March 13, 2012
An American woman named Kelly Tucker is keeping a blog called thecosbysweaterproject with drawings of the patterns of the famous sweaters worn by American television comedian Bill Cosby.
If you dig deeper and play ‘zoek de Nederlander’ (‘find the Dutch person’), you’ll learn that these famous sweaters were made by Dutch-born Koos Van Den Akker, a modern day Piet Mondriaan if you will.
(Link: www.bright.nl, Photo of Cosby sweater by Felix Jackson, Jr., some rights reserved)
March 9, 2012
Yes, the Netherlands took first prize at the World Championship Cheese Contest in the US and kicked Switzerland off its pedestal this week, but a group of five women from Groningen also won a Gourmand World Cookbook Award in Paris recently for the cookbook, ‘Koken Met Kruidnoten’ by Karin Sitalsing. They won the award for the illustration of a cookbook that features a lot of ‘kruidnoten’ recipes from local chefs Pierre Wind and Siemen de Jong.
Back to the cheese bit: the winning cheese, Vermeer, is a low-fat Gouda type cheese by Campina from Wolvega, Friesland, and is only called by that name for export, as nobody had ever heard of it until a few days ago. Remember, this is a country that boats Australian Homemade as a Dutch chocolate brand.
(Link: www.rtvnoord.nl, Photo of totally unrelated Gouda by Jon Sullivan, released into the public domain by its author)
March 8, 2012
Women make 20,8% less than men in the Netherlands. They work in sectors that pay less because more women work in them, causing a vicious circle. They work less and earn less because they have to take care of their children, as men apparently don’t and it’s cheaper if they do it because they get paid less anyways. Bosses know they can offer women less money at the start of a job because women don’t negotiate. Sectors where more men work actually pay better. Some 75% of women work part-time and do not stand up for their rights, resulting in less pay and fewer rights. Foreign women are easy to discriminate against because they don’t know the rules or the law (been there, done that). Women’s jobs have less social status. Women aren’t usually bosses and prefer to be more low key, earning less. Older women earn a lot less than older men and female students earn less than male students even in their first job.
If you still think International Women’s Day is fluff, think again.
(Link: www.loonwijzer.nl, Photo of Birthday cake by C J Sorg, some rights reserved)
March 7, 2012
As of this summer, female football players will again be allowed to wear headscarves during professional football matches. Thanks to a highly functional design from Cindy van den Bremen of capsters.com (see range of headscarves) headquartered in Eindhoven, football governing body FIFA has decided to drop its 2007 ban on the hijab aka headscarf and the girls can now hit the pitch and play.
Back then traditional headscarves were said to be dangerous, which they probably were, but a proper Dutch design has now helped to reverse the ban, allowing women from predominantly Muslim countries to play more football.
Van den Bremen felt the ban was a big fuss over not much and didn’t see the difference between a headscarf and having a pony tail in one’s hair. You can also pull really hard on the collar of a male player’s T-shirt too she explains.
“The sporting headscarf is not just a commercial success. It has won a Good Design Award in Japan and a place in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.”
(Links: www.rnw.nl, www.ad.nl, Photo by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)
Tags: Eindhoven
March 6, 2012
The Rijnstate hospital in Arnhem, Gelderland now has a separate ER (Emergency Room) for children, following demands from paediatricians that children would be better served by not coming into contact with wounded adults.
Only in children’s hospitals do they have ERs for children obviously, and paediatricians probably felt the pressure of finding a better way to reassure their small patients admidst big world chaos.
A quick Google search in English leads me to believe that this seems like a good idea and quite common in other countries. There is also a growing number of ERs for the elderly as well, something I can imagine this country either should have or could really use.
Why is this news in the Netherlands? I’m sure budgets play a role, but again it seems this country is lagging behind world trends. I say ‘seems’ — someone enlighten us: have doctors been pleading for years to get this set up and finally someone listened?
(Link: www.gelderlander.nl)
Tags: Arnhem
March 2, 2012
As of yesterday, euthanasia in The Netherlands can also be performed by mobile euthanasia units. The ‘Life End’ clinic will be working with six mobile teams of doctors and nurses to perform euthanasia throughout the country, starting in The Hague.
Contrary to factless nonsense spewed by certain American politicians who would rather divert attention to a small country 6,000 km away than look at the mess in their own back yard, doctors as well as the rest of The Netherlands are definitely worried about these mobile teams carrying out the proper evaluation of patients. Some 1,000 patients have submitted a request to receive the services of the travelling clinic, having been refused euthanasia from their general practitioners. More often than not, the motivations are religious or ethical, and sometimes doctors are not well enough informed about the law, and are scared to perform euthanasia.
The scheme is an initiative by the Dutch Association for a Voluntary End to Life (NVVE), a 130,000-member euthanasia organisation, the biggest of its kind in the world. Euthanasia has been legal since 2002, and physician-assisted suicide is not punishable if the attending physician acts in accordance with criteria of due care.
(Links: www.nrc.nlwww.guardian.co.uk, Photo: Salem graves by by Alanna Ralph, some rights reserved)
Tags: euthanasia
March 1, 2012
As of today, the Dutch University of Twente in Enschede has the fastest Internet connection in the world, clocking in at 1 Gigabit upload and download speed. The only thing that comes close is the Google campus in Stanford, California. However, the big difference is Twente is the first university to be able to offer super fast Internet to its students and campus residents, while the Google connection lets people connect to and from home, but isn’t campus wide.
IT department and students set up the network at Twente, not some corporation. “There are strict rules regarding the use and content of the university network. The upload limit of 50 GB per week will be maintained and any complaints about illegal uploads will be treated seriously.”
Stanford, it’s your move.
(Link: www.utwente.nl, www.npr.org)
Tags: Enschede, Internet, University of Twente
February 29, 2012
Today, Dutchman Dirk Stoop is the Product Manager at Facebook in charge of photos, as photos are the main reason people use Facebook. When Facebook first started allowing users to tag each other in photos in 2006, suddenly 70% of users came back every day, while 85% came back every week.
In July 2011 Stoop starting working for Facebook when his software company Sofa B.V. was acquired, with the goal of having Stoop work for Facebook.
The funny part is that Stoop himself only joined Facebook in April 2011 and is now in charge of what makes Facebook a huge success. Yes, you could file this posting under ‘Zoek de Nederlander’ (’Find the Dutch person’).
(Link: www.businessinsider.com, Photo of Facebook friends by Dan Taylor, some rights reserved.
Tags: Facebook
February 27, 2012
Even national television was trying to hold back its astonishment when they heard that Joan Franka from Rotterdam dressed in a Sioux-like costume won the right to represent the Netherlands at the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, Azerbaijan. I have nothing against her song, but maybe Buffy Sainte Marie could have a good laugh with us.
Last year, bookies rated Dutch Eurovision entry as hopeless, so here it is for anyone who missed it. We were collectively embarrased when Dutch gay-oriented icons The Toppers sang a mouthful of clichés and blinded the audience with lights as camouflage. I was already traumatised with the Netherlands’ entry from 2006, which I called ‘de trommelende trutten’ (roughly ‘the drumming bimbos’) who sang in a nonsense language to boot.
But this year, a shy singer with a guitar and some high notes won over the Dutch for reasons all the ones who didn’t vote for her couldn’t explain, like some sort of schism. Two promising soul singers where also in the running, both with problems in the interpretation of the songs they sang, but got nailed by Hiawatha, Pocahontas, Winnetou, and other nicknames. Leave out the costume and at least we won’t get laughed at this time. Yes, the costume refers to the song, but please get rid of it.
If she wins anything, I’ll whip out my peace pipe.
UPDATE: here it is.
Tags: Eurovision Song Contest
February 24, 2012
The internal video system of the Dutch defense department was and may even still be online for everyone to see with the factory setting password of the system. Exposed by a security expert, various parts of the department work with a Cisco teleconferencing system that uses Internet and nobody bothered changing the factory password. Names, IP addresses and fun stuff were all online as well.
The Ministry of Defense’s counterargument is that the video system is separate from their network, as it was bought by employees without IT knowing about it and that it was not used very often. Interestingly, log files retrieved by the security expert show that the system was used several times a day.
I bet you the IT people are not happy. And if that’s not sloppy all around, I don’t know what is.
(Link: webwereld.nl, photo: cyberbunker)
