March 28, 2011

Supreme court says participating in a reality show is real work

Filed under: Shows by Branko Collin @ 10:51 am

It took a trip to the Dutch supreme court, but reality show contestant Natasia Blank finally got the unemployment benefits she wanted, Elsevier reports.

Last Friday the judges confirmed the verdict of a lower court. The court felt that since Blank was paid to appear on the show, and she paid unemployment insurance, what she did—even if it was just loafing about all day—counted as real work.

Blank participated in a show called De Gouden Kooi (The Golden Cage) in 2006. Her appearance was heavily criticized at the time, even leading to questions in parliament, because she had left two young children in order to participate.

(Illustration: Photo by Wikimedia user Producer, some rights reserved. Press release Supreme Court.)

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March 27, 2011

Gays marry less than straights

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:39 pm

April 1 marks the tenth anniversary of gay marriage in the Netherlands. In that period some 15,000 same-sex couples got hitched here, making 1 in 5 same-sex couples married. Four in five heterosexual couples are married, AD reports.

Jan Latten of Statistics Netherlands told the paper that gays marry for the same reasons as straights—love, children and security—, that the relative number of divorces between the groups are virtually the same, and that both groups have the same preferences for wedding months: “spring and summer”.

See also:

(Photo by CarbonNYC, distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

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March 25, 2011

Dutch journalist Joris Luyendijk gets into semantics

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:22 am

“The way Americans follow Holland in the news, that’s how Europeans follow the Middle East.”

Just before that, he mentions that us peeps in the Netherlands are all stoned and visit whores because that’s what the media shows you. We laugh at that, but that’s his point: so many people think it’s reality.

Joris Luyendijk: ‘The old model of journalism is broken’
How can journalism meet the challenges of the Internet age? Former reporter Joris Luyendijk is looking for new ways to tell stories.

Watch a 5 min interview with Joris Luyendijk from The Guardian. (warning, it starts up automatically)

My dream would be if he’d explain to Dutch journalists to stop using terms like ‘black and white schools’, where white equals Dutch and black equals anything not white, which is totally inaccurate and painful to write about. Can we also do away with ‘ambitious women’, implying we’re not by definition and lose ‘good fathers’ (ouch to my friends with children) and even ‘luxury sandwiches’? The more you stick an adjective in front of a word, the less the noun has meaning on its own. Sometimes it makes it better, but not in the press, as Luyendijk explains.

(Tip: Thanks Sueli!)

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March 24, 2011

Unemployed air guitar star fined

Filed under: Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:03 pm

Air guitar star Tremelo Theun is duking it out over money with the town of Hengelo, Overijssel. Bureaucrats have calculated that in addition to his unemployment benefits, he has earned about 3,760 euro that he didn’t declare, accounting for some 43 gigs since 2005.

He claims that he’s only had 32 gigs, that he once received 40 euro for costs and that with a few exceptions, he hasn’t made any real money. Bureaucrats have decided to multiply it all up and give him a fine for not declaring his earnings.

Twice world champion air guitar has had to lawyer up to fight the man.
Stay tuned (bad pun).

(Link: deweekkrant.nl)

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March 23, 2011

Toxic spider crawls out of a bunch of bananas

Filed under: Food & Drink,Nature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:30 am

It has all the trappings of the opening scene of a B-movie. Employees in the ‘quiet’ town of Bolsward, Friesland were working at the supermarket, doing their thing. All of a sudden, an employee was in the fruit section and saw something big and brown crawl out of the bananas to say Bom Dia! to the world.

It was big and is apparently high venimous. It was a Brazilian wandering spider (phoneutria nigriventer) that hitched a ride on a bunch of bananas from Costa Rica to the Netherlands.

If you get bitten by the Brazilian, it does things only its maker could have come up with after a bender of mojitos and samba. Here’s what Wikipedia tells us:

Aside from causing intense pain, the venom of the spider can also cause priapism in humans. Erections resulting from the bite are uncomfortable, can last for many hours and can lead to impotence. A component of the venom (Tx2-6) is being studied for use in erectile dysfunction treatments.

In true sober Dutch style, an employee caught the spider, put it in a jar, and eventually drowned it and threw it in the bin.

(Link: hartvannederland.nl, Photo of Ctenus exlineae (F Ctenidae) by Marshal Hedin, some rights reserved)

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March 22, 2011

New tulip named after Vincent van Gogh

Filed under: Art,History,Nature by Orangemaster @ 11:33 am

Spring and the Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden that attracts visitors from around the world has a new red-brown tulip named after Vincent van Gogh.

Omroep Brabant got an explanation from Amsterdam’ Van Gogh Museum that there is no relation whatsoever between the flower and Van Gogh. He’s never even painted tulips, but he did like flowers.

(Link: vangoghmuseum, omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of Van Gogh tulip by vangoghmuseum)

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March 21, 2011

Oldest graves of the Netherlands discovered in Rotterdam

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 8:31 am

BOOR wrote earlier this month:

During a dig in 2008 in the Rotterdam neighbourhood Beverwaard three pits with cremated human remains have been found. Carbon dating has revealed the remains to be 9,000 years old. That makes these the oldest graves in the Netherlands.

BOOR archaeologists studied the top of a river dune where a tram garage was to be built. The graves, dating from the middle stone age (8000 – 3500 BC), also contained burial gifts such as flint tools, a hammer and a wetting stone.

BOOR is the municipal bureau for archaeology of Rotterdam.

(Photo: BOOR. Link: Telegraaf)

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March 20, 2011

35 Dutch Sesame Street songs by Henny Vrienten

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 2:16 pm

Holly Moors points out that Rubinstein released a CD (accompanying a booklet) with 35 songs from the Dutch version of kids show Sesame Street.

The music on Vriendjes Voor Altijd (Friends Forever) was written by Henny Vrienten, the lyrics by various writers. Most of the songs are sung by characters unique to the Dutch version of Sesame Street—Mr Aart, Ienie Mienie, Tommie—with Big Bird (called Pino over here) making the odd appearance.

Hennie Vrienten was one of the front men of legendary Dutch pop band Doe Maar during its short life in the early 1980s (the band broke up because the members couldn’t handle their popularity!).

Moors has this to say:

[…] One big party. If you have children or grand children of the right age, the purchase of this booklet + CD are obligatory, but use any excuse to buy this jewel, because any music lover will appreciate this CD, no matter what age.

Listen for instance to the magnificently modern classic Dutch street organ song with a twist that Vrienten created for Mijn Broer (My Brother), or the lovely exotically bouncy Gasfornuis (Gas Stove). […]

Vrienten clearly treats kids like grown-ups, and the result is that you get to hear songs with surprising rythms, remarkable arrangements, and intelligent changes. Music you can listen to again (and parents of small children know how repetitive children’s music can get), and that even gets better upon hearing it again.

Moors’ review has samples of four songs, including the ones mentioned here.

(Cover image: Rubinstein)

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Nineteenth century X-ray machine put to the test

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 1:28 am

In 1895 high school director H.J. Hoffmans and hospital director Lambertus van Kleef from Maastricht decided to build their own X-ray machine, just weeks after Wilhelm Röntgen’s famous discovery. Gerrit Kemerink of Maastricht University has now fired the old beast back up again and managed to coax some good pictures from it. The BBC has both images of and by the machine, and reports:

Given that a high radiation dose might be required to carry out the tests, the team obtained a hand from a cadaver as their imaging subject – rather than the “young lady’s hand” listed in Hoffmans and van Kleef’s notes.

The team accordingly found that using a modern detector, a radiation dose 10 times higher was required from the antiquated system when compared to a modern one.

Using a photographic plate and the same imaging conditions Hoffmans and van Kleef used, a dose 1,500 times higher was required.

In Dutch X-rays are called ‘röntgenstralen’, after their discoverer.

(Via Boingboing)

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March 18, 2011

Starlings above Utrecht, three takes

Filed under: Animals,Nature by Orangemaster @ 1:56 pm

Ah yes, spring is coming and the starlings know this.

This video is nice and homemade:

This video felt the need to use music and is from afar:

This video has music and shows the starlings in smaller groups:

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