While we’re picking between pronoscans and grope-downs, people of the Netherlands are laughing up this TSA thing at the STRP art fest with Marnix de Nijs’s installation The Physiognomic Scrutinizer. As you proceed through the scanner, the computer matches your mug to 1 of 250 notorious personalities in its database — serial killers, celebrity druggies, etc. — and then recites all your deeds to the public. It’s a hoot!
A spray painted goat stares at two of the myriad goats slaughtered at Dutch farms to fight Q fever, or Goat Flu as it’s known. |BBC|
Photo by REUTERS/Michael Kooren
With all the weed-stocked coffee shops dotting the country, you’d assume that Dutch police would know the difference between the kind of cannabis that gets you high and hemp, the male plant that sucks for smoking, but is great for fuel, fiber, and a million other things. Not so. Officers descended on what they thought was an illegal ganja farm, but turned out to be an agricultural group’s “officially sanctioned field of harmless hemp.” Authorities had publicly announced the seizure of “more than 47,000 cannabis plants, with an estimated street value of nearly $6.45 million,” before they were alerted to the error. Oops. Read more »
A Dutch arts official is making Dwight Newton, the former Brooklyn Museum employee accused of stealing $600k, look like a real amateur crook. Clemens Kahmann, the former finance head for the Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (Fonds BKVB), is on the run following the discovery that he stole nearly $22 million from the Netherlands’ arts funding organization. |The Art Newspaper|
Like the FBI, the DEA often uses erroneous data and scare tactics to argue against legalizing weed in the United States. They falsely characterize how the liberal policies adopted by the Netherlands have transformed that nation into an oasis of crime and drug abuse, even publishing bogus shit like this on their website: “The increasing use of marijuana is responsible for more than increased crime. It has widespread social implications as well.” Well if that’s true, then why are the Dutch closing eight prisons? This could be the reason: “The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry’s research department expects to continue for some time.” Someone needs to update their site.
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