June 23, 2010
After axing American Snoop Dogg with the excuse that violence would ensue and after much protest about the homophobic lyrics of Jamaica’s Beenie Man, the bureaucrats who couldn’t make up their minds went with Ivory Coast’s Alpha Blondy as headlining act for The Hague’s Parkpop festival on Sunday 27 June.
That probably means festival visitors will get to hear some African French reggae.
Here’s Alpha Blondy perfoming ‘Ça me fait si mal’ (It hurts me so) about Africa and hardship
Tags: Alpha Blondy, Parkpop, reggae, The Hague
Contrary to many other European countries, the Netherlands has very few homeless people (or so it seems) and in general, very few beggars on the streets. I’ve been to Paris and Brussels recently, which reminded me again how few beggars a city like Amsterdam has, even in the tourist season.
Apparently, in the town of Amersfoort, where someone has counted 25 homeless people, they have their own bar. They get free beer and can get food, a shower and medical attention while they’re at it. And that’s not all: they get a client card, allowing them to drink a 500 ml beer every hour and a half, with a max of 10 a day. Lucky them, as Dutch beers are usually a wimpy 200-300 ml.
It seems very sad to get them to drink more in a way, but my money is on the getting them off the streets for the sake of the yuppies and nice families who live in Amersfoort.
(Link waarmaarraar.nl)
Tags: Amersfoort, beer, homless
June 22, 2010
A hashtag in Twitter is a word or phrase preceded by the pound sign (#). If it’s a sentence, like #whatsontelly, it is written without spaces. It gives a certain punch to tweets, as a tweet is only 140 characters long. It is also used for people to search for subjects like #obama #oilspill #tigerwoods and so on.
Our favourite Internet-savvy lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet explains how some Dutch folk have missed their mark.
First of all, the trademark claim for #weetjevandedag (roughly, this day in history or what happened on this day) was claimed on an image (a square, black-and-white, cartoon-like smiley face), not on the hashtag expression. If you don’t use the image, it’s not an infringement. Second, such an expression is general and does not differentiate the trademark in question from other things. Third, the trademark claims it already won a court case on someone using their trademark with no proof anywhere to be found to back it up. In English it’s called ‘hot air’, in Dutch it’s lovingly called ‘baked air’ (‘gebakken lucht’).
(Link tip @wilbertbaan (Twitter), blog.iusmentis.com)
Tags: hashtag, Internet, trademarks, Twitter
June 21, 2010
Jamaican dancehall artist Beenie Man has now been signed to replace Snoop Dogg at The Hague’s Parkpop festival on Sunday 27 June, which we wrote about a few days ago. However, replacing an artist who has never had any crowd problems in Europe with an artist that has been cancelled several times for his anti-gay lyrics, is beyond anyone’s comprehension.
Wikipedia mentions Beenie Man’s song ‘Damn’ with “I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays” as well as an explanation from the artist that ‘gay’ in his country refers to child molesters. Although it is a very bad choice of words internationally, I also know that Russians have something similar, which gets lost in its cultural translation as well. But OK, The Hague isn’t booking a Russian artist here.
No matter the real reasons or the context, Beenie Man is way more controversal that Snoop Dogg and has been cancelled much more often. Beenie Man was banned from The Hague two years ago for homohobic lyrics, which makes the country wonder what kind of susbstances the bureaucrats down there are on these days.
UPDATE: Beenie Man is not coming either!
We’ll keep you posted!
(Link: dutchnews.nl, Photo: gayspirituality)
Tags: Beenie Man, gays, homophobia, Snoop Dogg
June 18, 2010
Ah yes, the pseudo-tolerant cliché of the Netherlands rears its ugly head: all of a sudden, hip hop artist Snoop Dogg, head act for The Hague’s Parkpop festival on Sunday 27 June, is not welcome. His show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam the next day is sold out. I’ll bet he’ll say some nice words about the bureaucrats in The Hague at his show.
Parkpop, said to be Europe’s biggest free pop festival, will feature Nena, Nick Lowe and Juliette Lewis. The mayor of The Hague, the attorney general and the cops think that it is a good idea to cancel Snoop Dogg, “in order to preserve the free, open and friendly nature of Parkpop.” Say what?
And not giving an explanation makes us imagine the worst of reasons. Even political parties are wondering why Snoop is being banned. Fear has to be part of the excuse.
Here is a great television appearance by Snoop Dogg on an old episode of ‘Jensen’ (Dutch talk show). It’s mostly in English with Dutch subtitles.
(Link: NOS.nl, abc.net.au)
Tags: bureaucrats, Jensen, Snoop Dogg, The Hague
June 16, 2010
Cardboard Mechanics Installation from Sasj on Vimeo.
Cardboard Mechanics mady by Saskia Freeke, Fin Kingma, Davy Jacobs and Sonja van Vuure of the Utrecht School of Art and Technology.
(Link tip: The Presurfer)
June 15, 2010
On Wednesday 16 June, the Dutch defense department will be showing off the very first helicopter that flies on biofuel. A Boeing Apache AH-64D helicopter of the Royal Netherlands Air Force will fly on biofuel above the military Gilze-Rijen Air Base, located in Noord-Brabant, between the cities of Tilburg and Breda.
During the demonstration flight, one of the Apache’s engines will run on a mixture of fossile fuel and biokerosene, of which 90% of this kerosene comes from discarded cooking oil and 10% algenol, biofuel made from algae that is still very new.
This is a picture of an Apache, most probably somewhere in the United States.
(Link: blikopnieuws, Photo of AH-64 Apache helicopter by nathanm, some rights reserved)
Tags: biofuel
June 12, 2010
Job Cohen, Dutch Labour Party leader and until March this year Mayor of Amsterdam, shows us his football moves. Yes, it’s an old film, but hey, sharing is caring.
The action kicks in at 0:32
June 11, 2010
A woman from Hoogezand near Groningen recently showed up angry at the doctor’s office with the cremated remains of her dead husband who died seven months ago. She had been receiving reminders from the doctor for her husband to get a flu shot and for a bone density scan.
The ‘missing link’ in this story is that for whatever reason, the doctor’s office did not know or had not yet entered the death of this woman’s husband in their mailing database. The assumption is that this was communicated to them, but not dealt with, although it could be the woman’s fault, I don’t know.
“My husband could only participate in the bone density scan if he had recently shrunk by three centimetres and weighed less than 60 kilos. Since he’s been in an urn for months, he meets the requirements,” said the widow.
This is dry Dutch humour at its best. The nurse who handles the scans apparently didn’t appreciate the humour at all.
(Link: rtvnoord.nl)
Tags: humour
June 10, 2010
Here’s a Skype conversation between two 24oranges bloggers yesterday, while watching the Dutch national election results:
Branko: “that is so not shopped” (the above picture)
Orangemaster: “It isn’t!! I saw the item on telly!”
Here’s proof: another photo, taken by a legitimate news source.
Branko: “I guess he just doesn’t give a shit anymore. Is he the guy who coveted a job in Europe?” (as in, if I can’t be Prime Minister (power is addictive), I’ll try for some job at the EU level, which he didn’t get because people don’t like him there either!)
Orangemaster: “He’s going doooown tonight.”
Freshly ousted Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende (in the pic), who has just caused a historic loss for his Christian-values peddling party, is wearing a T-shirt with a big swear word and is drinking the worst drug kids will probably ever encounter in their lives: alcohol.
Balkie, as we call him, was visiting the picturesque fishing village of Volendam, where ironically, the youth are bored to tears, drink themselves into a stupor and take lots of drugs when beer doesn’t do the job. But much like Balkie himself, they close their eyes to how people view these problems (total lack of self-relfection), look at the scenery of their touristic village and act like every is fine.
I gladly use this photo taken by Michael Sijbom, ironically (and I laugh writing this), campaign strategist for Balkie’s political party who needs as much image rebuilding as Rotterdam did after WWII.
Tags: beer, drugs, Jan Peter Balkenende, Volendam
