September 20, 2011

Laura is not hitting the books anymore

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 3:17 pm

Following Laura Dekker’s voyage as we have been, we left off recently with “still no word on if she has ever touched her homework.”. A report on her birthday today says that she just doesn’t have time to study. She had started to study at the beginning of her one-year sail around the world, but gave that up quickly enough.

One of the legal conditions on which she would be allowed to sail solo was that she do homework. She doesn’t plan to stop studying altogether, but I can totally imagine that repairing and replenishing her boat comes first.

The Dutch authorities can only wave their finger Dutch uncle style about her not studying, as her studies are her parents’ responsibility. And after the whole mess of a legal situation Laura got into with the authorities and her parents, she gave up being Dutch and relied on her dual citizenship with her country of birth, New Zealand.

Mark my words, if and when she completes this amazing feat, we’ll be playing ‘Zoek de Nederlander’ (’Find the Dutch person’) soon enough. In Laura’s case it will be a game that consists of constantly dissing a Dutch person in the media and then ignoring all the bad things and claim her victory as a Dutch one.

Follow Laura’s tweets on @laura_and_Guppy (Guppy is the name of her sailboat)

See also all our stories about Laura Dekker .

(Link: rnw.nl)

(Photo of an entirely unrelated boat by the US Navy)

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September 14, 2011

Dutch punk band Heideroosjes calls it a day

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 9:57 pm

Arguably one of the Netherlands’ best known punk bands internationally, De Heideroosjes from Horst aan de Maas, Limburg, have decided to stop making music after 22 years. Their last album entitled Cease Fire will be out on 21 November. The band started out called Fire, so this last album has a full circle ring to it.

Founded in 1989, the band has been on Epitath records in California for years, arguably one of the world’s best punk labels. They sing in English, Dutch, German and the dialect Limburgish (see below). Contrary to so many other bands, De Heideroosjes have had the exact same band members ever since they started, and they claim that stopping won’t be easy to do.

And in 1998 friend and music lover Guuz Hoogaerts wrote their biography entitled ‘De Heideroosjes, een teringtyfustakkeband’ (‘De Heideroosjes, a freakinfuckinfantastic band’)(rough translation, pardon the pun, the Dutch bit is in reference to one of their older songs), being a big fan of good music from Limburg. The book tells us how the band earned their internal status not by ‘blowing the right people’, but through hard work, great songs and remaining true to their ideals.

Even Lady Gaga actually ‘ripped off’ the intro of De Heideroosjes’ song ‘We Are Share the Same Sun’ in Electric Chapel. Follow the above link and compare, I’m convinced.

De Heideroosjes – Jerry rules in the land of the free (in English)

De Heideroosjes – Boore Lul (‘Dumbass farmer, rougly) (in Limburgs)

De Heideroosjes – Wurst und Käse (Sausage and Cheese) (in German)

(Link: volkskrant.nl)

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September 13, 2011

Blinded by false research about meat eaters

Filed under: Food & Drink,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:02 pm
anti-meatjpg

Professor Diederik Stapel from the University of Tilburg was recently suspended for making up research that the media actually took seriously and wrote about. The university is apparently looking into his previous ‘research’.

His latest nonsense that hit the papers was that meat eaters are more ill-mannered (aggressive, selfish, asocial, you know) than vegetarians. Professor Roos Vonk of the Radboud University in Nijmegen ran with this story and got nailed for doing so, once the media figured out it was made up. She claimed that she never thought for a moment that it could be false. Vonk explained that her expectations were that vegetarians were more empathic towards others than meat eaters, which turns out is 100% pure crapola. Vonk used to chair the animal activitst group Wakker Dier and is a member of the Party for the Animals. Call me crazy, but I suspect she’s a vegetarian.

She candidly admitted to have been stupid about trusting this research as she did have some doubts about Stapel’s methods. Human behaviour has shown throughout history that people believe what sounds good to them all the time.

And if Vonk truly believes that meat eaters are douche bags, she’ll want to buy into any nonsense that says what she would like to think could be true, making her vulnerable and gullible. You could argue that by not eating meat you’re doing a good thing, but placing yourself above others for that reason makes you a douche bag and in this case, a blinded, crappy scientist. It insults the intelligent, open-minded vegetarians and vegans out there that are not douche bags, for starters.

Oh and if you need to believe that your lifestyle choices are better by denigrating others, you’re also a douche bag.

UPDATE: Vonk eats meat sometimes, albeit organic. She admitted on Dutch telly that if the research had shown the opposite or that it didn’t matter what people ate, she wouldn’t have bothered with it. She also thinks meat eaters have a superiority complex, while she’s in fact the one thinking she’s a superior douche bag.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl, Photo: veggieunwrapped.com)

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September 9, 2011

Satnav on smartphone guided by music

Filed under: Music,Technology by Orangemaster @ 4:53 pm

Aspiring boffins at the Eindhoven University of Technology have developed a smartphone app for Android that helps cyclists navigate to their destination by using music. By using the phone’s satnav, a cyclist can listen to their favourite tunes the way they always do, but, for example, when they have to turn left, the music will be harder on the left, allowing the cyclist to focus on the road.

The application can be used around the world and can be downloaded as of next week for lucky Android users. iPhone users will have to wait, something that is often the other way round.

I’ve seen or heard nothing of this app, but I already have some issues with it. Using satnav (GPS function) on a smartphone sucks energy out of a battery like a vampire sucks blood (comes with a warning, too), so I cannot imagine using something like this for a real long bike ride that would require any serious directions. Is this something we really need? Will the app respond fast enough or even properly? Some of the best satnavs for cars have problems with certain countries and small roads. When do people need a map when they’re on a bike? That’s right, for a long ride. By then your phone will have died and you’ll have to sing the rest of the way. And I’m not even going to get into people who are hard of hearing or easily distracted.

If anyone uses this in the near future, please tell us about it.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl)

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September 8, 2011

100 years of Fokker airplanes and some beer

Filed under: Aviation,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:23 pm

Two weeks ago in Haarlem I popped into Dutch café in den Uiver, named after KLM’s Douglas DC-2 airplane, Uiver to have a beer and look around again at the cool Dutch airplane memorabilia on the walls. Lo and behold, that weekend besides Haarlem’s Jazz Fest, it was also the Centennial Festival of the Fokker Spin or ‘spider’, the flight of Anthony Fokker’s airplane ‘Spin’ that flew over St. Bavo Church 100 years ago, an aircraft he built and flew when he was just 20.

Although bankrupt in 1996, Fokker airplanes are still around today in KLM’s fleet and are an important part of Dutch aviation history. The Fokker Trimotor, as used by Richard Byrd to fly over the North Pole, is probably the best known of his planes.

For the occasion, Haarlem’s young beer brewery Jopen, of which I could go on about with many stories, brewed a Fokker Spin beer. In den Uiver had it on tap, and it had a proper bitter yet sharp after taste. But never ever drink and fly.

(Link: cloggie.org)

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September 7, 2011

A fire evacuation song for kids

Filed under: Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:36 pm

A Dutch site about children, pregnancy and the likes, peuteren.nl is offering the free download of a song children can sing when they leave a burning school building or during a fire drill.

According to the site, the story goes that someone somewhere wondered if there was a song the kids could sing to keep their focus on getting outside in a stressful situation. Here’s ‘Het Ontruimingslied’ (‘The Evacuation Song’), easy to sing for Dutch kids as young as two-years-old.

Someone who works with kids please tell me if this is a brilliant idea or just plain weird, I honestly don’t know.

An excerpt:

We moeten nu naar buiten
Stap voor stap in de rij
Iedereen verzamelen
De deur is al nabij

(roughly)
We have to go outside
Step by step in a file
Everybody gather together
The door is not too far

For the Dutch teens who do understand German, there’s always the punk rock classic by Extrabreit, Hurra hurra die Schule brennt (Hurrah Hurrah The School is Burning).

(Link: nieuws.nl)

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September 6, 2011

A big bike full of kids back from school

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 12:37 pm

De Cafe Racer has launched this 10-seater school bus which comes equipped with pedals for “most of its occupants.” I think this means some kids just sit there, but I don’t quite get that.

This eco-friendly vehicle is powered entirely by pedalling kids, although the driver can switch on an actual motor if they want to get going.

The company also makes bikes with a bar like the beer bikes we posted about. Then, there’s also cargo bikes for 8 kids, with an adult peddling along.

The cities and towns in the Netherlands have a very well divided space for cyclists and drivers. When I used to work as a bike courier, before bike paths in Montréal, Canada, you had to cycle on the right-hand side of the road and be very aware of fast traffic around you that may even hit you (happened at least three times, once even caught on film). Cars hit your handle bars and send you flying (BTW I wore a bike helmet). Or there’s that time someone opened a car door on a fellow bike courier roommate and the pointy end of the door ended up in his chest, sending him to the hospital.

In the Netherlands you can bike without fear of cars on the bigger bike paths, although racing scooters are the new danger. However, it is relatively safe for these kinds of bigger bikes, even on busy streets since so many people cycle in general and cars are more aware of cyclists. And traffic is much slower, too.

(Link: thenextweb.com, Photo: De Cafe Racer)

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September 1, 2011

Tracking down pooping dog owners using dog DNA

Filed under: Animals,Science by Orangemaster @ 3:59 pm

There can be quite some dog pooh on the street in the Netherlands sometimes because the owners pay taxes and some interpret that as ‘my dog can go anywhere it wants without me having to pick it up because I pay for it.’ It could be worse, but it could always be better.

The town of Wijchen, Gelderland is considering getting some device that reads pooh DNA, finds the dog that matches it, which in turn leads to the owner getting a fine. It’s all very CSI. Would people and law makers actually allow the reading of dog pooh DNA as a basis for a fine? And then the town has to properly keep a DNA database of all the dogs. Experience teaches us that government and databases are a very bad match in general.

The bottom line is, it’s also really expensive, the boffins say.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl.nl, Photo of Pick Up Your Dog Poo by Michael Coghlan, some rights reserved)

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August 31, 2011

Pianos take over the streets of Tilburg

Filed under: Art,Music by Orangemaster @ 5:27 pm

A project entitled ”Play Me, I’m Yours” by English artist Luke Jerram at Tilburg’s annual Incubate Festival will feature 101 pianos scattered around the city between September 12 and 18. Anybody can go and play the pianos in the parks, squares and at train stations. And they’ll surely be painted all kinds of pretty colours.

Some 200 musicians and music students have already showed a keen interest in giving concerts. And with so many people wanting to go and play the pianos, the city of Tilburg will surpass Jerram’s previous projects that took place in major cities such as New York and London.

Incubate donated the pianos and volunteer residents will babysit and care for the pianos during the event. Pet pianos, if you will. And with all this rain, that sounds like a good idea although all the rumours point to fantastic weather in September. And there will be music, too.

(Link: refdag.nl, Photo of piano keyboard by Adam Henning, some rights reserved)

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August 30, 2011

Christians first, then we rank people

Filed under: Religion by Orangemaster @ 2:32 pm

Since 2001 practicing, recognised Christian bureaucrats down at city hall where told that part of their job was to marry everbody, including gays and lesbians. Christian Democrat Minister of Education, Culture and Science Maria Van Bijsterveld said that practicing Christians could refuse to marry gays and lesbians on religious grounds, as long as it does not go against the basic principes set out in the Dutch constitution — they cannot refuse on the basis of race. Therefore, Christians can refuse to marry gays and lesbians, but not an Asian couple. Even my argument assumes the practicing Christian in question is white and has light coloured hair.

According to Piet Hein Donner, Christian Democrat Minister of the Interior, anyone of any other faith does not have the right to refuse to marry anybody on those same grounds. Christian are therefore protected by law, but other people have to just do their job and shut up. In my book, that’s discrimination. Or favouritism.

And so we’ve learnt two painful facts about the current Dutch government: Christians are above people of other faiths and people of other ethnic backgrounds are better than gays.

No one ever got the memo that the Dutch constitution has an apartheid-like reading to it. Parliament plans to have a lovely discussion about this state of affairs.

(Link geenstijl.nl, Photo of the Saint Gertrude cathedral in Utrecht by Wikimedia user pepijntje, some rights reserved)

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