September 7, 2011

A fire evacuation song for kids

Filed under: Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:36 pm

A Dutch site about children, pregnancy and the likes, peuteren.nl is offering the free download of a song children can sing when they leave a burning school building or during a fire drill.

According to the site, the story goes that someone somewhere wondered if there was a song the kids could sing to keep their focus on getting outside in a stressful situation. Here’s ‘Het Ontruimingslied’ (‘The Evacuation Song’), easy to sing for Dutch kids as young as two-years-old.

Someone who works with kids please tell me if this is a brilliant idea or just plain weird, I honestly don’t know.

An excerpt:

We moeten nu naar buiten
Stap voor stap in de rij
Iedereen verzamelen
De deur is al nabij

(roughly)
We have to go outside
Step by step in a file
Everybody gather together
The door is not too far

For the Dutch teens who do understand German, there’s always the punk rock classic by Extrabreit, Hurra hurra die Schule brennt (Hurrah Hurrah The School is Burning).

(Link: nieuws.nl)

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August 25, 2011

Transgenic silk to make bullet-proof skin

Filed under: Art,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:02 pm

Often at odds, an artist and a scientist could be on the verge of making an incredible discovery. Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi and Utah State researcher Randy Lewis have collaborated and come up with a bulletproof, skin-like material made from silk threads produced by a genetically modified silk worm. The goal would be to someday create synthetic human skin with artificial tendons and ligaments.

“Luckily for me I found an article in Science about Randy Lewis and his team about how they succeeded in isolating the spidersilk producing genes of two spiders and embedded them in the genome of a goat. Creating a goat that produces in addition to her normal milk also significant quantities of the spidersilk protein. He also made a press release more recently that he pulled off the same trick with transgenic silkworms, who now produce spidersilk instead of normal silk.”

Read about Essaidi’s ‘New silk road’, the story behind the silk used for the DA4GA (Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Award) project: 2.6g 329m/s aka Bulletproof-skin.

(Links: neatorama.com, jalilaessaidi.com, Photo of Silk worm by Jo Naylor, some rights reserved)

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August 23, 2011

Priest refuses to do funeral after euthanasia

Filed under: Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:28 pm

Although euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 2002, all of a sudden a priest from Noord-Brabant has decided he won’t perform a funeral for someone who has been euthanised.

The family feels punished by the local church and has had to go to another church to hold their loved one’s funeral. The priest claimed he is just following orders set by the diocese and is also telling his colleagues not to handle funerals of the euthanised. His church says that they can understand his reluctance, but not finding a replacement is wrong, and are looking into it. The church also expects some apologies to be given to the family and that the priest might lose his job.

The local churchgoers are pissed that this could happen and are not so generous in giving their church funds to fix the organ all of a sudden.

(Link: trouw.nl, Photo by Johan Wieland, some rights reserved)

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August 18, 2011

LOL Dutch people

Filed under: Photography,Weird by Branko Collin @ 11:33 am

Want to ogle typical Dutch people in typical Dutch settings? The Tumblr site LOL Dutch People has got what you need, such as these kissing ‘triplets’ at a concert. (Warning: sometimes NSFW.)

(If LOL Dutch People is too hardcore for you, you could of course always try and study Facemepls’ portraits first.)

(Source photo: LOL Dutch People)

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August 9, 2011

Really happy or just faking it? A depressed country

Filed under: Health,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:10 pm

In a country where Dutch women don’t get depressed, the Netherlands regularly tops the world’s happiest nations and Dutch kids are happy because they’re egocentric, major depression is on the rise, putting the Netherlands at the top of the most depressed countries in the world.

According to a study sponsored by the World Health Organization, more people have reported being depressed in the Netherlands than anywhere in the world, according to interviews of more than 69,000 people in 18 countries.

Researchers took into account both clinical depression, a biological condition that leads to low self-esteem and loss of interest in otherwise enjoyable activities, and types of mild depression, which can be situational or caused by environmental influences. The latter was likely the cause of higher rates in the Netherlands, US and France

The report also found that women were twice as likely to experience depression, and the strongest link to depression was separation or divorce from a partner.

Recap: the kids are happy because they are highly individualistic, the nation ‘says’ it’s happy year in year out, but people are apparently suffering from depression in a dark corner somewhere. Group therapy, anyone? And handing out all those anti-depressants like bonbons is not the answer, dear doctors.

(Link: www.dutchdailynews.com, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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August 5, 2011

‘Four nights in the slammer for no bike lights’

Filed under: Bicycles,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:16 pm

A man who spent four nights in jail after failing to pay a € 40 fine for not having lights on his bike has been given € 345 in compensation. I thought the fine was € 25, but OK, it must have gone up. And having learnt how to drive in Amsterdam, those lights on bikes are very important since there are so many cyclists.

The police discovered the man still owed fines after giving him one. They took him down to a police station, but when a friend came later to pay the fine, the friend was told to go away. That part I do not get at all.

The next day, the man was moved to Almere from wherever he was stopped because it was the weekend and apparently, the police there have a serious 9 to 5 mentality and don’t deal with fines on weekends. A cell mate even offered to pay the fine in cash, but this was not accepted either. I just don’t get it.

I guess the police were out for bad publicity and they got it: the man spent four nights in jail before he was released and the cops had to fork out more money that it was worth, courtesy of the national ombudsman (!).

(Link: www.dutchnews.nl, Photo by Flickr user heliosphan, some rights reserved)

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July 31, 2011

Sixty hours community service for ripping open scrotum

Filed under: Health,Weird by Branko Collin @ 3:05 pm

A woman from Zeist near Utrecht was convicted last week for maiming her ex-boyfriend by twisting his scrotum in such a way that it tore open and a testicle fell out.

According to Algemeen Dagblad, the woman defended herself by claiming that the man had abused her before, and that she was afraid it would happen again. “He had been using drugs, and I could see in his eyes that things were not all right. […] I wanted to pull him off the stairs by his crotch.”

The man had to call an ambulance himself, as the woman’s phone credit had run out. The judge felt a claim of aggravated battery was not proven, says RTV Utrecht, and sentenced the woman to 60 hours community service, and awarded the ex-boyfriend 300 euro in damages.

(Photo by Steffen Zahn, some rights reserved)

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July 21, 2011

‘New’ laptop has someone else’s data on it

Filed under: IT,Weird by Orangemaster @ 8:50 pm

A man in Haarlem bought a new computer at a big chain store. He got home, started it up and saw that it was full of someone else’s data, like pictures, contracts and tax documents.

The previous owner had bought the laptop a year ago (so obviously not a super recent model) and returned it within a week because it kept crashing. Instead if having it repaired, the store just gave him a new one. But was it a new one?

The new owner and the previous owner are kinda pissed, as you could imagine. I have to assume that the previous owner was incapable or didn’t bother erasing his hard drive, which is weird if the new owner was able to start up the computer and use it. I also assume the shop didn’t even start up the computer, kept in the back and eventually put it back on the shelf.

A friend of mine who worked at a similar big chain store back when computers were big PC klunkers said that they didn’t repair anything and just waited a week and gave clients back the same computer, which is why he left his job when he found out.

(Link: welingelichtekringen.nl)

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July 20, 2011

Urk lets harbour lose big money on Sundays

Filed under: General,Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:37 am

sticker-300x61

After the barrage of other plagues (kids on drugs, alcoholic teens and fighting strippers), the quirky religious town of Urk, the butt of many jokes, has yet another faith-related problem: people stealing free electricity.

On Sundays, in the harbour, due to religious reasons, the harbour people cannot ask for money to others charging up their boats. And losing tens of thousands of euro is a good reason to ask the city to allow them to make an exception on Sundays, a day of rest for nobody except the bureaucrats in Urk.

The answer was simply that asking people for money on Sunday was not OK. Of course, the bureaucrats don’t see any change in their salary, so it’s OK to let business people choke. Love thy neighbour.

(Link: rtl.nl)

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July 19, 2011

Bargain fashion tricks its way onto the catwalk

Filed under: Fashion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:56 pm

(video in Dutch) at 3:00, the audience finds out they’ve been fooled. Imagine this was Walmart or some other cheap brand.

Bargain clothing and household linnen brand Zeeman pulled a guerilla move that has the whole Dutch fashion world buzzing. At the recent Amsterdam International Fashion Week, they posed as a ‘serious’ fashion brand, Frank (my guess a play on words for ‘frank’ or ‘straight up’), and made it onto the catwalk.

The whole point was to show that fashion does not have to be expensive. However, I can tell you that although this is a valid point, Zeeman clothing often falls apart after a few washes. I have no qualms about their towels, and their stores are ghastly. But yes, they are cheap, although they had bucks for this one prank.

And the fashionistas blogs are pissed because they were fooled. Be sure to look at their faces in the video.

Apparently, while the work of independent designers is judged beforehand, no demands are made of companies which cough up the full fee of 15,000 euro for a show with lighting and make-up thrown in. “We’re just pleased to get the money,” [event director] Mr Maussen admits. “But maybe we should be a bit stricter in future.”

Money talks and cheapness walks.

(Link: rnw.nl)

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