April 2, 2009

Zeeland to give free bicycle helmets to kids

Filed under: Bicycles,General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 8:35 am
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Everytime I see parents with unprotected small children on their bikes, sometimes two, or when I see small children riding hard and recklessly in traffic without helmets, I cringe. And everytime single time I have brought this up at parties, the Dutch tell me to shut up because they know better and that no one gets hurt since they were all born on bikes.

If that really was the fantasy world we lived in, then handing out 35,000 free helmets to children in Zeeland would be a total waste of money, right? Over the next five years, the Zeeuws Coördinatiepunt Fiets (ZCF) in the province of Zeeland will be doing just that, handing out free bicycle helmets to stop children from getting injured or killed.

Last year, the emergency wards in Zeeland treated 4,000 children up to age 17 for head injuries. On an annual basis, 10 to 15 children under age 13 die in traffic riding bikes. About 20,000 children between age 0 and 12 get treated in hospitals as a result of a traffic acccident.

Imagine your cute kid dying because you think no one gets hurt on bikes. Blame all the cars? Write off Zeeland as a ‘different’ part of the country?

And then, the best argument of them all: snowboarders and mountainbikers use cool, hip helmets, what’s wrong with doing so on your bike? It’s not ‘tradition’? The statistics are wrong? Kids just don’t really get hurt?

Bravo Zeeland!

(Link: ad.nl, Photo: holcus.nl)

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April 1, 2009

Woman takes driving exam at age 74

Filed under: Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 10:10 am
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Why bother taking your driving exam at that age? Because you’re a widow and need to get around, which is why Miep Derks from the town of Wijchen near Nijmegen is taking hers. Next Tuesday on her birthday at age 74, the energetic senior hopes to get her driving licence. In 2008 only 19 seniors above age 60 attempted to do so. The oldest candidate in Nijmegen was 64.

It took me three and half years (!) to get my Dutch driving licence (nine flippin’ tries and a hel-lu-va-lot of money). Driving in Amsterdam is tough, with all those bikes and trams, but driving in Nijmegen on the Keizer Karelplein roundabout from hell deserves a prize. It was modelled after the Place Charles-de-Gaulle in Paris, the huge roundabout around the Arc de Triomphe, which is really nasty, too.

(Link: gelderlander.nl, Photo dennismartijn.nl)

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March 31, 2009

Homegrown gut grows like geraniums

Filed under: Dutch first,Science by Orangemaster @ 8:23 am
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In the gut-stem cell research at Utrecht’s Hubrecht laboratory they can claim an impressive scientific feat: growing “tissue of the gut, cultivated from stem cells harvested from the same gut.”

Currently, the cultivated gut is mouse gut, but according to the researchers, the technology works just as well in humans. And the tissue grows fast; it increases fivefold within a week! Within a couple of years this method could be used in gene therapy. Project leader of the gut-stem cell research is Dr Hans Clevers, and according to him it’s a fundamental step forward in stem cell research:

“Cultivating tissue from stem cells has been done before, but in those cases the stem cells were embryonic, with all the ethical complications that go with that, or they were blood, or skin cells, which is really something else.”

Dr Clevers and his team claim to have found the right breeding material and growth factors to make the cells multiply outside the body. As Hans Clevers puts it somewhat irreverently:

“It’s just like a geranium; give it what it needs and it’ll grow all by itself.”

(Link: radionetherlands.nl, image dreamstime.com)

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March 27, 2009

Oldest Dutch resident turns 107 – and is Belgian

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:03 pm
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The oldest living man of the Netherlands, Jos Wijnant, is celebrating his 107th birthday today along with his daughters and other residents at the De Taling pensioners home in Den Bosch, according to Dutchnews.nl (English).

Wijnant, who is keen on following the news and enjoys a glass of wine, puts his long life down to never have done ‘stupid things’.

And if Wikipedia is accurate, he was born in Antwerp, which makes him Belgian.

(Link: Dutchnews.nl, photo freegeorge.us)

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March 25, 2009

British sitcom Yes, Minister goes Dutch

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 10:03 am
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“The classic British sitcom Yes, Minister has been shown in many countries around the world, but only two – India and Turkey – have purchased the rights to the format and made their own version. Now there’s going to be a Dutch version. Public broadcasting organisation VPRO has awarded a contract to independent production company S&V Fiction to make an updated version, which will be called Sorry, Minister, reflecting Dutch public life in 2009.”

“Of course, many things will be adapted. Devious civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby will be replaced by a woman in the Dutch version. The minister’s principal private secretary will be re-cast as an assistant private secretary called Mohammed, who’s Moroccan, in a bid to reflect the multi-ethnic character of Dutch public life. In some respects, bearing in mind the Dutch system of proportional representation and the fact that every government here is a coalition, there should be even more material for the scriptwriters than in the original.”

I’m still laughing at the sorry part!

View the announcement and a clip from the show from British television.

(Link: radionetherlands.nl)

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March 24, 2009

The friendly neighbourhood mood wall

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 4:16 pm

 

moodwall

Here’s the Mood Wall, another urban project from back in Feburary that was also meant to liven up a notorious rough part of town, in this case, Amsterdam Zuidoost.

“Some 2,500 LEDs under a ribbed, semi-transparent wall create a wonderful light effect, which provides a pleasant moment under the underpass. Presence of ribbed sheets ensures that the wall isn’t very vulnerable to graffiti, while making the lights look better.”

(Links and photo: cube-architecten.nl, gizmodo)

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Handing out curtains to spruce up the neighbourhood

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:10 am

 

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In the category of news we could call “when life gives you lemons make some lemonade”, the city of Rotterdam has decided to hand out free house curtains to make run down houses in the neighbourhood of Charlois look nicer. Aaaah. A notorious rough area of the city, Charlois could use some visual freshening up. The makeover also includes painting houses and cleaning up gardens in some 12 streets.

(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo: berthi.web-log.nl)

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March 23, 2009

Amsterdam’s lovely canals are just full of things

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 5:13 pm

Ashleigh Elson of Radio Netherlands tells about the stuff that is dredged out of Amsterdam’s canals. In the film, Gijs van Thiel, Senior Supervisior of Waternet gives us gory details.

“There are over 2,600 houseboats in the centre of Amsterdam, only 20% of the houseboats are connected to the sewer system.”

(Link: radionetherlands.nl)

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March 20, 2009

Postering up the Vijzelgracht with art

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Orangemaster @ 9:56 am

The now infamous Vijzelgracht, a street in downtown Amsterdam where entire houses are sinking into the ground due to a series of major screw-ups in digging the new North-South metro line, was a sorry sight. Families were evacuated and their houses boarded up and declared ‘unfit to live in’.

Across the street, local artist Peter Doeswijk who lives and works on the Vijzelgracht came up with a cultural solution to poster up the boarded houses and hide the inevitable graffiti: by using famous artworks of Dutch Masters (Frans Hals, Vermeer and the likes). He has had other poster exhibitions on the Vijzelgracht during the actual construction and without his efforts, the street, which boasts famous manors such as the one of the Maison Descartes (French institute) would look even worse than it sounds.

When I went by to take pictures around 6 pm last Monday, about 50% of everyone walking by stopped for at least 10 minutes to admire all the artworks and take pictures. Here are mine below. The last one is of the stairs of one of the houses, just to show you how bad the situation is. It reminds me of the stairs in the Mousetrap game.

I also met Peter Doeswijk some 12 years ago when he sold his painted phones before we all had mobiles ones, as his niece was a roommate of mine back in Montréal.

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March 19, 2009

TU Delft breaks record with experimental rocket

Filed under: Dutch first,Science by Orangemaster @ 3:18 pm
statos

Students of the Delft University of Technology launched their Stratos rocket in the North of Sweden which reached a height of 12 kilometres and 551 metres, breaking the old European record of 10,7 kilometres set by British students.

“We’re really happy with this win,” Jasper de Reus, a student of Project Stratos told Elsevier.nl from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden. “It was our first record attempt.”

The British had their motor built by other people whereas the Dutch did it themselves. The Dutch designed a unique rocket motor made from carbon, which “in theory is strong enough to launch a small car.” They did, however, except the rocket to fly 15 kilometres, which it did not.

If you want to see what happens when BBC programme Top Gear try to launch a Robin Reliant into space, then watch this video with a cup of tea.

(Link: elsevier.nl)

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