Tunnels no Minasan no Okage Desu is a Japanese game show where contestants strike poses to fit through cutouts in pink foam walls. International reproductions of this game show reveal much about national character; reproductions exist in Italy, Russia, France, Denmark, Hong Kong, Korea, and Australia.
posted on Aug 13, 2008 - View this thread

Denmark: Flush With Energy.
posted on Aug 10, 2008 - View this thread

Viking invasion ends as longship sails home. The Sea Stallion From Glendalough, a replica Viking longboat (previously), is returning to Denmark.
posted on Jun 30, 2008 - View this thread

Natasja Saad, born to a Danish mother and a Sudanese father was a Danish rapper and reggae singer, about to achieve international break through. She died last week in a car accident near Kingston, Jamaica
posted on Aug 3, 2007 - View this thread

Else Marie Pade (b. 1924) is a phenomenon in the history of Danish music. As a child she was often ill and bedridden. She would listen to the sounds around her... on the stairs, from the yard and the room next to hers. This is where her audio universe began. During the Second World War, she was arrested by the Gestapo and placed in solitary confinement. Rather than despair, she began composing music on the bare prison walls, where she scratched the notes with the fasteners on her garters. After the war and her discovery of the concrete music of Pierre Schaeffer and the French avant-garde, she realized that the sounds resembled those she had heard in childhood, and that this was the music she really wanted to compose. Read a long interview with Else Marie Pade here and listen to her collected works here. (Last link in Danish. Left column is production year, middle column is title. Click the bit rates on the right to listen to each work.)
posted on Jul 30, 2007 - View this thread

"I'm a control freak-- but I was not in control." Lars von Trier made his latest movie without a cameraman. The Boss of It All (trailer), a comedy, was made with "Automavision", allowing a computer to decide when to tilt, pan, or zoom. The film also employs Lookey, a game that challenges the viewers to spot objects that don’t belong in a scene. The first viewer in Denmark to identify all the Lookeys correctly wins a cash prize and a chance to be an extra in von Trier’s next film.
posted on Jul 4, 2007 - View this thread

Longboat! The Sea Stallion, a reconstruction of a ship scuttled off Roskilde will sail from Denmark to Dublin, where tests on timbers from the wreck show the original was built in the mid-eleventh century. (Pillaged from a centre of Irish learning)
posted on Jun 30, 2007 - View this thread

Guide to the Danish Golden Age
posted on Feb 10, 2007 - View this thread

The King's Kunstkammer - en vogue in Renaissance Europe, kunstkammers were status symbols of kings, vast collections of art, curiosities, and scientific and natural objects. This is a partial reconstruction of the Royal Danish Kunstkammer, established by King Frederik III in the mid-1600s. Exploring the collection's 250 objects offers insight into princely preoccupations of the era.
posted on Nov 22, 2006 - View this thread

The Danish Road Safety Council is a private association of authorities and national organisations in Denmark. The number of member organisations is currently 42. The Council has existed since 1935. The Council works to increase public road safety through information and traffic education. We aim for the public to gain knowledge and understanding of the aspects of road safety. The Council works to sustain road safe conduct by means of campaigns, consulting and the production of instruction blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
This movie was made by the Danish Road Safety Council and aims to draw attention to speed signs and speed limits in Denmark. (embedded movie, nsfw) (direct movie link)
posted on Nov 7, 2006 - View this thread

Stateline windfarm in Oregon/Washington is the largest windfarm in the world (300 MW). Denmark's Nysted windfarm is the world's largest off-shore windfarm (165 MW). Ireland plans to build a 520 MW off-shore windfarm, while the London Array would produce a massive 1000 MW and be a major feaure in the English Channel. Norway announced a 1,400 MW windfarm in 2005. The world's largest single wind turbine (5 MW).. the worlds largest solar farm (300 MW) planned for New Mexico would cover over 3,000 acres.
posted on Apr 30, 2006 - View this thread

When Iranian paper Hamshahri (in Persian) launched a contest for Holocaust cartoons, an Israeli group responded in turn with a contest of their own for cartoons that make fun of Jews. Too bad it closed yesterday, or the Dutch branch of the AEL could submit theirs. (WARNING: some of the linked content may be offensive to readers' ethnicities, cultures, religions, or tastes.)
posted on Mar 4, 2006 - View this thread

Due to the insanity of the 'cartoon riots' one man takes it upon himself to support Denmark
posted on Feb 20, 2006 - View this thread

This great picture was taken in the French Pig-Squealing Championships. This pic was alleged by Danish imams to be offensive to Muslims, and was included in the recent tour of the Middle East. The Brussels Journal asks some pointed questions. The Beeb belatedly explains - and (sorta) apologises.
posted on Feb 9, 2006 - View this thread

Newsfilter : Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor to the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri, puts out a call for revisionist Holocaust cartoons. Israeli settlers may plan to riot. Well, continue rioting, anyway.
posted on Feb 6, 2006 - View this thread

Muslim world goes apeshit over Danish cartoon. Saudi Arabia and Libya have withdrawn their ambassadors to Denmark, which issued safety warnings to its citizens travelling in Muslim countries after threats by militant Islamic groups and a boycott of Danish goods
posted on Jan 31, 2006 - View this thread

Pioneering instrumental-rock guitarist Link Wray - one of the original rockabilly artists, credited with having invented the "power chord", which has become the basis for modern rock and alternative music - died this week at the age of 76. You'd probably know him from his song 'Rumble', used on the 'Pulp Fiction' soundtrack. The English-speaking media hasn't picked up on the story yet, but various blogs, the Spanish and Danish press - translation here - and various music messageboards were all over the story 24 hours ago.
posted on Nov 20, 2005 - View this thread

Should a rapist be given a harsher sentence if his victim dies as a result of the rape? A Campobello, South Carolina teen has been accused of a rape in his neighborhood. Now the victim has died, possibly because of injuries to her internal organs. And the charges are being upgraded, but prosecutors aren't looking for the death penalty.

Cruelty isn't just an American phenomenon-- a Danish caretaker has eaten some of his charges and the law can't touch him.
posted on Jun 20, 2005 - View this thread

Erik Petersen. Danish newspaper photographer. Died in 1997. He took a number of pictures around WWII. He never developed them. Fortunately, sixty years later, someone else has. Now they can be found in a book. Here's a bit of bloggery as well.
posted on Jun 2, 2005 - View this thread

"I am an American, so that is why I make films about America. America is sitting on our world, I am making films that have to do with America (because) 60% of my life is America. So I am in fact an American, but I can't go there to vote, I can't change anything. We are a nation under influence and under a very bad influence… because Mr. Bush is an asshole and doing very idiotic things."
Lars Von Trier introduces his new film at the Cannes Film Festival: «Manderlay» picks up where «Dogville» left off, with the character originated by Nicole Kidman -- now played by Bryce Dallas Howard -- stumbling onto a plantation that time forgot, where slavery still operates in the 1930s. The film (5 MB .pdf file, official pressbook) ends, as Dogville did, with David Bowie’s Young Americans played over a photomontage of images that range from a Ku Klux Klan meeting to the Rodney King beating, George Bush at prayer and Martin Luther King at his final rest, American soldiers in Vietnam and the Gulf, the Twin Towers. More inside.
posted on May 16, 2005 - View this thread

Simon Hoegsberg's latest project involved stopping passersby and asking what they were thinking at exactly that moment. These are their thoughts and portraits.
posted on Jan 21, 2005 - View this thread

The Law of Jante (Janteloven) was codified by the Danish-born novelist Aksel Sandemose while he was living in Norway. The Law comprises ten 'commandments', and describes an unspoken code of conformity that Sandemose felt as a stifling inhibitive influence in the town where he grew up. Later commentators have used the term more generally to refer to the anti-individualist tendencies that have traditionally pervaded Scandinavian culture, and to denote 'the dark side of egalitarianism'. Of course, the Law needn't be interpreted in such a negative light, and egalitarianism has its good side too, the difficult question being: do the benefits of equality make it worthwhile suffering the strictures of Janteloven?
posted on Oct 27, 2004 - View this thread

The architect as total designer. In 1959, Danish architect Arne Jacobsen shattered paradigms aplenty with his SAS Hotel (represented now by its last remaining original room, the legendary 606). The hotel was intended as a single field of experience; from seating and lighting (more here and here) to table service, Jacobsen was intimately involved in almost every aspect of the hotel's physical interface with its guests. The result is a work of deeply pleasing harmony that still looks fresh some four and a half decades later. MeFites in Copenhagen: how's it holding up?
posted on Oct 6, 2004 - View this thread

Heterosexual marriage rates in Denmark increased after adoption of same-sex marriage, study shows. "In the end, the Scandinavian and Dutch experience suggests that there is little reason to worry that heterosexual people will flee marriage if gay and lesbian couples get the same rights," Badgett concluded, in a report published by The Institute for Gay & Lesbian Strategic Studies. Much of the report covers the same ground which Hoover Institution professor Stanley Kurtz testified on before the US Congress in April this year, drawing almost diametrically opposite conclusions.
MORE FROM THE PRESUMABLY STRAIGHT KURTZ HERE; FROM THE POSSIBLY GAY BADGETT HERE.
posted on Aug 26, 2004 - View this thread

"The people of Dogville are proud, hypocritical and never more dangerous than when they are convinced of the righteousness of their actions" (NYT link) "The movie is, of course, an attack on America—its innocence, its conformity, its savagery—though von Trier is interested not in the life of this country (he’s never been here) but in the ways he can exploit European disdain for it." (The New Yorker). Lars Von Trier's new movie, Dogville, is under attack from critics who consider it anti-American. Von Trier, of course, has never been to the US but he counters that he knows more about U.S. culture through modern media than, say, the makers of "Casablanca' knew about Morocco. Kafka hadn't been to Amerika either. Should non US-ian artists leave America alone if they've never been there? Von Trier says that "in my own country, I'm considered anti-Danish - again, that's more about politics than issues of nationality." (more inside)
posted on Mar 22, 2004 - View this thread

Artnode: Contemporary Danish Art
posted on Feb 3, 2004 - View this thread

Christiania, the spunky Danish autonomous zone near Copenhagen, may soon be shut down after 32 years of self governance. "I built my own house here. I have two young children who are third generation Christianites. I am not going to give all that up without a struggle."
posted on Dec 31, 2003 - View this thread

The Little Mermaid Explodes. This is only the latest in a long series of indignities suffered by Denmark's national symbol. Why are people so into this sort of thing?
posted on Sep 17, 2003 - View this thread

Yippie. Denmark beats US in world cup hockey. We have not participated in the world cup since a 0-47 loss to Canada in 1949.
posted on Apr 27, 2003 - View this thread

What a bunch of little nazis. A scout leader in Denmark has been reprimanded for leading the kids (ages 11-14) in a theme based game of tag, with the theme being Nazi's vs. Jews. This included dressing the Jews in yellow Star of David outfits and a sign with the words "Arbeit macht frei". Danish Metafilter members, explain yourselves!!
posted on Jan 24, 2003 - View this thread

The man who wrote 10,000 Grooks (grooks, grooks, grooks), Piet Hein, was also the inventor of Hex and the creator of the Soma Cube. In the design world, he is most famous for the SuperEllipse, a figure that rivals Buckminster Fuller's geodesics in ingenuity, an aesthetic balance between a circle and a square, and a mathematical figure which has been used to design a square in Stockholm. From the SuperEllipse, you can get the SuperEgg, a strange solid which will unexpectedly balance on one end and has been mistaken for an alien artifact.
posted on Oct 28, 2002 - View this thread

happy birthday jakob Though we all like to scream about his pronouncements or catch him when he makes an error in his own rules, it's time everyone who has a job relating to human factors to acknowledge that Jakob Nielsen's tireless promoting of usability is very likely the reason our bosses or our clients are willing to consider allowing usability testing. Thanks guy! Wish I could afford to buy you that rogers and hamerstein collection...
posted on Aug 20, 2001 - View this thread

Red Bull cocktails giving wings, sending some to heaven. The Swedish are more than a little upset and Norway, Denmark, and France won't sell it because of its caffiene content.
posted on Jul 15, 2001 - View this thread

Copenhagen is one of the cleanest cities I have ever visited, so what does this mean for the rest of us? My wife and I were a bit troubled when our house guest told us he flicked his butt from our balcony; it's likely that his flying butt did not land on the street--more likely on the balcony two floors below. Quelle horreur!
posted on Jun 6, 2001 - View this thread

The U.S. Should buy Greenland I often wonder why politicians and bureaucrats don't act on the ideas of columnists. Maybe because it would be, in the words of Sir Humphrey Appleby, "courageous" of them to do so.
posted on May 17, 2001 - View this thread