March 24, 2011

Unemployed air guitar star fined

Filed under: Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:03 pm

Air guitar star Tremelo Theun is duking it out over money with the town of Hengelo, Overijssel. Bureaucrats have calculated that in addition to his unemployment benefits, he has earned about 3,760 euro that he didn’t declare, accounting for some 43 gigs since 2005.

He claims that he’s only had 32 gigs, that he once received 40 euro for costs and that with a few exceptions, he hasn’t made any real money. Bureaucrats have decided to multiply it all up and give him a fine for not declaring his earnings.

Twice world champion air guitar has had to lawyer up to fight the man.
Stay tuned (bad pun).

(Link: deweekkrant.nl)

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March 23, 2011

Toxic spider crawls out of a bunch of bananas

Filed under: Food & Drink,Nature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:30 am

It has all the trappings of the opening scene of a B-movie. Employees in the ‘quiet’ town of Bolsward, Friesland were working at the supermarket, doing their thing. All of a sudden, an employee was in the fruit section and saw something big and brown crawl out of the bananas to say Bom Dia! to the world.

It was big and is apparently high venimous. It was a Brazilian wandering spider (phoneutria nigriventer) that hitched a ride on a bunch of bananas from Costa Rica to the Netherlands.

If you get bitten by the Brazilian, it does things only its maker could have come up with after a bender of mojitos and samba. Here’s what Wikipedia tells us:

Aside from causing intense pain, the venom of the spider can also cause priapism in humans. Erections resulting from the bite are uncomfortable, can last for many hours and can lead to impotence. A component of the venom (Tx2-6) is being studied for use in erectile dysfunction treatments.

In true sober Dutch style, an employee caught the spider, put it in a jar, and eventually drowned it and threw it in the bin.

(Link: hartvannederland.nl, Photo of Ctenus exlineae (F Ctenidae) by Marshal Hedin, some rights reserved)

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March 22, 2011

New tulip named after Vincent van Gogh

Filed under: Art,History,Nature by Orangemaster @ 11:33 am

Spring and the Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden that attracts visitors from around the world has a new red-brown tulip named after Vincent van Gogh.

Omroep Brabant got an explanation from Amsterdam’ Van Gogh Museum that there is no relation whatsoever between the flower and Van Gogh. He’s never even painted tulips, but he did like flowers.

(Link: vangoghmuseum, omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of Van Gogh tulip by vangoghmuseum)

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March 18, 2011

Starlings above Utrecht, three takes

Filed under: Animals,Nature by Orangemaster @ 1:56 pm

Ah yes, spring is coming and the starlings know this.

This video is nice and homemade:

This video felt the need to use music and is from afar:

This video has music and shows the starlings in smaller groups:

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March 17, 2011

Protestant church receives organ from anonymous donor

Filed under: Music,Religion by Orangemaster @ 2:38 pm

A generous Dutch churchgoer donated an entirely built church organ to the Reformed Protestant church in Diever, Drenthe. In true Dutch fashion, we have to tell you the price of it: about 350,000 euro. The Neo Baroque organ has 1147 pipes and will be officially put to use this weekend.

The organ photo here is of a Catholic church in Barcelona.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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March 16, 2011

Olympic tickets only for the Dutch, the rest use Visa

Filed under: Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:14 pm

The Volkskrant estimated that the Netherlands would be allocated some 100,000 tickets for the Olympic Games in London 2012, but apparently they are only up for grabs if you’re a card carrying Dutch person.

Non-Dutch Europeans in the Netherlands who want to buy tickets for the Olympic Games in London will have to pay by Visa card because the Dutch ticket allocation is only for Dutch nationals, the Volkskrant reports on Wednesday. The Dutch selling agent is only allowed to sell cards to Dutch nationals, and will charge them a 23.8% booking fee on top of the price of a ticket.

All ‘third party nationals’, a fancy term for non European, are obliged to buy tickets from the agents of their country.

(Link dutchnews.nl)

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March 15, 2011

‘Organic farming can be deceiving’

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 4:11 pm

When it comes to environmentally friendly products, we tend to collectively think that they’re automatically better than conventional products without even checking. The media and marketing play on these warm and fuzzy feelings all the time, which tends to be echoed by people whose need to believe always seems to outweigh checking the facts. Yes, these are nasty generalizations and yes, I too want to believe, but I don’t — yet.

After an aquaintance had posted an ‘I’m better than you because I eat less meat’ blurb on a mailing list, I promptly responded with our posting on producing meat is actually less damaging to the environment than producing cotton T-shirts. I’ll bet you she still buys cotton T-shirts.

However, I do agree that the video linked below seems to gloss over the issue of pesticides and other interesting comments the farmers were trying to make, but the deception is real: organic products have their own issues and according to everything I have read from several countries as an ordinary consumer, they are very often the same or only slightly better than conventional products.

And yes, killing animals is still killing animals, I got that part.

Watch the short video report: ‘Organic meat not better for the environment’.

(Link: Radio Netherlands)

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March 10, 2011

Public transport chip card nabs two privacy breach awards

Filed under: General,IT by Orangemaster @ 11:55 am

The Big Brother Awards 2010 for the ‘worse breacher of privacy’ was awarded to Trans Link Systems (TLS), the folks who brought to you the disaster of a public transport chip card here in the Netherlands. Even the public’s choice award went to them for the double whammy. The card has been cracked every which way possible, but the makers pretend they have the situation under control, but they don’t.

From unnecessarily fingerprinting the Dutch for a passport to forcing visitors of the city of Haarlem to register their comings and goings by car with their licence plates, breaching people’s privacy in the name of safety is illegal as well as a very slippery slope. In the Netherlands, citizens’ movement Bits of Freedom continues to draw attention to these problems and has had some success.

What a weird idea: the government breaks its own privacy laws made to protect citizens in order to check whether citizens are breaking the law. That can’t be good.

(Link: nu.nl)

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March 7, 2011

Carnival parade in Sittard, the Prince throws oranges

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,History,Music by Orangemaster @ 2:36 pm

I had heard rumors that in Sittard, Limburg, the carnival Prince throws oranges and I had to go and find out if that was true. Once his float arrived on the Market Square I snapped a picture of him (Tom 1) and I also caught an orange. I’m grateful he didn’t try to hit people with them.

A lot of the people parading also gave their social commentary about Sittard, a city falling apart and watching the number of inhabitants dwindle like many other places in Limburg. In local dialect, these signs read ‘Greetings from the torn down city’, referring to the many broken down and empty buildings in Sittard.

In sharp contrast to the ugly parts of town, the lovely Sjtadscafe de Gats dating back from 1535 on the Market Square makes for a lovely background. I saw a few more similar buildings from that era, as the town didn’t really suffer serious architectural damage from WWII.

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March 6, 2011

Children’s carnival parade in Heerlen

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,History,Music by Orangemaster @ 11:26 am

It’s carnival time again in the South provinces of the Netherlands and yesterday in Heerlen, Limburg they had their children’s parade with parents, prams and princes. The red-green-yellow scarf that doesn’t match the rest adorns the carnival colours, a must have for many.

Besides a good story I wanted to know if the kids on the floats threw sweets like they did in when attended carnival in Cologne, Germany a few years back. Just as I reached into my purse to get my camera, I got beaned by a waffle! And I collected enough for breakfast before writing this.

Eventually the children’s carnival Prince, ‘Martijn 1’, showed up in full dress, waving to the crowd. From what I’ve learned, picking the carnival Prince is done by a serious carnival association and is chosen from different schools alternately. They also have princesses, it is done months in advance and is kept secret until the very last minute, a very dear tradition in these parts.

Has the tradition changed over the years? Well, I’m sure some things have, but a few things have definitely remained the same according to a former junior carnival Prince, vintage 1981.

Notice the ship-like float the junior carnival Prince and Princess were standing on here back in 1981? Well, they still use it today, the Blauw Sjuut in local dialect.

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