February 13, 2013

Staying in shape to catch thieves and beat the enemy

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 1:08 pm

A group of seven women in Leiden were doing an exercise bootcamp in a park when a thief ran off with the instructor’s handbag. The seven women took off after him, and one of the women caught him. While they called the cops, the man got away and the group of women ran after him and caught him again. He was arrested.

Segueing into other bootcamp-related news, Dutch newspaper AD says that about 3,300 Dutch soldiers are not fit enough to go on missions, claiming that one third, 15,500 out of 43,000, do not even show up for their obligatory physical fitness test. The test consists of 20 press-ups (push-ups), 25 sit-ups and being able to run 2,250 metres. Other tests around the world are much harder than this one and even I can do this test easily.

Why bother being in the army if you can’t defend your country because you’re out of shape? The women’s bootcamp in Leiden could run circles around you, losers.

(Link: nos.nl, www.ad.nl, Photo of Getting fit by Fit Approach. Used under the terms of GNU FDL)

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July 31, 2012

Commuters watching the Olympic gymnastics program at Leiden railway station

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 4:20 pm

On other days, the central area of the Leiden railway station is a funnel through which the Dutch railways tries to hurry its customers as quickly as possible past fast food concession stands while at the same time relieving them of as much money as possible.

Yesterday, however, people took a few minutes between trips to catch an event of the London 2012 Olympics as shown on two big screens hung by the rail road operator from the ceiling. Wooden benches, fake grass, cheerful umbrellas, and table cloths had turned the place into ‘London Park’, as Dutch railways call it.

Metro notes that the railway stations Utrecht Centraal, Den Haag Centraal, Eindhoven and ’s Hertogenbosch have also received the London Park treatment, albeit at a smaller scale.

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July 8, 2012

Turkish brothers win prestigious herring award

Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 1:47 pm

A herring stand in Leiden.

There are few things more Dutch than herring and xenophobia, which makes today’s catch deliciously ironic. Turkish-run, Leiden-based fishmongers Atlantic won the AD Herring Test 2012.

Brothers Abdullah and Umut Tagi were the only fish sellers to score ten points this year.

AD writes:

The first place in the national herring test is the ultimate revenge for the brothers Tagi: “We were always ‘those Turks’ to the rest of the trade, at least, that is how it felt. We have definitely made a mark now that we have won the most important prize there is. […] We are fighting a battle, and that battle is yet to be won. That will only be the case once every Dutch man and woman can enjoy the real thing, traditionally prepared herring.”

The brothers Tagi have been ‘in fish’ all their lives. Fresh out of Turkey, 10-year-old Abdullah helped clear fish waste at the The Hague market, while his mother—pregnant of Umut—cleaned herring in Scheveningen. Today the brothers run two stores in Leiden and The Hague, and a wholesale business that specializes in hand-cleaned herring.

Meanwhile the folks over at DutchNews.nl would like to know, how do you feel about raw herring?

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December 11, 2011

Battery pack disguised as classic Dutch bicycle repair kit

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 1:04 pm

Leiden-based American blogger Alicia likes long bike trips (50+ km), and the batteries of her smart phone tend to run out on these day-long rides, so her boyfriend made her a battery pack that can charge her phone twice. For the casing he used the box of a Simson cycling patch repair kit. These kits have been around as long as I can remember.

Simson was a brand of glue founded in 1881 in Groningen by Jehuda Levi Wijnberg (Wikipedia dixit). In 1989 the company was sold to German competitor Stahlgruber. Simson repair kits are sold almost exclusively in the Netherlands.

(Photos by Alicia, used with permission. Disclaimer: although I still have a Simson box, I refill it with the contents of the competing Hema kit. Orangemaster is a Brompton folding bike rider, and its anybody’s guess really how these people fix their flat tires.)

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October 8, 2011

Erwin Olaf’s painting-like photos of the liberation of Leiden (1574)

Filed under: History,Photography by Branko Collin @ 12:22 pm

Look at these great photos Erwin Olaf made in celebration of the liberation of Leiden from an 11 month siege by Spanish forces in 2011.

The city still celebrates the liberation each year. Olaf made nine photos on request of Leiden University (the oldest in the Netherlands) and Museum De Lakenhal, some of them portraits, other still lifes. The largest, a historical ‘painting’, is on permanent display in De Lakenhal, the other eight are exhibited until January 8 in the university library. The photos are inspired by paintings of the time.

You can also view the photos at a digital exhibit of the University of Leiden:

The historical piece was shot on July 6, 7 and 8 in Peter’s Church in Leiden. The equipment had been installed on the fifth. On that same day Olaf took a test photo using stand-in models. He had picked the camera angle during an earlier visit to the church. […] The photo was shot in three parts, spread out over the three shooting days. First the right hand side, then the middle, and finally the left hand side.

NRC has a short ‘making of’ picture gallery.

Erwin Olaf is a former journalism student who quickly turned to art and commercial photography. He gained fame and notoriety with his portraits of fat people and midgets in bondage outfits. On October 13 he will receive the Johannes Vermeerprijs, a state award founded in 2008 to “honour and further stimulate remarkable talent”. The award consists of 100,000 euro.

Leiden was liberated in 1574 by the terrorists of Willem van Oranje, the so-called geuzen or gueux. The French word means beggars, a name given to the Dutch nobles that wanted to separate from Charles V’s European empire. The geuzen breached dikes around the city, after which the Spanish army fled. A young orphan called Cornelis Joppenszoon left the city on October 3 and went to a Spanish army camp, which he found deserted. There he also found a kettle containing hutspot (mashed potatoes, carrots and onions). He then alerted the citizens. In the early morning the geuzen entered the city bringing herring and white bread.

Using water as a defense was seen as a viable way to maintain Amsterdam as a national redoubt until the invention of the tank. The floodable area was called Fortress Holland.

Not unrelated: Modern still lifes by Richard Kuiper.

(Photos: Erwin Olaf, 2011, Leidens beleg en ontzet (1574). Link: Historiek.net. Link tip: the Digital Diva.)

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June 12, 2011

96 year old WW II hero admits to post-war killing

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 12:43 pm

“During one of the first days of this year” Atie Ridder-Visser sent a letter to the mayor of Leiden admitting that she had shot dead Felix Guljé on March 1, 1946, mayor of Leiden Henri Lenferink reported last Wednesday.

In the final years of the occupation (1944,1945) Ridder-Visser had been part of an underground team that located and assassinated traitors. Guljé, owner of a construction company, collaborated with the Nazis in the open but was a resistance member in secret. As he had several high-ranking members of the Dutch Nazi party NSB on the payroll, he could not openly defy the Germans.

So many threads coming together in this one—also echoes of both Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down and Couperus’ Old People and the Things that Pass here—it would take me a day to make something coherent in English of it. If you read Dutch, follow the link above. The mayor took trouble to tell the story in detail.

As the statute of limitations which was in force at the time of the execution has passed, Ridder-Visser will not be prosecuted. The statute of limitations was dropped for serious crimes in the Netherlands in 2006, but not retro-actively.

Link: Kulture Live.

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January 24, 2011

Cooking club rides bikes and sails boats to local farms

Filed under: Bicycles,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 10:05 am

“The people here have no idea where they can buy locally grown food,” Kook Company’s Saskia van Deijk told daily De Pers. “That’s why when it is summer we take the boat to nearby cheese farms and the bakfiets to farmers. Once we’ve stocked up on ingredients we return to our building which is right on the river Rhine and prepare our meals.”

These meals are surprising variations on the Dutch kitchen: cold cauliflower mousse and profiteroles with a Gouda cheese sauce, or spinach poffertjes. The Kook in the name is not a reference to a mental state, but simply means ‘cooking’ in Dutch.

Photo: Kookcompany

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December 19, 2010

The dark games of Victor Gijsbers

Filed under: Gaming,Literature by Branko Collin @ 2:14 pm

A couple of weeks ago I recommended you play Zwarte Piet, one of the few video games (that I know of) where you play a black hero. But is he a true hero, or just a white caricature of one? Your enjoyment of the game can hinge on your answer. And games are there to be enjoyed, right?

Philosophy student Victor Gijsbers doesn’t seem to think that is the whole truth. About the inspiration for his role playing game Vampires he once wrote: “It was breathtakingly cruel, a condition with an inexplicable charm of its own; it was dark; it was uncompromising—what a shame that, as [the author] himself claimed, the mechanics didn’t work.”

I first noticed Gijsbers’ work when he published The Baron (and simultaneously a Dutch version, De Baron), a text adventure for adults that on the surface deals with how moral decisions can become easy when all those you meet are monsters. Need I say there is a twist?

As John Walker put it at Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

The Baron begins as an experiment in futility—a fascinating exploration of someone’s inability to change the inevitable repeating pattern of their life. As you set off on a quest to rescue your kidnapped young daughter from the evil Baron—made all the more sinister by a note left saying he has to be with her as he loves her—you have a righteous task in place. Which makes the implications of your inevitable failure so very interesting. And then it changes.

I was so deeply affected by this game that after finishing it the rest of my day was pretty much a write-off. I was emotionally ruined. I say this because I want to put up a massive neon warning sign before people play it. But I really think people should play it.

(Not everybody agrees with him, but you will have to play the game yourself to find out where you stand.)

(Illustration: Victor Gijsbers / Emily Short.)

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August 15, 2009

Lucia de B., angel or witch? [HAR 2009]

Filed under: Science by Branko Collin @ 10:35 pm

I just turned away from the lock-picking talk, as the tent was absolutely packed (me being 5 minutes late). I don’t know how many people fit in these convention tents, hundreds, perhaps thousands, but that is the amount of people that after tonight may know how to break every lock you own.

Earlier today I was at the talk with possibly the smallest amount of listeners of this 4-day exercise, you might even say the attendants resembled Cantor Dust. OK, lousy statistical jokes aside, this talk was by statistician Richard Gill of the University of Leiden and dealt with the Lucia de Berk case.

I had heard of the case before. In 2001, a nurse from The Hague was accused of having murdered dozens of patients, and the strange thing was that most of her guilt was determined by statistics: she had been near the victims at the time of their deaths, and although a direct link with the accused in the form of a confession or evidence could not be established, the court found that the statistical likelihood of her being near all these victims at the time of death was so minute, she must have done it.

At the time I thought this reasoning seemed silly, but I have learned early on in life never to argue with statisticians. So imagine my surprise: here was a statician who argued that the court’s reason had indeed been extremely silly, and that an innocent woman had gone to jail.

I won’t bore you with repeating the entire lecture: author Maarten ‘t Hart summarized Gill’s position excellently in this article from NRC (Dutch). Gill’s paper on how likely the chance is that a nurse was on active duty during all deaths concludes that one in nine nurses would have gone to jail (PDF).

(more…)

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March 29, 2009

Leiden researchers develop gel with healing properties

Filed under: Health,Science by Branko Collin @ 10:01 pm

Two scientists from Leiden University, Joke Bouwstra and Robert Rissman, invented a gel that has the same healing properties as “the buttery coating that protects and nurtures a foetus’s developing skin,” reports New Scientist. Apart from helping premature babies, the ‘baby butter’ could also be used for other applications. Writes the magazine:

Natural vernix caseosa contains a mixture of fatty compounds that waterproof the foetus. Crucially, it also contains dead cells called corneocytes, which store large amounts of water and ensure that the foetus does not get dehydrated. Vernix may also act as a barrier to infections.

To mimic this versatile substance, Joke Bouwstra and Robert Rissman […] mixed a range of fatty compounds including lanolin, fatty acids, ceramides and cholesterol with particles made of a water-storing hydrogel. When they rubbed this white cream on mice missing a patch of their outer skin, the mice healed three times faster than untreated ones, Bouwstra says.

Illustration by Leonardo da Vinci. Somehow I cannot remember the Florentine one mentioning “baby butter.”

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