May 11, 2012

Fast food chain upset at student delivery service

Filed under: Food & Drink,Online by Orangemaster @ 3:11 pm

Since the 1970s American junk food chain McDonald’s has been big in the Netherlands, so big it was the biggest restaurant chain second year in a row in 2011, and for all we know it still is.

Some smart students from Barendrecht near Rotterdam area have managed to piss off the Golden Arches by starting a delivery service. You can Twitter @MacDeliveryNL or e-mail McDeliveryNL@live.nl and some kid on a scooter will pick up a burger, fries and a shake for you. Nope, no idea what the extra cost is, I imagine it’s cheap. For the expats out there reading this, the Netherlands doesn’t have ‘drive thru’ service the way they do in North America, and we’re used to onlines services that delivery food from over 100 restaurants.

According to Twitter, the students are making headlines in the media this week. The junk food kings are upset at the students using the name ‘Mac’ and ‘Mc’, and I wonder what the rest of this story will be because it seems it just got started. Mac delivery could also get Apple computers upset, who knows. To be continued.

UPDATE: McDonalds still is No. 1 in the Netherlands.

(Link: www.rtl.nl, Photo of burger by huppypie, some rights reserved)

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May 10, 2012

Van Gogh Museum buys its first Van Gogh in five years

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 3:49 pm

For the first time in five years the Van Gogh Museum has purchased a work of art by Vincent van Gogh. For the sum of 1.5 million euro, it scored a watercolour entitled ‘Knotswilg’ (‘Pollard Willow’), a particular work from Van Gogh’s The Hague period (July 1882) that has not been on display very often. The museum is proud to add it to its collection, as it didn’t have any works from that specific period.

A spokeswoman for the museum explains that while paintings are continuously on display, works on paper are sensitive to light, so they are showcased for a few months and then put in the depository to be shown again later, making them more special. The watercolour already shows some discoloration, but then that’s quite common.

(Link: www.at5, Photo of Van Gogh Museum poster by Elias Rovielo, some rights reserved)

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May 9, 2012

Dutch world radio service goes off the air

Filed under: General,History by Orangemaster @ 2:04 pm

Some 65 years after it all started, Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s Dutch service will go off the air this week on Friday 11 May. To mark the shut down, it will feature a 24-hour live radio marathon starting on Thursday 10 May at 8 pm UTC (10 pm local time) and run until Friday 11 May at 8 pm UTC (10 pm local time).

Hosts Karin van den Boogaert, Anouk Tijssen and Wim Vriezen will talk about the station’s beginnings, playing wartime audio from Radio Oranje and many RNW newscasts of important events in Dutch and world history. They’ll also touch upon special programmes on culture and language as well as shows aimed at expats, seafarers and truck drivers.

Although the Dutch service is signing off for good, they’ll also talk about the future of Radio Netherlands Worldwide, promoting free speech in places where freedom of the press is under threat. Basically, this is what they are being ask to push after the budgets cuts, making the best of a bad situation.

RNW is going off the air due to huge budget cuts, losing some 70% of their usual funding. Tons of people will lose or have already lost their job, while Editor-in-Chief Rik Rensen and his second in command Ardi Bouwers, quit in April over the cuts. RIP.

(Links: www.rnw.nl, www.rnw.nl – cuts)

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May 8, 2012

The top 10 ugliest places in the country

Filed under: Architecture,General by Orangemaster @ 10:43 am

On 14 May, a Dutch television show will let viewers vote for the ugliest place (shopping mall, train station, etc.) in the Netherlands. The short list includes Zoetermeer’s Central Station, shopping mall passage way Brinkman in Haarlem and shopping mall Stokhorst in Enschede. They will be the top three in whatever order, while the 4th to 10th place have already been chosen.

Co-blogger Branko gets to see Zoetemeer Central Station often enough (is it that bad?), while I’ve had the pleasure of seeing 5th place winner Bos en Lommerplein in Amsterdam with a caved in parking lot that took months to fix and put people out of their homes. The entire place is also a wind tunnel.

Other ‘winners’ also seem to have been plagued with problems: the Scheringa museum (shown here) in 7th place was never finished, has had legal problems, and is up for sale.

(Link and photos: www.welingelichtekringen.nl, Photo of Scheringa museum by Karavaan, some rights reserved)

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May 7, 2012

Mobile Rube Goldberg machine for stamping postcards

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 8:40 am

Eindhoven based design studio Hey Hey Hey came up with this intricate mobile device called Melvin the Machine. It stamps postcards. No, that is not a Dutch post box you see in the end (at least not a current one, to my knowledge), although that is a real Hema alarm clock starring in the clip.

Via The Pop-Up City. Video: Hey Hey Hey.

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May 6, 2012

Using boats for transport in the canals of Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:18 am

Bright reports about an inner city shipping company that uses an actual ship in Amsterdam.

The electronic freighter of Mokum Mariteam, the magazine writes, “replaces five trucks, and is quieter and cleaner.” (The company’s estimate is more conservative: “a boat of 20 by 4.25 metres, [and a] nett volume […] of 85 cubic metres (four compact trucks)”.) The batteries can power the boat for an entire day.

The canals of Amsterdam were dug originally at least partly for transport, but that function seems to have fallen into disuse, until recently. Bright adds that German logistics company DHL (originally American) has been using a canal boat for delivering packages “for years”. (Since October 1997, Binnenvaart.nl adds.)

The text on the side of the City Supplier, ‘vracht door de gracht’, simply means ‘freight through the canal’. The word ‘Mokum’ in the company name refers to the Yiddish name for Amsterdam, Mokum (Alef), literally meaning ‘city A’.

(Photo: Mokum Mariteam)

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May 4, 2012

Site sells legal news photos for use on social media

Filed under: Online,Photography by Orangemaster @ 1:59 pm

The Netherlands’ two biggest photo agencies, ANP and Hollandse Hoogte, have set up the website Eerlijke Foto (‘Fair Photo’) allowing people to legally download their news photos for use on social media sites at reasonable prices.

The idea behind the site is a lot like the one behind music sites like Spotify and iTunes: if people can pay a fair price (a couple of euro) as opposed to an exuberant one, they’d be more inclined to buy than to steal. Yes, even though many of us collectively post pictures we have no legal right or permission to use on the Internet, it’s legally and technically stealing, whether you get caught or not.

It’s one thing and a lot of hard work to try and sue all the people that use your photos illegally both agencies say, so they are making their photo database available to others all while stepping up the nailing of anyone who uses their photos illegally. In fact, as 24oranges found out once, they are even baddies (copyright trolls) who will try and represent copyright owners illegally, try to sue you and scare you into giving them large sums of cash.

(Link: www.z24)

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May 3, 2012

‘Ban on fries around high schools until 2 pm’

Filed under: Food & Drink,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:13 pm
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As if there weren’t enough weird bans and rules in Amsterdam, the Labour Party is seriously considering talking to snack bars and asking them not to sell fries to high school children. Some party member was shocked to find out that on a day to celebrate healthy foods at school, some school in the Nieuw West district was serving kebabs and Turkish pizzas, in other words, unhealthy food.

The Nieuw-West district has many children of ethnic origin that are overweight according to the telly. There is even a school in that district where 42% of the children are overweight, many of which eat junk food every day, and their parents thinks that’s fine.

Although Dutch children are also quite healthy compared to other European and North American countries, they drink too much soda and do not eat enough fruit. They are in the middle range in terms of exercise and sports.

And then I still love this picture about healthy eating with utter crap in the vending machine. Some adult doesn’t know right from wrong here either. The breakfast ginger cake the kid is eating in the picture has acrylamide in it, a cancer-causing agent that isn’t even mentioned on the packaging and eight different kinds of sugar.

To get back to the ban: banning won’t help, it will hurt business and annoy ordinary citizens.

Stop protecting uneducated people from themselves and educate them about food. Stop the nannyism already.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl)

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May 2, 2012

British RAF pilots cycle to the Netherlands for memorial

Filed under: Aviation,Bicycles,History by Orangemaster @ 10:28 pm

A group of nine pilots from the 99th RAF Squadron arrived in Landsmeer near Amsterdam today after four days of cycling from the UK. They were welcomed with a fanfare by the mayor like heroes. Every year they go to the monument to commemorate their deceased Squadron members. And since the British army is cutting back on expenses, the nine men couldn’t fly over and so they decided in true Dutch style to bike 750 kilometres.

The first question RTVNH (Radio and Television North Holland) had for one of them in true British understatement style was “how are your buttocks?”.

(Link: www.rtvnh.nl, Photo of Memorial by Bjorn V., some rights reserved)

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May 1, 2012

Remembrance of the Dead gets controversial

Filed under: History,Literature by Orangemaster @ 11:29 pm

First, there was the banning of a poem about a teenage boy’s SS uncle deemed inappropriate to be read at the annual Amsterdam ceremony, now the town of Vorden, Gelderland, which has one of the only graves in the Netherlands with German soldiers buried in it that wants to commemorate them. Basically, it’s fashionable to blur the lines between victim and perpetrator: it’s cool to be on the wrong side of things. And there’s so much bad taste going around these days, you need to pick your battles.

The Remembrance of the Dead on 4 May is to commemorate civilians and soldiers of all kinds who died in WWII, Dutch or foreign, but since the 1960s it has also included other wars and major conflicts. The boy’s poem was also meant to commemorate a Dutch volunteer who ended up on the wrong side of things, but after much commotion from Jewish organisations and the public at large, it was pulled. The teenager did well in winning a contest with his poem, but it’s too bad he’s being dragged in the mud for it. Only one line of the poem points to the man being on the German side, it’s not a big pro-Nazi rant or anything.

However, paying tribute to German soldiers flat out is losing the plot in my opinion. Or amnesia. Or dementia.

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