March 27, 2017

Top 15 richest Dutch artists are all men

Filed under: General,Music by Orangemaster @ 8:20 pm

Dutch magazine Quote’s list of 15 richest Dutch artists are all men, and with the exception of Afrojack having one Surinamese parent, they are all white. Six of them are DJs, five of them are Dutch-language singers, two of which are gay (one of them is a bit racist). The rest of these artists work in the classic music industry, with one in popular music.

The kicker is explaining the success factor of these artists, according to ING bank economist Marten van Garderen. “An important success factor is having good role models to follow. The world’s best football players like Messi and Neymar inspire children to play football. It’s like that as well in the world of dance music. Children grow up with Tiësto and want to be like him”.

Girls need role models as well, but this economist painfully points out that they are none at the top of the entertainment business in this country. Girls don’t usually grow up or aspire to be male professional football players, dude. Basically Van Garderen has confirmed to half the country’s population that girls have no role models to follow and because of it won’t make this list any time soon. That also goes for anyone who’s not white apparently.

15. Jaap van Zweden (conductor)
14. John Ewbank (composer)
13. Gordon (singer)
12. Ferry Corsten (DJ)
11. Hardwell (DJ)
10. Gerard Joling (singer)
9. René Froger (singer)
8. Jan Smit (singer)
7. Martin Garrix (DJ)
6. Afrojack (DJ)
5. Frans Bauer (singer)
4. Wessel van Diepen (radio host)
3. André Rieu (conductor)
2. Armin van Buuren (DJ)
1. Tiësto (DJ)

Last year, Quote’s top 15 was ever so slightly more diverse, while the first woman at 21 was paired up with a man. Quote’s 2015 list of Richest Women on Earth basically says women luck out with a good marriage or an inheritance in a tone that implies that’s all they can do.

(Link: deondernemer.nl)

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March 24, 2017

The Dutch Royal family and cycling

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 10:05 pm

Dutch people cycle mainly as a mode of transportation. The Dutch Royal family enjoys doing normal Dutch things, and one of them is cycling. A quick Google search tells me that the British press coined the term ‘Bicycle monarchies’, making a link between less ceremonials monarchies like the Dutch one as if that was a bad thing.

Watch this film from 2013 as generations of Dutch royals take to cycling and even some racing. Enjoy the funny moment when one of the members of the Royal family gives a lift to a stranger and find out why royals used to be banned from cycling.

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March 22, 2017

Vote for your favourite ugly public art

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 9:46 am
Photo by Peter Cox

Photo by Peter Cox

Dutch radio station 538 is asking their listeners to vote on the ‘Ugliest artwork of the Netherlands’. The nine nominees include a ‘pooping skater’ in Pijnacker, the awkward arch in Amstelveen and something I actually like, the ‘Big Funnelman’ (their spelling, not mine) in Breda.

Click here to vote!

(Link: amstelveenz.nl, Photo of ‘Big Funnelman’ by Peter Cox)

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March 21, 2017

Spring is here, tulips from Amsterdam

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:49 am

tulips-PK

It’s spring in the polder and sometimes it’s good to stop and admire the tulips. Well, mostly daffodils at the moment on the side of the road, but you get the idea.

You may know the song ‘Tulips from Amsterdam’ made popular by Max Bygraves in the UK in 1958, but maybe you didn’t know it was a translation of a German song. According to Wikipedia, the song was first written in 1953 as ‘Tulpen aus Amsterdam’ by German singer, songwriter and entertainer Klaus-Günter Neumann, after he had performed at the Tuschinski theatre in Amsterdam and visited the tulip fields at Keukenhof.

Here’s Max’s version and of course a Dutch version by Herman Emmink.

And here’s a classic performance in the 1928 Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam not far from 24oranges HQ by Dutch pop singer Wilma Landkroon when she was a little girl.

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March 19, 2017

Big anti-drone competition coming this winter

Filed under: Dutch first,Technology by Orangemaster @ 12:22 pm

In December this year, Delft University of Technology will be hosting ‘DroneClash’, the first ever Dutch anti-drone competition. At this competition participants will use their own drones to take down as many other drones as possible and also avoid a series of anti-drone obstacles.

“Drones can fly into our lives, but we need to be able to take them out again if necessary”, says Bart Remes of the TU Delft Micro Air Vehicle Lab. The goal of the competition is to generate new ideas for the drone and anti-drone industry. A year ago we also told you about the Dutch police training eagles to attack drones.

Watch the video and follow the link to sign up for DroneClash if that’s your thing.

(Link: tudelft.nl, Photo of Drone by Karen Axelrad, some rights reserved)

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March 18, 2017

Dutchman proposes circular runway systems for airports

Filed under: Aviation by Orangemaster @ 10:07 am
airplane1.JPG

Aviation expert Henk Hesselink of the Netherlands Aerospace Centre believes that one day airports could be using circular runways instead of today’s straight runways. He claims his 3.5 kilometre wide runway systems would be safer, more efficient, and less noisy, with planes experiencing only headwind and no crosswind.

Crosswind is indeed the stuff that fuels scary YouTube videos, where planes experience lots of yaw, which is going side to side, given them that goose landing on water quality. I typed in ‘crosswind’ and picked the first video – have a look.

As planes could be able to fly from any direction, noise pollution could be reduced. As well, up to three planes could take off at the same time, while nowadays they taxi to the runway and then queue up to take off. Finally, part of me would love to roller skate on one of those runways and I’m sure some cyclists would love to join in as well.

(Links: bbc.com, fastcompany.com)

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March 15, 2017

Tilburg to welcome royal couple with handkerchiefs

Filed under: Design,General,History by Orangemaster @ 10:34 am

[Photo of children wearing inflatable crowns]

Instead of environmentally unfriendly plastic trinkets, the city of Tilburg will have the honour of welcoming the royal couple this year on King’s Day waving handkerchiefs, if the Textile Museum gets its way.

On 27 April King Willem Alexander and Queen Máxima will visit Tilburg on King’s Day, which is also Wim-Lex’s 50th birthday. The idea is to wave at them using specially designed orange handkerchiefs, echoing the city’s former textile manufacturing glory.

People will be given free embroidered handkerchiefs instead of crap like the environmentally unfriendly plastic crowns seen above. Sure it’s good publicity for the Textile Museum, but then crap like those crowns are sponsored by lottery companies who prey on vulnerable people. And if you visit the museum, they’ll embroider a golden crown on it for you and you can even use them until 11 June to get into the museum for free.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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March 14, 2017

Incentives to get people to vote tomorrow

Filed under: Automobiles,Food & Drink,Gadgets,General by Orangemaster @ 11:39 am

vote-counting-rnw

As if trying to change things for the better by voting wasn’t appealing enough, some Dutch cities have come up with amusing ways to convince their residents to vote tomorrow in the Dutch general election.

Hilversum is going to give people a condescending-sounding ‘voting diploma’, as if they were children learning how to swim, but swiftly make up for the condescension by giving them a free bluetooth speaker, so they can annoy people in the train during their commute.

In the village of Losser, Overijssel, they thought it would be a good idea for the mayor to get into a limo and pick up people all day long to go and vote. The goal is to encourage first time voters aka young people to vote, so apparently those questionable music videos have been sending the right message all along.

The big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague will use schools as polling stations to get the kids to do their civic duty by them not having to go far to vote. No limos for you!

And then if cycling, walking and rocking the limo isn’t doing it for you, there’s always taking a boat to the polling station in the region of Marker Wadden north of Amsterdam, which, I can tell you from personal experience, is an absolutely delightful place to visit by boat.

And then if transport and a bluetooth speaker is not your jam, imagine some good old-fashioned cupcakes, tea and coffee in Zeist, Utrecht, accompanied by live piano music. The goal here is to attract older voters that need to make an extra effort to vote. No transport for you.

Half of 24oranges HQ can vote and the other half will just hope for the best.

(Link: binnenlandsbestuur.nl, Photo by Photo RNW.org, some rights reserved)

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March 13, 2017

‘Dutch girls not interested in STEM subjects’

Filed under: General,Science by Orangemaster @ 10:00 pm

According to a survey carried out by Microsoft among 11,500 girls and women from 11 European countries including Russia, the Dutch are the most unsure of themselves when it comes to STEM subjects. Some 1,000 girls and women from the ages of 11 to 30 were interviewed at length for this survey.

More than 50% of the Dutch girls and women estimated their knowledge to be less than that of the other countries and 40% said their knowledge fell short of what it should be. Dutch girls were also quicker to claim their disinterest for STEM subjects, one year earlier than their European peers, apparently due to a lack of female role models since 60% of STEM-related teachers in the Netherlands are men. As well, some 31% of the girls talk to their mothers about STEM subjects and 33% to their fathers, while in the rest of Europe, 38% of the girls talk to their mothers and 37% talk to their fathers.

(Link: nieuws.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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March 11, 2017

Disneyland France can’t seem to get Dutch staff

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 7:30 am

Why are there so few Dutch people working for Disneyland Paris? Besides French people, there are lots of Spanish and Italians, but very few Dutch speakers. Nicole Korssen from Eindhoven who works at Disneyland Paris explains that even though tons of Dutch people go to Disneyland on vacation, her employer’s recruitment days just can’t seem to close the deal. Disneyland Paris needs to have Dutch-speaking personnel seeing as they get about one million tourists from the Netherlands every year.

The first reason is that the Dutch don’t speak French well enough, something I’m thinking the Spanish and Italian actually can do. We can blame the Dutch educational system for not teaching French to children anymore, and that’s on the Netherlands. However, the lower salaries offered in certain positions, as compared to what the Dutch can make here doesn’t help, so that one’s on Disneyland.

And then there’s the fact that the Dutch are generally too tall to be ‘cast’ as characters. Too tall to be cast as Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse at 1.50 metres or even a princess at 1.65 metres. A quick search tells me the average height of a Dutch man is about 1.80 metres, the tallest on the planet, while the average Dutch woman is 1.70 metres.

Why don’t the Dutch get assistance in English when there’s a problem? According to Korssen, the Dutch choose to wait longer to be helped in Dutch. Why don’t they hire Flemish people who generally do speak some French and get paid less than the Dutch anyway? I don’t know, but I’m going to assume Disney would rather have actual Dutch people.

Dutch astronaut André Kuijpers does voice-over work for Disney.

(Link: businessinsider.nl)

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