April 14, 2011

Utrecht openly discriminates against non-Dutch in marathon

Filed under: Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:40 am


Utrecht marathon bans foreign runners door tvnportal

On Monday 25 April, the city of Utrecht will hold its annual marathon, and the organisers have decided that non-Dutch participants are less worthy of winning this race as they’re simply too good and win too much. Sounds like something an elementary school teacher would say to the smart children not to hurt the stupid kids’ feelings.

Organisers are trying to discourage Kenyans in particular from taking part, saying only invited runners can win ‘big money’ prizes. Only Dutch nationals have been invited to take part.

If this isn’t discrimination, I don’t know what is. No other Dutch marathon does this.

(Link dutchnews.nl, Tip: Stefan)

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April 13, 2011

Sugar and soul with Laura Vane & The Vipertones

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 3:41 pm

Just released today, the official video of the song ‘Capsize’ from their second album Sugar Fix (out in a few days) by Dutch-British new soul band Laura Vane & The Vipertones.

“Laura is the chocolate, the Vipertones are the cream, this is the sugar fix.”

Disclaimer: I know how hard these guys and gals work and I wish them a big cherry on top of their future success.

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April 12, 2011

Looking through the Lookout Rabbit in Nijmegen

Filed under: Animals,Art by Orangemaster @ 10:12 am

The Lookout Rabbit was made of concrete, sand, grass, metal, wood, paint and cement coating by Rotterdam artist Florentijn Hofman who has this thing for cute animals.

The Lookout Rabbit is a temporary 12-meter high sculpture. It’s a rabbit with a red dot which you can enter and have a look out over the Waal river. The arwork is located at the Valkhofpark in Nijmegen and will stay put for at least six months.

There’s even a making of the Lookout Rabbit.

(Link and photo: florentijnhofman.nl)

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April 8, 2011

Urk looking into getting drug sniffing dogs

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink,Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:01 am

sticker-300x61

Every country in the world has that one town that people make fun of and in the Netherlands, that town is Urk, Flevoland.

The former island (that could explain some weirdness) seems to attract attention by making decisions based on its strong religious beliefs that are akin to fighting windmills because nothing they do seems to work, it just seems to get worse.

After banning strippers, attempting beer confiscation and littering the rest of the country with creationist folders, it’s now time to score some drug sniffing dogs to enforce the town-wide marijuana ban, which ironically is illegal. Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten warned Urk’s city council that it cannot declare the entire village a drug-free zone because that’s illegal. But hey, when you do things based on your religious beliefs the law goes out the window pretty fast and you can get away with murder.

The word on the Internet is that the kids in Urk are some of the most messed up youth in the area not because of some sort of preponderance of drugs and booze, but because of the very religious city council constantly making them the object of their problems. We’ll save the hard drug use and unwanted pregnancies stories for later.

Slightly unrelated, but I had to.

Lard – I want to be a drug sniffing dog

(Link: dutchnews.nl)

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April 6, 2011

Dutch sign language jokes, not very politically correct

Filed under: General,History by Orangemaster @ 11:55 pm

Watch this video here, we can’t embed it. It is subtitled in English.

They say it is a prejudice to sign a headscarf as a symbol for the cheap German supermarket chain Aldi where Muslims shop and to sign a pointy helmet for Germans referring to the WWII. It’s nice to know that the Dutch speaking world is not alone in its prejudices.

And the Dutch have five sign language dialects because they had five different schools that did their own thing.

The sign for Facebook does remind me of a fish.

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April 5, 2011

Girl turns 18 becomes an illegal immigrant and is shunned

Filed under: Film,General by Orangemaster @ 6:33 pm

Sofia came here when she was 2 from Colombia with her father, went to school, speaks fluent Dutch and and when she turned 18 she automatically became an illegal immigrant and cannot go to college, get state assistance or a job.

The current Dutch government wants to declare illegal immigrants criminals and make it a crime to help illegal immigrants as well. The film is in English and has some English subtitles.

“Here in the Netherlands, they don’t care if you’ve been here 20 years, 2 years, 1 year, 2 months, you’re still illegal.”

(Tip: Ferrie Differentieel, Facebook)

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April 1, 2011

Schoolchildren in Arnhem to perform with Roger Waters

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 4:33 pm

Schoolchildren from the John F. Kennedy school in Arnhem have been chosen to sing the children’s chorus in Pink Floyd’s 1979 hit ‘Another Brick in the Wall Part 2’ live and on stage with Roger Waters on Friday 8 April at a sold out GelreDome, Arnhem.

Waters has been taking on schoolchildren to sing this chorus from around the world ever since the tour started in Toronto, Canada. Next week the kids finally get to meet the rock legend they had never heard of before they started practising. Their teacher says in the video they practice almost every school day. After all they have to dance a bit, and the song is in English.

I was exactly their age when the song was a hit on the radio, and I totally didn’t understand the complexity of Pink Floyd’s famous concept album until I saw the movie in 1984. At the time, it was the first movie made to fit an album, as opposed to a soundtrack being made to fit a movie. Being Canadian I also had no working understanding of the British school system with uniforms and headmasters or why the rock star (Bob Geldof) was so zonked and didn’t move. You could say it was part of my education.

(Link: gelderlander.nl)

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March 31, 2011

Miffy gets a collection of new designer dresses

Filed under: Comics,Fashion by Orangemaster @ 1:31 pm

The Dick Bruna House in Utrecht is celebrating its fifth anniversary on 1 April, offering free admission from 1 April to 3 April, as it is also National Museum Week. Dick Burna is the creator of Miffy (‘Nijntje’), one of the Netherlands’ biggest export products.

For the occasion Miffy will be dressed by top designers from the Netherlands and abroad, including Saskia van Drimmelen, Claes Iversen, Jan Taminiau, Britian’s Boudicca and Japan’s Minä Perhonen. The dress will be fitted on a 40 cm statue of Miffy and can be admired as of 1 April in the Dick Bruna House.

(Link: depers.nl, image: nijntje.nl)

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March 29, 2011

Dutch scuba divers break World Record Underwater Ironing

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:41 pm

Yesterday, scuba diving club De Waterman in Oss, Brabant got 173 divers together to break the World Record Underwater Ironing. The former world record was held by a Polish scuba diving club with 130 divers. De Waterman said they worked really hard, right up to the last minute to find enough divers and enough ironing gear.

De Waterman can now proudly be included in the Guinness Book of Records just in time for the club’s 40th anniversary.

(Link: depers.nl, Photo Photo of Underwater ironing by BlueBeyond, some rights reserved)

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March 25, 2011

Dutch journalist Joris Luyendijk gets into semantics

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:22 am

“The way Americans follow Holland in the news, that’s how Europeans follow the Middle East.”

Just before that, he mentions that us peeps in the Netherlands are all stoned and visit whores because that’s what the media shows you. We laugh at that, but that’s his point: so many people think it’s reality.

Joris Luyendijk: ‘The old model of journalism is broken’
How can journalism meet the challenges of the Internet age? Former reporter Joris Luyendijk is looking for new ways to tell stories.

Watch a 5 min interview with Joris Luyendijk from The Guardian. (warning, it starts up automatically)

My dream would be if he’d explain to Dutch journalists to stop using terms like ‘black and white schools’, where white equals Dutch and black equals anything not white, which is totally inaccurate and painful to write about. Can we also do away with ‘ambitious women’, implying we’re not by definition and lose ‘good fathers’ (ouch to my friends with children) and even ‘luxury sandwiches’? The more you stick an adjective in front of a word, the less the noun has meaning on its own. Sometimes it makes it better, but not in the press, as Luyendijk explains.

(Tip: Thanks Sueli!)

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