May 21, 2013

Dutchman wins a round of Britain’s Got Talent with 80s music

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 9:29 pm

A 23-year-old guy from Amsterdam living in England with what has to be a fake Dunglish accent won a round of talent search show Britain’s Got Talent with an 80s parody called ‘Back Door Lover’.

Wanting to bring the keytar back to its former glory, Maarty Broekman, sporting a Michael Jackson style leather jacket won sympathy from jury members to make it to the next round.

He can’t sing and is pretty bad on the keytar, but for being desperate for attention, he scores pretty big.

(Link: www.standaard.be, Photo of keytar by Thomas Beck, some rights reserved)

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May 20, 2013

Spike and Suzy re-imagined

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 4:34 pm

Spike and Suzy (Dutch: Suske en Wiske) may still be the biggest selling comic in the Netherlands, but a sales drop of 75% in 16 years in their native country Belgium has urged Studio Vandersteen to look at ways to renew the franchise.

The result is a spin-off comic called Amoras in which all the popular characters have aged about eight years. Spike and Suzy are now in their late teens and the target audience is in that same region. Publisher Johan de Smedt told 7sur7, “Amoras remains faithful to the spirit of Willy Vandersteen, whose heirs have agreed to the project. But it is more brutal, more violent and it does not always end well.”

Suske en Wiske have always been the flagship comic of the Dutch language. Their popularity in the Netherlands led creator Willy Vandersteen to even change names to make them more palatable to a Dutch audience. Ragdoll Schalulleke (Antwerp dialect for ‘scallion’) for example became Schanulleke.

In this story, Spike and Suzy accidentally use professor Barabas’ time travel device to ‘flash’ to the island of Amoras, Spike’s original home land, but to the Amoras of 2046. The future Amoras has been colonized by the evil Krimson who believes that “history is a playground and a treasury”. The story ends on a cliffhanger and it’s quite a biggie as far as cliffhangers go, so be prepared to also buy the next album which should appear in November.

*) French: Bob et Bobette; American: Willy and Wanda. They sell almost a million albums each year in the Netherlands. In their home country they have to had to give the sales crown to Kiekeboe.

(Image: Standaard Uitgeverij / Charel Cambré)

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May 19, 2013

Parody of Holland Marketing’s latest video advert

Filed under: Food & Drink,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 12:43 pm

Last week Holland.com published a video advert in which a cocky narrator explains why ‘Holland’ is the original cool. He contrasts posh English phrases with the down-to-earth words the Dutch supposedly use, such as ‘food’ instead of ‘artisanal cooking’.

The video above is a parody that appeared shortly after — I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been made by the same ad agency — in which the original visuals are replaced. ‘Artisanal cooking’ is suddenly contrasted with pulling a croquette from a street-side vending machine and ’boutique shopping’ becomes the Saturday morning Albert Heijn (Dutch supermarket) run. Added in for good measure is the world famous Dutch ‘service’, a concept so alien that the language doesn’t even has its own word for it and defaults to the French word (although we generally pronounce it the English way).

The original advert caused a minor uproar in the Netherlands, with pundits reacting strongly to the fact that most of the footage is shot in either Amsterdam or greater Amsterdam. Elsevier lists the complaints.

Personally, I think it is a great advert. It highlights the open manner in which the Dutch speak to the point of being abrasive and presents this as charming and desirable. The heavy Dutch accent spoken by everybody in the video underlines the exaggerated, almost cartoonish tone of the video. Our English really isn’t that good, but the message the viewer takes away is that it’s good enough to get by when visiting the country. This entire presentation helps smuggle in a lot of fact-free content, stressing great food for example even though our culinary tradition is mostly one of Calvinistic soberness (as long as you stay north of the great rivers), and pointing out our traditional use of wind energy even though nowadays our record for renewable energy is one of the worst in Europe.

(Video: YouTube / DoLeaveItOutMate. Photo: crop from the video)

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May 18, 2013

Famous bird snuffs it at the art fair

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 9:25 am

Visitors of the KunstRAI art fair in Amsterdam are confronted with an art work by Bart Jansen even before they enter the building. The corpse of a giant blue bird, the famous brainchild of American puppeteer Jim Henson (and yellow in its native country), is slowly passing the last of its warmth to the cold, grey pavers.

The artist says on a nearby sign: “These days a national park only seems to amount to something in the public eye if it is being threatened. The next step is to make the reservation accessible for recreation. This requires a motorway. In this work, the only bird in the world that was deemed safe, has just fallen by the way of an unstoppable civilisation.”

Click the ‘read more’ link to end your childhood.
(more…)

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May 17, 2013

Winning Eurovision is costly, losing seems like a better option

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 9:25 am

It’s hard to believe that after eight years of international humiliation the Dutch Eurovision’s entry for 2013 actually has a chance. National rock chick Anouk made the cut this week with the song ‘Birds’, which she had lying around and not with some Dunglish-gone-wrong cultural faux-pas like many of her recent predecessors.

Although TROS television station director Peter Kuipers is thrilled that Anouk is going to the final of the Eurovision Song Contest, he’s already grumpy at the idea of forking out some 10 million euro for hosting the show if she wins. TROS is currently in talks to merge with the AVRO television station to save both their financial futures.

A straightforward, well-written ballad (as in no mistakes because we’ve done that before) seems like a good choice. TROS skipped having a television show to determine who would go to Eurovision as Anouk said either you pick me or forget it.

Seems like Anouk helped the TROS save money after all.

For a quick comparison, here’s Sineke – Ik ben verliefd (Sha-la-lie) – 2012.

Here’s the “trommelende trutten’ (roughly, ‘drumming bimbos’) with their made-up language (kicks in at 0:42) Treble – Amambanda – 2006

(Link: www.welingelichtekringen.nl, Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

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May 16, 2013

Printing human skin in 3D to help burn victims

Filed under: Science,Technology by Orangemaster @ 11:16 am

The concept of SkinPrint, thought up by a group of students at Leiden University, uses a 3D printer to print pieces of human skin for skin grafting. SkinPrint has won the Digital Award, the country’s most sought-after student award.

“SkinPrint could mean a revolution in medicine”, explains team leader Ingmar van Hengel in the press. A healthy piece of skin is removed from a burn victim and then printed, ready to be used for medical procedures. SkinPrint must undergo a lot more scrutiny and certification before it can be used, say about five years.

There are many scientists around the world working on printing human body parts such as skin, ears, livers and what not. Have a look at 7 Cool Uses of 3D Printing in Medicine.

(Link: www.parool.nl, Photo of an Ultimaker)

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May 15, 2013

Guessing age and gender based on tweets

Filed under: Online by Orangemaster @ 5:56 pm
Pink bike

Dong Nguyen, a doctoral student in computer sciences is part of a group of researchers at Twente University near Enschede which have compiled lists of words and sequences corresponding with different ages and specific genders, albeit in Dutch for now. Based on almost 3,000 tweets, users simply enter their username into the online programme which calculated age and gender by comparing the last 200 tweets with the words and phrases in its database.

“We note that users use more uniform language from about 35 years and older. There are larger differences between a users aged 15 and 20 then there are between users aged 45 and 55,” Nguyen said. The difference between men and women is apparently very stereotypical.

(Link: phys.org)

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May 14, 2013

Police accused of brokering a wedding to save a girl’s family’s honour

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:09 pm

Dutch police in Amsterdam Zuidoost have been accused of acting as ‘matchmakers’ for two underaged Dutch Muslims of Pakistani and Hindustani background. Together with Fier Fryslan, a Friesland-based organisation specialising in ‘relationship violence’, the ones who were involved in redesigning women’s shelters to put them out in the open, had their hand in a religious wedding performed to save the girl’s family’s honour.

Dutch law apparently forbids religious weddings, and the couple have agreed to attend a civil ceremony when they turn 18 to make it nice and legal, but the critics aren’t happy with that at all. They argue that traditional Islamic marriages put women in a subordinate role by denying them equal rights such as divorce.

Both the police and Fier Fryslan say that the media attention is being taken out of context, as they would not actually have agreed to a forced marriage. However, a social worker in Amsterdam Zuidoost has accused both parties of acting as if they have ‘saved the day’.

(Links: www.amsterdamherald.com, www.volkskrant.nl, Photo by Anthony Kelly, some rights reserved)

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May 13, 2013

Bike path under Rijksmuseum Amsterdam to open tomorrow

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 9:33 am

On a dreary Saturday I snapped this picture of the entrance to the recently opened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

This is also a photo of the only bike path in the world that bicycles are not (yet) allowed on, which is why there are barriers and security guards.

When in 2003 renovations started the architects came up with a plan to move the museum entrance from the side to the tunnel underneath the museum. This would bring museum visitors in closer proximity to the cyclists who fully expected to still be able to use their age old bike path. The footpath (not shown here) is several meters wide, but as anybody who lives in Amsterdam knows, tourists will not look where they walk.

Museum director Wim Pijbes has traditionally been against the bike path, Eindhovens Dagblad reports, and probably would shed no tears if people stopped noticing that there was one.

Although the Netherlands does have a concept of right of way (recht van overpad), people here make much less of deal about it than in, say, the United Kingdom where the Rambler’s Association actively works to keep public paths over private property open. The Rijksmuseum is, as the name implies, publicly owned.

The new Rijksmuseum opened on 13 April of this year. The bike path will be opened tomorrow evening, although the city reserves the right to close it ‘at busy times’ until it has had the time to put in extra security measures.

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May 11, 2013

Dutch government mapping the Chinese grey market for baby formula

Filed under: Food & Drink,Health by Branko Collin @ 11:47 pm

Chinese expatriates have been buying up large amounts of Dutch baby formula and shipping it to their families in China for the past few years.

After the melamine scares of 2008 and later, it appears that Chinese parents no longer trust the formula from their own brands, even if it is made by Dutch manufacturers. Apparently there is a scarcity of baby formula in the Randstad region. Not just the Netherlands but also Germany, the UK, Australia and New Zealand suffer from Chinese bulk purchases, Gelderlander wrote last week.

Manufacturers and supermarkets have asked Minister Sharon Dijksma of Economic Affairs to interfere, NRC says. Dijksma has asked the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority to study the grey market. Producers of formula have promised to increase production in the meantime.

According to retail expert Paul Moers the shortage of formula in Dutch supermarkets is not because of Chinese parents buying all the product. Moers says according to Gelderlander that Nestlé, Nutricia and Unilever can simply make more money by selling to Asian countries:

“Multinationals are focussed too much on profit. How can it be that the Netherlands, where the product is made, has a shortage of baby formula? Doing business should also be based on morality and ethics.” Moers used be a manager for Unilever in Asia.

See also: Chinese buying up Dutch baby milk powder (RNW, 2010)

(Photo of a poster protesting Nutricia by Martijn van Exel, some rights reserved)

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