November 21, 2013

Archaeologists dig up the oldest city seal of Rotterdam

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 12:55 pm

Archaeologists are claiming to have found the city of Rotterdam’s oldest city seal from 1351 on the site where the country’s biggest covered market is being built. The seal is made of beeswax and was discovered in a copper box. On the seal can be read “clavis sigilli de rotterdam”, or ‘key seal of Rotterdam’, and was used to seal the back of documents.

The seal is said to depict the Rotte river, while the vertical bar is a dam. However, in this modern day and age the ‘international sign of friendship’ (aka ‘the bird’ or ‘three-finger salute’) does come to mind more quickly than a river and a dam.

Back in 2011 we told you about the oldest graves of the Netherlands discovered in Rotterdam.

(Link: www.ad.nl, Photo: BOOR)

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November 20, 2013

Racist remarks on television fuel discussion over Dutch intolerance

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 6:10 pm

The racist sounding jury of televised talent show Holland’s Got Talent has actually managed to outdo itself stupidity-wise after recently failing to recognise one of their most established singer-songwriters.

This time a Chinese immigrant speaking better English than the Dutch jury was poked fun at purely because of his ethnicity. Xiao Wang is asked his name before singing an opera aria by Verdi and once he says his name, a woman on the jury answer’s “no matter”, reassuring him that his Chinese is not a problem. The crowd sounds shocked, but laughs. A little later, Gordon, the same pop singer we mentioned earlier this week , asks Wang, “what are you going to sing? Number 29 with rice?”, obviously referring to the fact that many Chinese run take away restaurants in the Netherlands. After Wang’s performance which was surprisingly good, Gordon says “that was the best Chinese I’ve had in weeks”. I stopped watching after that.

This video has decent English subtitles, which will have you facepalming in no time:

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November 19, 2013

Dutch student addicted to travelling

Filed under: Aviation,Weird by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am
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The Germans refer to it as ‘Wanderlust’, and the technical term is dromomania, “an uncontrollable psychological urge to wander”. Dutch tax law student Valentijn Kuperus is not only constantly on the go, but tries to do it as cheaply as possible. I can imagine that if you’re on a student budget and have the urge to travel that saving money as well as planning is something you excel at very quickly. And what a lawyer he is going to make, but he’ll never be in his office.

Kuperus knows all about saving air miles, bonus programs and travel sites. He has learned all about online travel booking by spending three to four hours a day looking for deals. Last month Kuperus flew to in Abu Dhabi, UAE and Cape Town, South Africa. However, he spent all of 90 minutes in Abu Dhabi, but was very happy to accumulate thousands of frequent flyer miles by stopping there.

Simply put, Kuperus is clearly addicted to travel and needs it like a fix, a lot like a record collector needs to constantly dig crates to score a great record for next to no money.

Contrary to most of us who like to fly as directly as possible to our destination, Kuperus would rather pile up as many layovers as possible because that’s how he can score the most points to then be able to travel some more. He has even taken flights that earn him more air miles than they cost. He once landed a deal flying from Paris to Sri Lanka for 7,50 euro, a mistake on the part of the airline and a great find for him.

Kuperus has already visited 57 countries, with about 11 more coming up soon. His passport is so full of stamps that he needs to get a new one every two years. This year’s Christmas trip reads as follows: Brussels-Ljubljana-Istanbul-Cairo-Abu Dhabi-Bangkok-Singapore-Beijing-Seoul-Taipei-Ho Chi Minh City-Taipei-Hong Kong-Amsterdam.

He plans to do some studying while flying as well. He has good travel tips on his frequent flyer blog.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl)

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November 18, 2013

Photo report of the Saint Nicholas parade in Amsterdam

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 8:02 pm

Yesterday I went to the Saint Nicholas parade in Amsterdam.

The bishop of Myra visits the Netherlands, Belgium and other parts of Europe each year to give gifts and candy on his birthday (6 December) to children that have been good and to take children that have been bad back to his palace in Spain.

Recently the appearance of Saint Nicholas’ helpers, the Black Petes, has drawn criticism for its uncanny resemblance to a black caricature.

As a response to the criticism, the city of Amsterdam promised to tone Black Pete down a bit. I did not see much evidence of that, the lips were caricaturally red as ever, although golden earrings seemed to have disappeared.

(more…)

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Talent show jury ignorantly trash established singer-songwriter

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:05 am

The show may be called ‘Holland’s got talent’, but the jury recently made it clear that they don’t exactly have proper knowledge of their own musical culture. Jury member Gordon himself a Dutch pop music singer basically told Joop Visser, who has been performing since the mid 1960s, that he sucked. “The lyrics are reasonably well thought up”, which was not said very nicely and “your voices are horrible together”, which is harsh. In this video Joop sings with Jessica and yes, the song is very well written, which is why anyone should listen to Joop Visser in the first place.

To understand the full extent of the cock-up, imagine if Bob Dylan with nobody recognising him went on stage and sang a new song and got told that his voice range was poor and that his look was outdated. Or imagine telling Leonard Cohen that he doesn’t have any moves and needs to get a makeover, something crass like that.

Visser seemed to have had a good laugh once they realised that the jury had no clue who Joop was and didn’t hesitate to be flippant right back at Gordon. Gordon also asked them both how old they were and when Jessica answered ‘old’, as in, it’s irrelevant, Joop said how old he was and Gordon told him he looked older. All I can say is Gordon was never particularly smart and just got dumber and ruder.

Here’s a Dutch song many of you can relate to called ‘Heineken is een harddrugs dealer’ (Heineken is a hard drug dealer):

(Link: www.welingelichtekringen.nl, Screenshot: YouTube)

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November 17, 2013

Prositutes claim 1.2 million euro from procurers

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 9:18 pm

Ten former prostitutes are claiming 1.2 million euro from seven procurers before a court in The Hague.

The claim is part of a criminal case in which seven Hungarian men are accused of sex trafficking, AD reports. Twenty Hungarian women say the men forced them to hand over the money they made in prostitution. The damage claims run from 700 euro to 460,000 euro.

The sex trafficking case is the result of a police raid in April 2011 in the Doubletstraat in The Hague. The police cordoned off the street and talked to 157 prostitutes.

A court decision is expected in December.

(Photo of the Doubletstraat from Google Street View)

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November 16, 2013

Dutch social network Hyves quits, offers users chance to download data

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 2:20 pm

Popular Dutch social network Hyves will stop operations on 2 December, Parool reported last month.

Although the paper doesn’t mention why the site is shutting down, it’s likely because Hyves was haemorrhaging visitors to Facebook, which offers a similar experience but to an international audience. The international ambitions of Hyves can presumably best be summed up by its name, which is the English word (spelled slightly different) for a skin rash. Marketing Facts reported in March 2012 that Hyves led Facebook by almost 3 million unique Dutch visitors in December 2010. Twelve months later that number was reversed. (The Netherlands has approximately 16 million inhabitants, 10 million of whom were Hyves members at the site’s peak .)

Starting today Hyves allows users to download the photos, videos, messages and so on that they left on the site. The download window is only two weeks. Parool further reports that the Hyves servers currently hold over 1 petabyte in data. Although Hyves will stop as a general social network, it will try and continue as a gaming website.

Update 17 November 2013: Volkskrant reports that Dutch people in their late teens are abandoning Facebook in droves. Of those aged 16 – 19 who had a Facebook account last year, 52% had abandoned their account by this year. On the whole Facebook is still growing though. Volkskrant suspects young people simply do not want to share a network with older relatives.

(Photo of a bus stop ad by Patrick Nielsen Hayden showing how in 2009 Hyves was considered the prime application of a smart phone, some rights reserved)

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November 14, 2013

November 13, 2013

Interpol to use Dutch software for identifying DNA

Filed under: Science by Orangemaster @ 7:07 pm

Earlier this month, Interpol announced its plan to start using a computer program called Bonaparte that is able to identify people from their relatives’ DNA. Bonaparte is based on research done by Radboud University Nijmegen and the Dutch Foundation for Neural Networks at the university.

The Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) has already used Bonaparte successfully on many occasions including in 2012 to find out who had murdered a young Dutch woman, Marianne Vaatstra, in 1999. There are event plans to use Bonaparte to help identify unnamed victims of the 1953 North Sea flood that devastated the southwest of the Netherlands.

As for the name, Napoleon Bonaparte was said to have given people surnames, and so Bonaparte the program does just that for nameless victims.

(Link: phys.org, Photo of DNA by DNA Art Online, some rights reserved)

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November 12, 2013

Dutch architect designs house with a 360 degree view

Filed under: Architecture,Gaming by Orangemaster @ 1:12 pm

Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars of Amsterdam, known internationally for projects such as his building to be built using a 3D printer, has designed a house with a 360 degree view (video).

Inspired by the Russian game Tetris, Ruijssenaars thought up a row house made of blocks placed in such a way that every room has a different view of outside instead of just being able to see out the front or out the back. His idea was based on a building contest in Peru in 2009 which was about increasing density. By having more people use the same space, he was able to increase the density as well as the quality of the residences.

It remains to be seen who will be the first to build these houses. And although different, they do remind me of Habitat 67 in Montreal by Moshe Safdie.

(Link: www.telegraaf.nlPhoto of Tetris cookies by Rakka, some rights reserved)

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