Sunday 18 September 2005
My body is back home in Amsterdam from a week full of heaven and hell. My mind is still caught somewhere in between.
It's Saturday, September 10, and cameraman Albert is up high on a Swiss alp filming the arriving Challengers.
On Sunday we had to floor it, driving from Switzerland through Italy to Slovenia, to keep within shooting distance of the most spectacular cars.
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05:29 AM | category: Culture | Comment(s) (0)
Monday 5 September 2005
Last weekend belonged to Mystery Land. It was my first time and I won't soon forget it.
04:10 AM | category: Culture |
Sunday 17 July 2005
One of the main reasons I work with
ID&T is the international potential of dance music. I witnessed that potential Saturday night first hand in Gelsenkirchen, in the Arena Auf Schalke at
Sensation White Germany. The German dance fans were very responsive to the music and the show and the overall atmosphere was extremely pleasant and positive. Sensation White in Belgium was met with a similar enthusiastic response. Leaving at 11.30 pm and returning 7.30 am the next morning was all worth it.
There's light at the end of the tunnel...
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03:47 PM | category: Culture |
Sunday 10 July 2005
Entering the Arena for
Sensation Black tonight, the scene resembled the set of a science fiction movie.
Up in the royal lounge, a proud father Cor Stutterheim chats with his son Duncan.
You gotta have lasers. Lots of lasers. Check the videos:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5 and
6
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09:01 AM | category: Culture |
Wednesday 6 July 2005
Some shots made with my cell phone at the Amsterdam Arena last Saturday night. Better pictures are
here,
here and
here.
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01:46 AM | category: Culture |
Monday 9 May 2005
This and
this just can not be real... but it is. (Thanks to
Marza)
04:10 AM | category: Culture |
Sunday 8 May 2005
President Bush flew back from Eastern Europe for
a brief visit to Holland, where he visited the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial and delivered
this speech. Exactly a year ago I spent a weekend at
the same hotel the president stayed yesterday, also followed by
a visit to the cemetary at Margraten. Today was a day without politics, where the people who died for our freedom were properly honoured and remembered.
05:32 PM | category: Culture |
Tuesday 25 January 2005
And
this luxury suite even comes fully catered!
12:55 AM | category: Culture |
Thursday 4 November 2004
The results of the 2004 US presidential elections as received through e-mail.
02:21 AM | category: Culture |
Friday 15 October 2004
No Child Left Behind should broaden its scope and include artists. The Dutch most prominent cultural contribution to the world before
Big Brother has been
desecrated.
12:58 PM | category: Culture |
Monday 2 August 2004
The CEO of Rentokil got fired for an
extremely boring Powerpoint-presentation. Let this be a warning for all the Powerpoint-jockeys out there...
12:51 AM | category: Culture |
Wednesday 16 June 2004
"When I'm sitting in my car in front of my office, talking to my mother on the cell phone, here are the songs I play while she's talking so I don't have to hear her."
- Adam Sandler explains the inclusion of Paula Abdul's Straight Up in his playlist on
iTunes.
10:10 PM | category: Culture |
Thursday 8 April 2004
 Venture capitalist
Fred Wilson added Google AdSense to his blog a couple of weeks ago, as he is interested in contextual advertising. I am also experimenting with blogs, actually produce one of the
most popular commercial blogs in Holland, and I'd like to learn more about contextual advertising as well. Fred donates his AdSense proceeds to
The Grameen Foundation, that provides 'tiny loans, called "micro-credit" to poor women all over the developing world. The women use these loans to start businesses such as farming, making food, tailoring, etc.' Sounds like a great cause. (By the way, interesting to see that a vc picks a charity that gives out loans, not gifts or grants. I wonder about the term sheets ;-)
I will be donating all proceeds of this blog to
War Child, an organisation that for reasons unknown to me does not yet seem to have a presence in the United States. Here is some background on War Child:
Children are amongst the first casualties of any armed conflict, always the most vulnerable and innocent of victims. In the last decade alone 1.5 million children have died in wars. Four million have been disabled and a further 10 million traumatised. The severe psychological wounds that war inflicts on children can scar them for life, crippling the very generations that must one day rebuild their devastated countries. For the future peace of the world we must do everything in our power to help these war children.
The central theme behind War Child is that you can take a child out of war, but how do you take the war out of the child? Essentially, War Child helps kids that have lived through a war, become kids again. Through singing and dancing and playing games, children that have lost almost every sense of what it's like to be a child, learn to play and discover the joys of being a kid again. The transformation these kids go through is simply amazing.
A friend of mine, whose business acumen I deeply respect, sits on the board of War Child. He has thoroughly checked out the spending and efficiency of their organisation and it's about as mean and lean as it can be. For example, when Dutch pop star and War Child ambassador Marco Borsato
visits Afghanistan for War Child, he pays his own flight, stay and everything: there's no pampering. I find those kind of things vital when judging any charity, and most of them don't pass the test. But every dollar you send to War Child, is a dollar well spent. Here's how
you can help.
And of course, you can always start a blog and donate the proceeds to War Child.
03:41 AM | category: Culture |
 For about six months I have had
a blog about media and technology. In Dutch. While that may appear weird to those very rare individuals that have not yet mastered the language of love, I had a good reason to do so: I figured that since the Netherlands (that province of Denmark where we speak Dutch)
is running southern Iraq as part of the not-quite-so-global-coalition, we'd promote Dutch among the natives and essentially establish a new colony there. A young nation starving for knowledge, loaded with oil, gets on the internet, reads my blog and donates. (Hey, the donation model worked for
Glenn Reynolds.) The Dutch have had success with this strategy to promote our language around the world before: how did you think the word 'apartheid' became the only Dutch word everybody in the world knows? Because our great forefathers instilled those Boeren in South Africa with some wholesome, traditional Dutch values. It was passed on for generations. I'd go as far as to call it one of the first true forms of
viral marketing.
Anyway, it looks like our boys have hit
a little snag in Iraq. They'll be taking it a little bit slower with the cultural indoctrination program, I presume. So for the time being, I'll be blogging in English to maximize my audience. Next up: blogging in Arabic.
03:07 AM | category: Culture |
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