Daily Flatland 15: Molehills

I have no time for a long comment, I'm off to look at the snow and the seagulls!

Daily Flatland 14: Mountains of Den Haag

Visited the Haague, a town that started as a hunting residence for a local count back in 1230. The name has nothing to do with Hags or Witches, instead it was originally called "The Count's Woods" - "Des Graven hage".

Daily Flatland 13: Funky Cubes

A factoid about the cube houses that I find fascinating (from the wikipedia article): each cube apartment is approximately 100 square meters, of which half is practically unusable due to the angles of the walls.

Daily Flatland 12: Lego Houses

Time is short these last few days, so just enjoy the pretty pictures! :)

Oh, and also enjoy the story of legos, so the documentaries won't be just about pretty birds and bees.

Daily Flatland 11: The Plattenbau

... umm ... no extra comment today! Might expand this bit tomorrow. Woke up with a sore throat and wasn't too inclined to come up with anything interesting today. More later!

Daily Flatland 10: The Wall

From destruction, creation ... or something like that. This is going somewhere ... (I was a bit late with this one, more tomorrow!) ... but for now, something Pink!

Daily Flatland 9: More on Architecture

It is an interesting point, how property taxes affect architecture. I wonder how much work has been done on this point. The Flatland example of narrow houses due to street-front taxes is one example, overhanging medieval and renaissance buildings due to plot taxes is another. A more modern example is the Greek example of the "unfinished" and "unroofed" house to avoid paying taxes, which are only levied on finished houses.

I would think that a modern approach should involve property taxes based on energy-efficiency. However, that may be a topic for another time ... taxes will keep, along with death. A slightly related documentary might be interesting, however. The topic: how many people can live on Earth? Something that seems important to the heavily compacted (so they say) Flatlanders.

Daily Flatland 8: A Peaty Diversion

Literally dirt farming. I never realized that it's not a joke--people used to make a living by digging up peat, which helped power the early bits of the industrial revolution, provided an incentive for drying out marshy bogs, provided heating for the not-so-very-rich, brough about the building of canals, and ... as a special effect ... helped lower large areas of Flatland so much that flooding became severe enough to result in the loss of quite a few towns and villages! Literally, certain areas of Flatland dug themselves into the sea. Some of them cannot be seen right now, because they are ... a bit damp.

Daily Flatland 7: Architecture 1

An isometric illustration of an archaic native peat-diggers hut with living quarters for ruminant quadruped used for heating of quarters and provision of milk and moos. Now, admittedly, it's been a while since I saw a reconstruction of such a house in Drenthe, but this was pretty much it--a tiny hut sunk into the turf. The combination of small houses, world war II and an expanding population led to housing such as that which I occupy now--the modernist apartment block--but that will be dealt with in a few days.

On a completely different note, a history of another peat extracting country, quite close to Flatland:

Daily Flatland 6: Medical Insurance

Well, it's that time of the year in Flatland. Here medical insurance seems to be tied to calendar years and the individual, rather than a person's employment status (which I assumed was normal). So: time to pick an insurer next week! Let's hope eye-patches are covered.

This seems to be a pretty boring topic (though for some reason it gets people quite riled up), so I'm going to make this post more fun by recommending more history of the Mediterranean. Yes, still missing bright sunny weather here!

Look at those shadows! I haven't seen the like of those in quite a few days ...