September 30, 2010

Small cafes get to allow smoking again

Filed under: Dutch first,Health by Orangemaster @ 9:41 am

While outgoing Minister of Health Ab Klink blew up his own political career recently with his yes-no-yes-no behaviour at a crucial moment, now one of his biggest political accomplishments is being turned over: the smoking ban.

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After fighting tooth and nail, small cafe owners with no staff will be allowed to smoke and allow smoking in their establishment. Although the smoking ban has been in effect since 2008 and there have been creative people with small cafes fighting it, the first nation-wide exception is coming up. This is a big ‘international sign of friendship’ salute to Mr Klink.

Besides the obvious monetary arguments, protecting staff again smoking when you don’t have staff is nonsensical. The Netherlands is funny that way.

(Link: dutchnews.nl)

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September 27, 2010

Oldest human remains found in the Netherlands

Filed under: Dutch first,History,Science by Orangemaster @ 10:14 am

In Swifterbant, Flevoland, the country’s famous province entirely made from reclaimed land and known for remains of all kinds, claims to have found remains of the oldest Dutchman. The excavation of a grave revealed some bones which date back to about 7000 BC, making it the oldest remains ever found in the Netherlands.

Note: we still can’t bring you new pics, bear with us, we’re waiting for it to be sorted.

(Link: destentor.nl, Photo: Salem graves by by Alanna Ralph, some rights reserved)

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September 9, 2010

Klingon opera premieres in The Hague

Filed under: Art,Dutch first,Shows by Orangemaster @ 1:11 pm

Back in June 2008 we told you about earthlings of the Dutch persuasion planning to perform Klingon opera and that day has finally come.

The Klingon opera ‘U’ (that’s the name of it, pronounced ‘oo’) will premiere tonight at the Zeebelt theater in The Hague and run until 12 September, after which the show is heading to Qetlop in Farnsberg, Germany to perform at an exclusive event for the Klingons of the Khemorex Klinzhai Fleet.

Klingon language expert Marc Okrand, the creator of the language, will be the guest of honour at the 10 September premiere.

Classical trained opera singers will be performing, here’s a presentation of U at a FedCon sci-fi gathering, have a look at the video (1:03):

(Links: presurfer, u-theopera)

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July 29, 2010

Scotland’s Sink the Bismarck beer sunk by the Dutch

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:23 pm

Someone was telling me at a dinner party about this beer (not the one in the picture) and the (pardon the pun) pissing contest it became to brew the world’s strongest beer. Back in February Scottish brewery BrewDog could still claimed it brewed the world’s strongest beer called Sink the Bismarck! at 41 per cent. It has now been surpassed by Almere’s Jan Nijboer of brewery ‘t Koelschip with a beer called Start the Future that comes in at a whopping 60 per cent.

Game on.

(Link: spitsnieuws.nl)

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July 27, 2010

The Ice Man breaks his own ice sitting record

Filed under: Dutch first,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:57 am

On Saturday in Utrecht’s busiest shopping mall, Wim Hof, aka the Ice Man, broke his record of sitting in ice for 1 hour and 13 minutes by a whopping 31 minutes 23 seconds (1 h 44 min 23 sec).

Back in May, after having put Hof through tests, two Dutch scientists in Nijmegen concluded that what he can do “is medically impossible”.

He’s just the definition of cool.

Read and watch more about The Ice Man being a freak of nature.

(Link: rtvutrecht)

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July 22, 2010

Sports park lit up entirely with LED lighting

Filed under: Dutch first,Science,Sports,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 11:26 am
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As of September, a sports park in Eindhoven (three football pitches, four tennis courts and the rest of the place) will be entirely lit using LED lights, made popular in its mordern-day version sometime around 1999 by Dutch firm Philips, headquartered in Eindhoven.

Local newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad claims that this is a world first, as they couldn’t find anyone else who did this. LED lighting is much less energy consuming that regular lighting, up to 60% according to measurements quoted in the newspaper.

(Link: nuzakelijk.nl, Photo of LED lighting project by Velo Steve, some rights reserved)

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July 19, 2010

World record consecutive gaming in Dutch hands

Filed under: Dutch first,Gadgets,Gaming by Orangemaster @ 3:35 pm
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Dutch gamers in Rotterdam have scored a Guinness world record for the most hours of consecutive gaming: 50 hours playing Red Dead Redemption. The old record was held by Chirantan Patnaik from India at 40 hours 20 minutes, according to the print version Dutch daily De Pers.

The attempt to break the record was organised by Dutch company Vogel’s Products that wanted to promote a Sony PlayStation 3 controller.

(Link: wireupdate.com, Photo of a PlayStation controller 2 by blindfutur3′, some rights reserved)

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June 15, 2010

Dutch fly world’s first biofuelled helicopter

Filed under: Aviation,Dutch first,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 10:44 am
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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)

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June 8, 2010

Town of Limmen breaks Lego tower record

Filed under: Architecture,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 8:41 am

The town of Limmen, North Holland got 1800 volunteers with loads of free time to build the highest tower ever made of Lego blocks. The tower is made up of 700,000 Lego pieces and is 30,52 metres high, breaking the old Guinness Book of Records record by a mere 30 cm (see pic), set by the city of Oslo, Norway.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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May 29, 2010

Million digitized newspaper pages available at kb.nl

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Branko Collin @ 1:34 pm

newspaper_ad_2000_04_01_sportsLast Thursday, the Dutch national library opened its repository of digitized Dutch newspapers from the period 1618 to 1995.

So far the library has digitized 1 million pages from 70 papers, which can be viewed at http://kranten.kb.nl. It plans on scanning 7 million more in the next two years in order to cover 5% of all newspapers ever printed in the Netherlands.

For the occasion, the oldest copy of a Dutch newspaper in existance, Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt &c, is on display at the library, on loan from the Royal Library of Sweden. The name, meaning “‘currents’ from Italy, Germany, etc.” stuck around, and now courant—krant in its modern spelling—is the word for newspaper in Dutch.

The Dutch national library is not the first with an online newspaper archive, and there are some genuinely cool archives out there such as the Australian one that lets you proofread OCRed texts (much like Wikipedia). The range of the Dutch archive is actually impressive.

(Links: Webwereld, Trouw.)

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