dozen” published papers, many accepted in respected journals and reported in the news media, according to a report released on Monday by the three Dutch institutions where he has worked..."

This seems to be the latest example of increased academic fraud and plagiarism. Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara is quoted in this report saying:

“The big problem is that the culture is such that researchers spin their work in a way that tells a prettier story than what they really found. It’s almost like everyone is on steroids, and to compete you have to take steroids as well.” read more

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Dutch Win World Championship Bridge


"Dutch Hosts Are Winners of Bermuda Bowl".....The New York Times reports that
"At the world team championships here on Saturday, much to the delight of hundreds of spectators, the Bermuda Bowl was won by the host nation. In the 128-board final Sjoert Brink, Bas Drijver, Bauke Muller, Simon de Wijs, Ricco van Prooijen and Louk Verhees Jr., with Eric Laurant the nonplaying captain, defeated U.S.A.-2: Daniel Zagorin, Kevin Bathurst, Joe Grue, Justin Lall, John Hurd and Joel Wooldridge, with Curtis Cheek the nonplaying captain. The final score was 300 international match points to 255. Italy was third...." read more

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Dutch Win Baseball World Cup

Dutch Baseball Team Celebrating World Cup
This may be startling news to American baseball fans, but there is a new Baseball World Cup champion, and it’s not the San Francisco Giants, Boston Red Sox or the New York Yankees. It's the Netherlands baseball team that won the 2011 Baseball World Cup, beating Cuba 2-1 in the final played last weekend in Panama City, Panama.  First, something about the Baseball World Cup:  initially known as the Amateur World Series and until 1998 only open to amateur players, has since included professional players (incl. minor league players, although Major League Baseball still does not allow its players to join.) This tournament has grown from its founding in 1938 – when only two teams participated and Great Britain won by beating a team of U.S. college students– to last week’s tournament consisting of 22 countries including................


Tuesday, September 13, 2011

9/11 Remembered

Map of Four Flights on 9/11 (U.S. National Archives)
This month marks the 10th anniversary of September 11,  2001, a time for families, friends and others to reflect on the loss of nearly 3,000 people killed during the ter-rifying attacks on the symbols of  American prosperity and  power. Four planes were hijacked; two destroyed the Twin Towers in New York, one plane dived into the Pentagon in Washington DC, and the other crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. That day was not only a terrible day for the families affected; it marked a watershed in U.S. history. This was the first time ever the U.S. had been attacked on its soil, and at the beginning of the 21st century, this day would be.......

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The End of 648 kHz BBC World Service and of News as We Know it

(Tropic-7's photostream/Flickr)
While driving on a Dutch highway, I'm trying to find the BBC World News on my car radio. I only hear empty sounds, when I suddenly remember the BBC announcement earlier this year that it would end its 648 kHz transmissions of World Service English language radio due to budget cuts.  It was effectively ending direct broadcasts to Europe, and I am now a ‘victim” of this closure. For those not familiar with the BBC World Service, it was founded in 1932 initially focusing on English speakers throughout the British Empire. By now it has reached a reported weekly audience of nearly 190 million people and is broadcasting in 27 languages worldwide. According to the BBC, the World Service’s aim is to be "the world's best-known and most-respected voice in international broadcasting, thereby bringing benefit to the UK, the BBC and to audiences around the world".  Clearly, the BBC World Service has not only succeeded in reaching this goal, but has also played an unique part in ....................





Tuesday, August 30, 2011

How Money Threatens the Future of Soccer

 Samuel Eto'o (Tommy Klumker/Flickr)
U.S. sports fans probably haven’t paid much attention to the latest news in football (as soccer is called outside the U.S.): Cameroon international and Inter Milan striker  Samuel_Eto'o  will be transferred from Italian club Inter Milan to Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala  for a transfer fee of $38.9 million (which is a lot but was dwarfed this season by other transfers such as $42 million for Barcelona striker Fabregas, $60 million for Paris St. Germain player Javier Pastore, and $62 million for Machester City player Segio Aguero).

If Eto’o’s transfer fee is not a record, what makes it so special? First, his annual pay is a record at $28.8 million. That still doesn’t tell the full story. If you have never heard of the Russian football club Anzhi Makhachkala, you are not the only one. It's a club based in Makhachkala, capital of the southern Russian province of Dagestan , quite obscure till it was purchased earlier this year by..............

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

'What's On The Table? - Combatting New York City’s Hunger Crisis

The U.S. is in a hunger crisis, although you may not know. Especially in America's financial and media capital New York City, where approximately 3 million people regularly have trouble affording food (mind you, this is over one third of New York's population of around 8 million people!) 1.4 million people rely on soup kitchens to feed themselves and their families. One in 5 children live in “food insecure” households, a euphemism for hungry families, and one in 6 senior citizens receives meals from emergency food providers.  Last weekend I joined an event organized by...........

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

How Important is the Iowa Straw Poll Really?

Tim Pawlenty in Ames, Iowa
As the presidential elections are again looming, Iowa, located in the American heartland and ranked the 30th state in the U.S with a population of just over three million,( i.e. less than 1 % of the U.S. population), takes on its role as kingmaker of the U.S. presidential elections. But is this role justified or even accurate? Last weekend’s example of its outsized influence was on display with the Ames Straw Poll, which is taken by the Republican Iowans every presidential election since 1979. In this year’s straw poll an impressive 16,892 (!) mostly conservative Republican voters cast their votes, many of whom were bused in and received free tickets and food from the candidates. Winner was ....

Friday, August 12, 2011

Record Breaking Poverty Leads to Poverty Tour

(povertytour.smileyandwest.com)

While one of the wildest weeks in global capital markets is coming to an end, even more economic devastation is going on among the poor in the United States. The most recent U.S. Census data show that 14,3%  of the population or 43,6 million Americans, lived in poverty in 2009, which is the highest percentage in 15 years and the highest number to live in poverty in the 51 years poverty estimates are available. (Poverty is defined as $21,954 for a family of four.) Also,.....






Tuesday, August 9, 2011

When Bears Attack - in Wilderness and on Wall Street



Over the last month, we have witnessed terrifying news about bear attacks in the natural wilderness, and also on Wall Street, proving animal spirits are making our planet more and more dangerous:



Friday, August 5, 2011

Does Anyone Have a Vision for America?

Edgar D. Mitchell (edmitchellapollo14.com)
The first thing that came to mind as I looked at Earth was its incredible beauty. […] It was a majestic sight—a splendid blue    and white jewel suspended against a velvet black sky. […]
 Next I thought of our planet’s life-supporting character. That little    globe of water, clouds and land no bigger than my thumb was home, the haven our spacecraft would seek at the end of our voyage […] Then my thoughts turned to daily life on the planet. With that, my sense of wonderment gradually turned into something close to anguish. Because I realized that at that very moment […] people of Earth were fighting wars, committing murder and other crimes; lying, cheating and struggling for power and status; abusing the environment by polluting the water and air, wasting natural resources, and ravaging the land, acting out of lust and greed; and hurting others through intolerance, bigotry, prejudice and all the things that add up to man’s inhumanity to man. It seemed as though man were totally unconscious of his individual role in—and individual responsibility for—the future of life on the planet.”

These are the words of Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, moonwalker and visionary.  He wrote the above quote in his book Psychic Exploration, published in 1974 just a few years after his visit to the moon. After years of being out of print, this book is now available again and is a testimony to Mitchell’s vision that the world can be a better place and.....






Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Tale of Two Americas: Democrats vs Republicans




                                                         (Bob Englehart/Hartford Courant)
There is a tale of two Americas going on, and I’m not referring to John Edward’s campaign slogan.
Many of us, regular citizens, journalists, politicians or economists, have been witnessing the saga developing in the US for quite some time now. Grown-up men and women, smart enough to ensure their own career as politicians and to convince donors and voters, seem to have lost it completely when it comes to getting anything else done. They are Republicans or Democrats and convinced they are 100% right and the others are 100% wrong. They don't........