March 13, 2008

Segway use on roads being debating today

Filed under: Automobiles,General by Orangemaster @ 9:34 am
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“All the other countries around us are using Segways, why can we?” Because we aren’t forerunners when it comes to innovation, we’re the ‘wait and see’ type. And all the other countries around can buy Segways, but not necessarily use them at will. Germany, Spain, Belgium, Austria and the UK sell Segways, but this doesn’t mean they are legal there or even will be.

However, if – and that’s a big if – you can believe what Wikipedia says about bans in other countries, the Netherlands is far from being alone. Australia, Sweden, Canada, and many US states have problems and proper arguments against using Segways.

Today the Dutch government will be debating trying to impose a licence for Segways like on other motorised vehicles, a process that could take another 1.5 years and possibly see Segways legally on the road/bike paths by 2010. As for ‘countries around us’, Denmark has classified the Segway as a moped and Germany is still conducting local pilot projects, but has not made it legal yet.

However, Segway Nederland says this is all a huge delaying tactic (no kidding), which is not only hurting their business and frustrating users, but defeats the purpose of ‘going green’, a major plus point of the Segway. And what’s really annoying to Dutch Segway fans apparently is that EU rules just say let local government regulate it, we’re OK with that.

We’ll have to wait and see as well then.

(Link: emerce.nl)

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March 12, 2008

Of old people and things that pass

Filed under: Literature by Branko Collin @ 3:47 pm

Today marks the start of the Boekenweek, the Dutch week to promote books. This year’s motto is “Of old people…,” after Louis Couperus’ classic 1906 psychological novel Of Old People and Things That Pass… The theme focuses on old age, both in people and books, and has already been criticised by those who feel that youngsters should be encouraged to read books, not discouraged.

More interesting for 24 Oranges readers may be that Alexander Teixeira de Mattos’ classic translation of Couperus’ masterpiece has recently become available in many formats at the Internet Archive. If anyone would like a version that is more accessible (plain text, HTML, PDF), let me know and I’ll try and post one here. The Dutch version is available from DBNL.org.

Of Old People follows a couple of murderers in their old age, and their children and grand children, and shows how one gruesome act committed many years ago is felt in the family today.

(Picture: Louis Couperus)

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Ecohouse runs out of time and gets axed

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 11:55 am
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Yesterday, the police removed GroenFront protesters who were occupying an ecohouse in Steenwijk, Overijssel. Monday, the court in Zwolle ruled that the ecohouse could be scheduled for demolition because the neighbours complained of its unsightly, unfinished look. And today, the house should be destroyed.

Why destroy the friendly ecohouse made of old wood and built by eco-frendly engineer Jan Husslage? Because the house was never finished on time and remains unfinished. The building permit expired. The Green party is red furious and trying to come up with a last-minute solution, like moving the house somewhere else.

Why wasn’t it built on time? Not much seems to be built on time (or even within budget) in the Netherlands. Biggers projects such as the high-speed train line (North-South), the Betuwe train line (East-West) and Amsterdam’s metro are all years away from being finished. Of course, they don’t get the wrecking ball, but the small fry do.

(Link and photo: blikopnieuws.nl, zwolle.nl)

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March 11, 2008

Happy slapping your way into paradise

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 9:51 am

The Limburg tourist board has chosen a different tack to lure visitors to the southernmost province of the country. “The rolling hills, the romantic little steam train, yada yada yada. Kids today don’t go for that stuff anymore.” So what can you expect from hospitable Limburg?

Via De Telegraaf (Dutch).

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March 10, 2008

Director fakes rampant racism, gets sacked

Filed under: General,Religion by Branko Collin @ 2:20 pm

Last week, a director working on a fake TV news item about racism in the Netherlands got caught with his pants down because a competing station happened to have a crew nearby filming the whole thing. The director had set out to film a piece exposing rampant bigotry by showing that people in Amsterdam will not stop and help a woman in need if dressed in a niqab.

In order to measure this bigotry, the crew’s reporter would drop a bag of oranges and see who would help her pick them up. After a while she would change to a niqab, a garb worn by some Muslim women that covers everything except the eyes, and repeat the exercise.

And it seemed the crew got exactly the sort of result they expected. When dressed as a Westerner, people would help the reporter pick up her oranges. But the moment she switched to the niqab, help was no longer forthcoming. The cold eye of the camera registered a forlorn woman, crouching in the middle of the street amidst her belongings, while passers-by took a wide berth around her.

Except that it was all staged. Local TV station AT5 was there, and filmed the whole thing. People who wanted to help the woman in the niqab were shouted at by the director who told them to move on. Even then that did not stop some of them to actually help. After 101 had streamed its program, AT5 contacted them for commentary. Originally, the youth channel denied that anything shady had been going on. They thought the attention was exaggerated, and that people only started to help when they saw the AT5 camera crew. But the station must have smelled a rat, because it later examined raw footage, after which it came out with a full retraction. Apparently, people had been trying to help the niqab-clad woman the whole time. “We ended our collaboration with this director,” the press release concludes.

Even in the 101.tv segment there are hints that not everything is as it seems. The host says that she herself has family members who wear a burqa except of course that she is not wearing a burqa but a niqab.

Via Wij blijven hier (Dutch). Source images: AT5 and 101.

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March 9, 2008

First dessert restaurant of the Netherlands

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 3:15 pm

This month restaurant Sucre will open its doors in Amsterdam, serving only desserts. The restaurant is owned by Martijn Machielse (of local caterer Mynth Events) and Eline Kok (of local restaurant Bloesem), while the man behind the pan will be Peter Scholte, formerly of Chateau Brakkestein in Nijmegen. Sucre will be the first of such restaurants in the Netherlands, although similar places in New York and Barcelona (Espai Sucre) have blazed the global trail.

“You can get four or five courses here, made entirely of desserts,” Machielse told the Zest blog. “We will have one non-sweet dish though.” The menu is still a secret, but Machielse ensured the restaurant would not take the molecular cooking route. “We will choose accessible dishes, but twisted! You may for example discover non-sweet ingredients in your sweet dishes. But you won’t find classics like crème brûlée on the menu.”

Sources: Bizz and Zest (both Dutch).

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March 8, 2008

TMF cancels plan to list all downloads in its hit parade

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 2:09 pm

TV music channel TMF (The Music Factory, owned by MTV) recently announced plans to include all downloads in the computation of its new hit parade called Superchart, both from legal and illegal sources. This week the station cancelled those plans, according to NRC (Dutch). Counting paid downloads in hit parades is a relatively new phenomenon. Two years ago, in April 2006, Gnarls Barkeley were the first act to top a major (UK) hit parade on the strength of downloads.

NRC lists no reason why TMF would change the format of their chart at the last minute, other than that the station considers downloading from an illegal source to be “wrong”. NVPI, Dutch representatives of the record industry, applaud TMF’s decision. “You are sending a fatal message if you count all downloads for your hit parades,” Wouter Rutten said. “It would be as if the music industry had accepted downloads from an illegal source.” Oh my.

(Why the unwieldy “downloads from an illegal source”? Because the Netherlands, like Canada and a few other countries, allow copies for private use. The phrase “illegal downloads”, recently gaining popularity in the Netherlands, may be snappier but is also incorrect.)

Via Dagelinks (Dutch).

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March 7, 2008

Giant cat still stuck in cage

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 10:16 am

Not only is the poor big cat Shin-Chan still caged up at Schiphol Airport (but not in this picture) since the end of January and not only did celeb lawyer Bram Moszkowicz not manage to free the cat, but the owners could be sued for “illegallly importing a wild animal”. The bottom line for the cat is being killed or shoved in a zoo, a very bright future indeed.

Since the Dutch love to put a price tag on everything, let me see… about EUR 20,000 for the cat (some sources say 19,000 others 22,000), probably close to that in lawyer fees and then there’s the very real defence attorney fees and a possible fine.

Find out what we wrote in January about the poor giant cat.

(Link: haarlemsdagblad.nl)

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March 6, 2008

Yuppies kill horses rather than send them to the butcher

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink,Music by Branko Collin @ 2:25 pm
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Singer Henk Westbroek praised the sausages of Wim van Beek in his column in De Pers yesterday. Van Beek was one of the last horse butchers of the Netherlands, and died last year. After a hiatus of three months, his son ewopened the business, and the man who is one of the founders of the 1980s Nederpop movement thinks the son’s sausages are as good as those of the father.

But there is a problem. According to Westbroek, the butcher only has a limited supply of horses. He only buys horses that are two year olds or younger, which usually are hobby horses with which the owner got bored. Nowadays, owners think it is “sad” that horses are killed for their meat, so they have the horses put to sleep (and presumably have the horses buried). And so the famous sausages of Van Beek in Utrecht are never on sale for long.

Update 12-3: the text of the column is now available in Dutch on Westbroek’s site.

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March 5, 2008

Catholic church says gravestone size matters

Filed under: Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 8:58 am
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You’d think it was tough enough burying a loved one in a country where after a certain amount of years you have to dig them up again and shove them somewhere else to make room for more. The Catholic church had a problem with a gravestone that is 10 cm too wide and 6 cm too high, so they say, and confiscated it. In fact, if you look at the uncommon gravestone which depicts a Barcardi rum bat (isn’t this copyright infringement?), there could be many reasons other than the obvious but unspoken ‘it’s not very Catholic’. And I thought all of God’s creatures are supposed to be beautiful. According to the friend of the deceased woman who put back the gravestone by hand, he says many other gravestones are the wrong size, in a conflict that has been dragging on for almost a year.

It’s funny how the author of the article left out the Barcardi bit.

(Link: ad.nl)

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