September 3, 2008

Creating false food memories to lose weight

Filed under: Food & Drink,Science by Orangemaster @ 9:09 am
Poutine

Convincing someone of a false memory could change their long-term eating patterns. It could even be a way to fight obesity and help people who are overweight. Researchers from the Universiteit Maastricht have discovered that making simple suggestions to someone can change their eating patterns. For example, telling someone that they got sick as a child eating a certain type of food would put them off that food months later.

This picture features good old greasy poutine, typical French Canadian junk food I used to actually serve at one of my first jobs.

(Link: hbvl.be)

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September 2, 2008

Reggae artist Ziggi snapped up by major label

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 5:00 pm
In Transit

Dutch reggae singer Ziggi is the first non-Jamaican artist to sign a contract with the international label VP Records/Greensleeves. The label will release Ziggi’s second album ‘In Transit’ due out in the Netherlands on 22 September and around the world on 20 October. VP Records/Greensleeves is the world’s biggest reggae label and has brought us stars such as Sean Paul, Shaggy, Eek-A-Mouse, Shabba Ranks and Gregory Isaacs.

For folks who enjoy life’s little details, Ziggi lives on an island of the Netherlands Antilles called St. Eustatius.

(Link: telegraaf.nl, photo: Ziggi’s Myspace page)

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August 31, 2008

Dutchman wins Google prize

Filed under: Online by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am
PicSay

The final phase of Android Developer Challenge I is now complete. Out of 50 teams of finalists, 10 teams received a $275,000 award each and 10 teams received a $100,000 award each. One of the $275,000 winners is Eric Wijngaard with his mobile operating system PicSay.

PicSay allows you to quickly add word balloons, titles, and props to the pictures you have taken with your mobile phone camera. Enhance them further with various color correction, highlighting, and distortion effects, and then easily share them with your friends and family via e-mail, your blog, or photo sharing sites on the web.

(Link: code.google.com)

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August 26, 2008

Cancel the phone book, save trees galore

Filed under: General,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 11:09 am
Phone book

There is a petition going around that basically pleads for having the right to say no to the paper version of the phone book and the yellow pages (Gouden Gids). It’s not about taking it away from the elderly that do not bother with computers or people who actually use a paper copy, it’s about not so many of these guides ending up in the bin. Thousands and thousands do and these folks think it’s time to put a stop to it. This picture is actually of my own version waiting to be recycled yet again this year.

You can sign and read about the petition in Dutch here: Stop De Papieren Telefoongids (Stop the paper version of the (Dutch) phone book)

(Link tip: From Twitter)

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Hirst’s diamond skull comes to the Rijksmuseum

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 9:15 am
Hirst

The famous diamond-bedecked skull by British artist Damien Hirst will be exhibited in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam from 1 November until mid-December. The museum’s director Director Wim Pijbes told De Volkskrant that the contract for showing the work is the strictest he has ever signed. “The skull has to be placed in a dark room without anything else around it. Everything we have to do is in the contract. We cannot mention who the owner is, either.”

The skull, that of an 18th century European covered in platinum and 8,601 diamonds, was sold in 2007 to a group of investors for €75m, the largest sum ever paid for a work by a living artist.

(Link: dutchnews.nl, photo ad.nl)

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August 25, 2008

Cute canal house closets for kids

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 9:09 am
Closets

Canal houses in Amsterdam and in many other Dutch cities have a very big “aaaaw” factor. Marie-Louise Groot Kormelink, owner of Kast van een Huis, combines this with “fun and hip things for your kids that don’t come from that Swedish furniture store”.

It is designer children furniture that can be custom-ordered, mixed and matched, and is very Dutch.

(Link and photo: kastvaneenhuis.nl)

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August 22, 2008

First-ever Dutch woman Stratego champion

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 8:19 am
stratego11.jpg

During the Stratego championship this week in Kiev, Roseline de Boer from Baarn, South Holland is the first woman ever to become world champion at the board game Stratego. It was also the first time a competition was organised for women. Roseline’s brother Vincent de Boer who won the world title last year, also competed in Kiev. He ended up in third place.

According to Wikipedia, the modern version of Stratego was originally published in the Netherlands, which would explain why the Dutch have apparently always won the championship, the Dutch Stratego Association explains.

And maybe champions run in the family, too.

(Links: rtl.nl, strategobond.nl)

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August 20, 2008

Villa Peet in Lelystad: sensation white architecture

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 9:31 am
White house

Recently completed, Villa Peet is described as an experience in contrasts. These contrasts create a sensation of entering into new worlds through a series of “rabbit holes”. The lack of doors inside gives the ground floor a sensation of continuity in order to keep the spaces clearly defined.

If you look around carefully, Lelystad, capital of the province of Flevoland, is one big garden of architectural experiments. As a big polder established as recently as 1967 (the last Dutch province), it has room galore to let architects, like these cute bunnies, roam free.

(Link and photo: plataformaarquitectura.cl)

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August 18, 2008

Netherlands’ first private elementary school opens today

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 2:25 pm
Aap

It doesn’t matter what media you read, any recent article about Dutch education tells you how really bad it is. One ex-teacher, Peter van Kranenburg, decided to do something about (read: cash in) and start, according to Dutch newspaper Trouw, the Netherlands’ very first private elementary school. Located in Bussum, North Holland, Florencius started today and has four students of 8 and 9 years old and seven staff members. It costs 12,500 euro a year, which is not cheap. Florencius is of course hoping for more students and plans to open more school in Arnhem and Haarlem.

If I am not mistaken, most Western countries have had private elementary schooling for ages. I wonder why it took so long for someone to be done here. Rules? Willpower? Embarassement? Starting any private venture is usually proof that when money is put into something, it makes things better.

I went from a high school with 2,500 screaming students to one with 125, not counting the 25% that get kicked out for bad behaviour in the first year. What happened?

(trouw.nl)

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August 15, 2008

Emergency car help strictly for the highly educated

Filed under: Automobiles,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:43 am
triangle

An insurance company in Dordrecht offers an emergency help service that caters to people with high vocational education, university level education and middle and upper management personnel. The company National Academic claims it can offer prices that are lower than that of the competition, ANWB (the Dutch automobile association) and Route Mobiel.

Although the car insurance has been around for two years, the emergency help can now be offered separately from the car insurance, which is why it’s in the news. The prices are lower because apparently the target group “is more careful with their things and has regular maintenance done more often.” They are also not clear on who falls under middle and upper management, which gets sorted on a request form. If someone lies about this fact, they will served but told to look elsewhere next time.

And yet this year if I remember correctly, giving women lower car insurance rates because they have less accidents was ruled sex discrimination. Just so you know. I can imagine one good reason why the not so highly educated take care of their stuff better: money, and not intelligence.

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