June 25, 2013

Dutch brick and mortar stores that accept Bitcoins

Filed under: Dutch first by Branko Collin @ 10:46 pm

Z24 reports that the first ‘physical stores’, as they call it, have started to accept the virtual currency Bitcoin.

Expat supermarket Taste of Home in Haarlem and bar De Waag in Delft (not to be confused with the bar and high tech society of the same name in Amsterdam) both accept the currency. Currently about five people pay their bar tabs at De Waag using Bitcoins.

Irishman Pail Desgrippes, co-owner of Taste of Home, has an IT background. One of the reasons for considering Bitcoin even before he and his partner started their supermarket was the publicity it would generate. “But I also like the idea of being independent from banks. We also get to save on transaction costs and offer our customers an extra payment option.”

Currently the number of Dutch brick and mortar stores that accept Bitcoins seems to be outnumbered by the amount of websites that report on the number of Dutch organisations that accept Bitcoins. At the moment Wat Is Bitcoin? has the longest list.

See also: Bitcoin income shall be taxed, Dijsselbloem says.

(Photo of a detail of De Waag in Delft by M.M.Minderhoud, some rights reserved)

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June 24, 2013

Ninety-nine years of Tour de France in comic book form

Filed under: Bicycles,Comics by Branko Collin @ 2:11 pm

Next Saturday the hundredth edition of the toughest bicycle race on the planet will start, the Tour de France.

Dutch comics artist Jan Cleijne has written and drawn a book called Helden van de Tour (Heroes of the Tour) in which he reviews the past 99 editions.

Het Friesch Dagblad notes that with the hundredth Tour ahead of us, the market is about to be saturated with bicycle racing books. “But it looks like Helden van de Tour will be one of the winners. […] A jewel of a graphic novel.”

Sevendays.nl writes: “Comics artist Jan Cleijne visits all the historic highs and lows, from World War I to the scandal surrounding Lance Armstrong, and talks about what the Tour is all about: endurance. He lets us experience the blizzards, the puddles, a 70 metre drop, glorious victories and molten asphalt. His drawings take on the colours of the stories, ochre during the climb of an arid Mount Ventoux, gray during the hellish ride of 1926 through the Pyrenees.”

“The book is an homage to a race that is worthy of its legends, but it also puts the focus where it hurts,” Zeit Online writes. “The author, born in 1977, is an enthusiastic amateur rider himself and it shows. His voice is critical throughout the book but also emphatic. Precise and loving are the brush strokes with which the Dutchman paints both the drama of the famous riders and the small anecdotes that take place near the sidelines. […] It is a funny but also a serious book.”

You can find a couple of sample pages at Manners.nl under the ‘Klik dan hier’ link.

Illustration: “In 1951 the yellow jersey was worn for the first time by a Dutchman. His name was Wim van Est. He had never seen a mountain before in his life. The ascent was very slow. The descent was much too fast.” (Miraculously Van Est survived.)

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June 22, 2013

Rob Scholte Museum opens for one more day in Den Helder

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 12:13 pm

Painter Rob Scholte has opened up his collection of contemporary art to the public.

Lost Painters points out that Scholte owns lots of works from artists of his own generation—Peter Klashorst, Mel Ramos, Georg Dokupil, Rene Daniels, Rob Birza, Rob van Koningsbruggen and Jeff Koons—but the online art magazine is especially enamoured with a large collection of covers that Jan Sluijters created for magazine De Nieuwe Amsterdammer (later De Groene Amsterdammer, now just De Groene). Sluijters, a well-known painter in his own right, sharply criticized the profiteering attitude of the Dutch government during World War I through his covers. Scholte displays 70 of them in chronological order.

The exhibit in an office building next to the Den Helder railway station lasts only four days. You will have to be quick if you want to catch it, the last day is tomorrow.

If you cannot make it the report at Lost Painters has got plenty of photos of the exhibit.

(Illustration: one of Sluijters’ WW I covers)

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June 21, 2013

The Dutch PhD ceremony: pomp and linguistic circumstances

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:34 am

I attended my first-ever PhD defense in the Netherlands at the University of Amsterdam this week. One of the candidates presented in English and the other in Dutch. In a ceremony open to the public attended by friends, family, colleagues and the curious, a master of ceremony (‘pedel’, a woman this time) with a ‘pedelstok’ (big staff with rattling bits on it) led a procession to bring the defense committee (‘opponents’) to their box seats wearing traditional black robes and caps. After an hour of Q&A chaired by the University’s rector with some tough questions the master of ceremony called ‘Hora est!’ (‘Time’s up!’ in Latin) and then the gang retreated for private consultation. It reminded me of church or court (we had to get up often), but it felt like being in an old Dutch painting.

Basically it’s a ceremony where the candidates have to defend some valid points that could surely be addressed in postdoctoral research, but then research is something that is never finished at any academic level.

The one thing that struck me as odd was that the English-speaking candidate was mostly asked if not only asked (if I remember correctly) questions in English to which they answered in English, while the Dutch candidate had to answer many questions in Dutch asked to her in English. In other words, the native Dutch speaker was technically at a disadvantage in their own country. As well, the native English speakers asked questions in English to which they could not really understand the Dutch answer. I find this proof positive of how much the Dutch have to continuously adapt to the use of English at the most important moments of their lives. The Dutch candidate was visibly more nervous as well.

We once wrote about the ceremony from an Australian blogger’s perspective.

Another post by a Chilean claiming that being exposed to public criticism shouldn’t be done at a purely ceremonial event.

And another post says the reception afterwards felt like a wedding reception (I agree), but it did feel like being ‘fired at’:

“Several months before you expect to get your degree you must finish your thesis and send it off for approval of your committee. When you get the “OK,” you are officially done with the analysis and writing! Now you can look forward to becoming your own personal party planner. ”

(Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Effeietsanders, some rights reserved)

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June 20, 2013

Nijmegen to let people choose the model of their home

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 4:03 pm

Nijmegen plans to let potential home buyers pick from 30 different models that have a DIY look to them. Buyers must meet a lot of financial conditions, as the Dutch have very strict rules related to housing.

“The scheme is modeled on the self-built success of another Dutch city, Almere, where hundreds of new homes have been built since 2006 by individuals given free reign to do with plots of land as they wish.” Wired magazine, who picked up the story, also picked the most extreme model that does look like a shack made of discarded Eur-pallets, giving way to snarky comments.

In 2008 we claimed that anything went in Almere when it came to architecture because it was a ‘planned city’ built on a polder, which means urban planners had a field day. And we also told you how cool housing can be in Nijmegen as well.

It is true that ‘affordable’ housing has a reputation for being of poor quality, something I can vouch for personally after being forced to move out of a flat with cement rot in Amsterdam and seeing an entire neighbourhood of badly built flats destroyed in Rotterdam.

Let’s see how this project in Nijmegen pans out.

(Links: www.ugenda.nl, www.wired.com. Photo of Nijmegen and the Waal river by Rein Ketelaars, some rights reserved)

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June 19, 2013

Armin van Buuren featured with vinyl records at Madurodam

Filed under: General,Music by Orangemaster @ 9:02 am
800px-Armin_Van_Buuren_2

Recently someone asked me if I had ever been to Madurodam in The Hague, an attraction many tourists and Dutch people visit, especially with kids, and my answer was ‘no’. Someone also recently asked me why Dutch DJs (music producers, really) Tiësto, Afrojack and Armin van Buuren were world-famous to which I pertly answered that Afrojack didn’t count in my books and that the other two make dance/trance music that the Dutch seem to make best.

Now that Armin van Buuren is just that much more popular than Tiësto and considered an export product like some sort of cheese, he’s now also featured in Madurodam.

As a DJ myself I am a bit miffed that Madurodam has set up turntables (you know, for vinyl records) as an attraction when in fact Van Buuren plays off CD players. I don’t care what he uses, but the art of using turntables is and will always be totally different than using CDs.

Madurodam, you’re willfully misleading children. It would be like giving them a chance to play with acrylic paints trying to mimic their favourite street graffiti artist.

(Link: www.omroepwest.nl, Photo of Armin van Buuren by Peter Drier, some rights reserved)

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June 18, 2013

Speed cameras wrongly fine motorists for years

Filed under: Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 10:06 pm

Hundreds of motorists on Dutch motorways have been wrongly fined because of an error caused by speed cameras, according to Dutch news RTL. The government has known of this specific problem of mistaking vans, camper vans and cars with cycle racks for vehicles with trailers, such as caravans, which have a maximum speed limit of 90 km/h instead of 130 km/h on most motorways, since 2009. However, they said it didn’t affect enough people to do something about it so they just sat on it.

The software of the speed cameras will be updated after all and people will be refunded even though the government claims that the fines given in error were not that many.

It’s nice to see some effective journalism once in a while.

(Link: www.nrc.nl, via www.amsterdamherald.com, Photo by Heiloo Online, some rights reserved)

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June 17, 2013

Bitcoin income shall be taxed, Dijsselbloem says

Filed under: Dutch first,Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:19 pm

Dutch people who accept payments in the new Internet currency Bitcoin will have to pay income tax on the funds they receive. Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem confirmed this two weeks ago after parliament had asked questions about Bitcoin, Nu.nl reports.

According to the minister, the “alternative virtual currency” cannot be seen as “electronic money” because it fails the definition set by the Dutch law. Dijsselbloem also reported that approximately 2% of all Bitcoin users in the world are Dutch, and that these Dutch owners possess about 20 million euro worth of Bitcoin. At the time of writing 1 Bitcoin represents about 75 euro.

Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet helpfully explains that the Wet financieel toezicht (the law on financial control) defines electronic money as a monetary value that

  • Is stored electronically.
  • Represents a claim on the person or organisation who issues it.
  • Is issued in exchange for money to make payments with.
  • Can be used to pay both the issuer and others.

Since Bitcoins do not represent a claim on the issuer and they aren’t necessarily issued in exchange for money, they aren’t electronic money. The reason you still have to pay income tax is simply because the law on income tax doesn’t mention money. Any form of income, whether that income consists of money, goods or Bitcoins, is susceptible to being taxed. The problems start when you have to pay these taxes though, because the Dutch tax office only accepts money. Your revenue will somehow have to be valued in euro before you can calculate how much you have to pay.

I can well imagine that the belastingdienst (tax office) isn’t going to chase down small time Bitcoin users just yet. I remember the first time I became self-employed and asked the belastingdienst for a VAT number. The man on the other end of the line laughed at me and said they could not be bothered to issue me my number for the couple of hundred guilders I expected to make that year.

Another complicating matter according to Engelfriet is that Bitcoins aren’t financial products either. That would mean you will have to pay VAT (‘btw’) over the Bitcoins you receive, which would make trading in Bitcoins less attractive for the Dutch.

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June 16, 2013

Dutch working mothers are paid less than working fathers

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:34 pm

OK, this is somewhat old news (in fact, Dutch Daily News covered it two months ago), but I still want to write about it because this follows up on earlier stories. Basically what I am trying to find out is how we, the Dutch, define Enlightenment ideals such as freedom, equality and happiness. It is clear that they are important to us, but we have been pursuing aspects of these ideals hundreds of years before other Western nations did and as a result, when looking through a global lens, we seem to do everything exactly different.

As they say, Dutch women don’t get depressed.

Here is the deal. In many ways the Dutch are some of the least gender equal people in the world. Our ratio of men and women in management roles is similar to that of the United Arab Emirates—and the Arabs at least are working to improve theirs. Furthermore, 60% of all Dutch women do not make enough money to pay their way through life—but they like it that way! In fact, men want some of that part-time action too!

So now a new study has come out that adds another piece to the puzzle. It appears that gender inequality is especially strong among working parents in the Netherlands. On the other hand the income of single men and women without children who work full-time jobs are exactly the same. I thought that was interesting. You’d expect at least some old-fashioned sexism to depress even those incomes by a couple of points. Perhaps that in the parts of our population where sexism is still rife (the Bible belt, anyone?) single, childless women with full-time jobs are rare.

If everybody is happy about this arrangement, then who I am to disagree? There is a difference between women being forced into inequality and women choosing inequality. Where things get weird is in relationships. The default Dutch marriage setting is that of community property (for now). The state sees a marriage as a contract between the state and two people. When the partners dissolve the wedding, the state typically demands that the high earner keeps supporting the low earner through alimony. What kind of incentives does an arrangement like that produce?

See also:

(Link: Statistics Netherlands. Photo by ValentinaST, some rights reserved)

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June 15, 2013

De Skaggerz sing of youthful independence

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 7:46 pm

Here’s a party song called Scuba by a band called De Skaggerz.

A son goes to his father / Dad, I did something wrong / I quit school / Have been staring out the window instead / I cleaned out my bank account / Paid for everything myself / Who do you think you are? / Let me go!

De Skaggerz are, according to their own description, an “up-tempo party reggae band from Rotterdam and beyond. Up-tempo ska-reggae is our genre and because of our frequent excursions to hip hop we are impossible to pigeonhole.”

‘Skaggers’ is Irish slang for pasta, but skagging also means to come off methadone. This is according to the ever so reliable Internet so take those definitions with a grain of salt.

I heard this song last week on De Tweeminutenshow (‘the two minute show’), a program on Dutch pop radio station Pinguin Radio where bands can submit their own tracks. Each song gets two minutes on the show and the song that gets voted on the most gets played in full during next week’s show. At the time of writing you can still vote for Scuba.

(Video: YouTube / De Skaggerz. Image: crop from the video)

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