June 25, 2012

Another Dutch professor caught in scientific fraud case

Filed under: Science by Branko Collin @ 2:51 pm

Professor Dirk Smeesters of the Erasmus University resigned after a study uncovered ‘irregularities’ in two of his papers.

Smeesters read Consumer Behaviour at the Rotterdam School of Management. The university accepted his resignation on June 21. The papers were withdrawn from scientific publications by the university, which stated in a press release today:

Two articles were found to have irregularities with findings that, in a statistical sense, are highly unlikely. The raw data forming the basis of these articles was not available for inspection by third parties, and the professor indicated that he had selected data so that the sought-after effects were statistically significant.

Last year professor Diederik Stapel from the University of Tilburg was suspended for making up pro-vegetarian research.

(Photo of the Erasmus University auditorium released into the public domain by Wikifrits.)

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June 24, 2012

Rooftop velodrome for Sanya, China

Filed under: Architecture,Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 11:31 am

In the southernmost part of China lies the city of Sanya. Local housing corporation Vanke asked NL Architects from Amsterdam to design a bicycle club as part of a resort. This is their proposal.

The pavilion houses a bicycle rental, a cafe and a rooftop velodrome.

(Link: The Pop-Up City. Photo: NL Architects.)

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June 23, 2012

Lottery forced to pay after judge finds advertisement misleading

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:11 pm

You know those lottery ads where in big print it says you’ve won and then somewhere in the small print it says you haven’t won at all, except perhaps for the right to hand over your cash?

Well, one Dutch judge thought enough was enough and has found for six plaintiffs who thought they had won 2,500 euro each.

In a letter that the winners received in October 2010 from Postcode Loterij, the impression was given that the recipients were guaranteed winners if the two unique codes they received with the letter matched the codes printed in a table (see illustration). Once they had sent in their coupons, only one plaintiff received a minor prize and the other five received a lottery ticket—clearly not what they had expected.

The small print said that participants only had a chance of winning the prize, but judge Pauline van der Kolk-Nunes quickly disposed of the T&C: “[The letter] will raise an expectation with the average consumer that they have won a prize […] and that the table shows which prize they have won. The codes and the table are unlikely to have any other meaning. [The small print] contradicts the core of the agreement, which is: you will receive a gift.”

Karma can be cruel.

Postcode Loterij is planning to appeal the decision.

See also: The battle to outlaw poker rages on

(Illustration: iusmentis.com / Postcode Loterij. The text reads: “Do you have one of these codes on your lucky coin? And do you have a valid gift code? Then you will receive one of these gifts, guaranteed. Which gift is yours?”)

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June 22, 2012

Kite Power demo by former astronaut Wubbo Ockels

Filed under: Science,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 11:34 am

Back in 2008 a concert raised money to develop the laddermill, a sustainable invention by former astronaut Wubbo Ockels (shown here), and today Ockel’s Kite Power research group from the Delft University of Technology will be showcasing a wind energy system using kites at the Maasvlakte 2 shore in South Holland.

The Kite Power Team explains that Kite Power is a type of wind energy where a radiographically controlled kite generates electricity. A single cable attached to the kite is pulled and released from the base station every two minutes, spinning a drum that in turn powers a generator. Pulling the kite takes energy, but less than it is generated. The kite can fly up to 900 metres and be used to generate electricity fully automatically, which is its major asset.

(Link: home.tudelft.nl, Photo of Wubbo Ockels courtesy of Emmanuelle)

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June 21, 2012

Ban on drinking standing up at terraces to be lifted

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 11:57 am

A few years ago, the city of Amsterdam made it illegal to drink alcohol at a terrace standing up. If you were off to a sunny Friday afternoon happy hour at a packed terrace you had to have a place to sit down to have the right to drink anything. Pouring out onto the street because happy hour turned into a party pisses off the neighbours who like their peace and quiet at night.

Back in 2009, action group Ai! Amsterdam (a play on words of iamsterdam which serves up tourist and expat information) claimed that thousands of people showed up at the Noordermarkt to create a ‘big standing terrace’ to protest what they believed was a patronising city rule.

Not only will this ban be lifted, but cafés may also soon be able to stay open 24 hours. Although Amsterdam is a world city in stature, its rules resemble more those of a big village usually making exceptions for the particularly touristy centre, and often hindering its residents. The rules change very often, for good or bad, and café owners seem to have a hard time keeping up. It’s a tough balance to play the world city card and please the residents in such a crowded city.

(Link: nos.nl)

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June 20, 2012

Dutchman plans reality show on Mars

Filed under: Shows,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:20 pm

After Dutch reality show Big Brother went galactic, the Dutch have been producing and copying other countries’ reality shows like there’s no tomorrow. However, this next idea is way out there — literally.

The man behind the Mars One idea is Bas Lansdorp who claims that in 2023 we’ll finally put people on Mars. Not only that, but he’s thinking, why not have a reality show on the red planet as well, while we’re there. What scares me as I write this is that he has devised a way to get there, costing about 5 billion euro, but no way whatsoever of getting back. It’s a one-way journey. Getting back is currently too complicated to work out, which sounds like every movie I’ve seen featuring Mars, and they end badly.

Only four people can go at once, a trip that lasts seven months. “We’ve had hundreds of people who are willing to go and settle Mars, even families with children.”

And why would this actually work? There has been plans galore to settle Mars. You have to read his reasons for yourself, it scares me too. Why would anyone want to leave this planet and go somewhere where you couldn’t see your friends or travel as you would on Earth? It sounds like a prison to me.

When I watch any space movie, I actually get freaked out by people dying of asphyxiation or being thrown out a space lock. Of course the idea of going to Mars is cool, but is it worth dying for, I wonder.

And then there’s this old Dutch beer commercial that echoes a Mars landing as well.

(Links: www.bbc.co.uk, www.ed.nl)

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June 19, 2012

Lego computer built for Alan Turing’s 100th anniversary

Filed under: Design,History,IT by Orangemaster @ 12:50 pm

Jeroen van den Bos and Davy Landman from the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), a world-renowned scientific research institute specialised in mathematics and computer science, built a LEGO Turing Machine for the CWI’s exposition “Turings Erfenis” (‘Turing’s Legacy’) in honor of Alan Turing’s 100th birthday this year. The institute is known for creating the popular programming language Python, which is used by Google, while cwi.nl was one of the first national domain names ever issued in the world. The CWI played a pioneering role in connecting the Netherlands to the World Wide Web.

Enjoy the short documentary below and in true nerd fashion, you can read all about the making of this documentary by Andre Theelen right here.

“Alan Turing was an English mathematician who was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer,” say Wikipedia.

LEGO Turing Machine from ecalpemos on Vimeo.

(Photo of Alan Mathison Turing by Garrettc, some rights reserved)

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June 18, 2012

Photo expo shows 24 hours of Rotterdam

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 6:10 pm

De Kracht van Rotterdam (‘kracht’ means power, strength) is a photo exhibition and contest in which 12 photographers, one for each neighbourhood of the city, show many facets of the largest port of the Netherlands.

The photographers had to base their pictures on a poem by Jules Deelder and Jana Beranová, and each had to shoot four photos within 24 hours. Click on the photographers’ names to see their works, a short bio, and a map that shows where in Rotterdam the photos were taken.

Starting July 2 there will be an exhibit in the streets of Rotterdam. The exact locations will be announced on the website. On that same day, Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb will award one photo with a prize of 3,500 euro at one of the locations. The exhibit will run until September.

From the website:

We should not just show [the power of Rotterdam] in the media and in museums, but also and especially outside these institutions, in the city itself. The people of Rotterdam can be found on the road more often than in a museum. Show Rotterdammers what their city looks like, what the city can do, what it does and achieves. Show South how North sleeps, show Hilligersberg an afternoon in Charlois, and show that there really isn’t much that separates dreams, ambitions and possibilities.

Shown here is the harbour area of Hoogvliet Pernis, as portrayed by Jet van Schie who graduated in 2005 from the Willem de Kooning academy.

Update 19-6-2012: I had a quick chat with the organiser, and have merged the info she gave me with the article—Branko.

(Link: Trendbeheer)

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June 17, 2012

Canta, the little can-do car

Filed under: Art,Automobiles,Health by Branko Collin @ 2:35 pm

On June 28 Dutch National Ballet will perform a dance that includes a group of disabled people in their Canta cars.

The ballet is part of a larger project that includes a documentary series by Maartje Nevejan and a book by Karin Spaink about the Canta microcar, the only car that can legally drive on bike paths and pavements in the Netherlands, exclusively sold to the disabled.

Spaink herself has Multiple sclerosis. In the book, De Benenwagen, she writes about the moment when it was time to face the hard truth, the moment she had to get an invalid car:

Everything changed. Using my crutches, my speed was 3 km/h and my range 500 metres. With the wheelchair I reached speeds of 8 to 10 km/h for up to five minutes. […]

[When I took my first test drive], the speed scared me. “Oh no”, I panicked, “I cannot do this! I am so sorry… Please take it back to the factory! I made a terrible mistake.”

The mechanic made me stop to catch my breath. “Don’t worry, really, you’ll get used to it.” […] He was right. I got used to it in no time. […] The Arola [the Canta’s predecessor] gave me a large part of the freedom back that I had had to give up due to my disability.

The book talks about the history of the Canta, how it was designed by former Ferrari F40 racing driver Dick Waaijenberg, how it is the one car in the Netherlands that may drive on bike paths and pavements (other microcars are treated like mopeds before the law), and how Waaijenberg only sells them to the disabled. There are companies and organisations that own them, but they have to find theirs on the second hand market.

Karin Spaink does a good job of explaining the various aspects of the Canta and its predecessor Arola. The chapter where she joins the mechanic for his daily round is both insightful and moving. It provides a glimpse into the sort of people that need a Canta, and through Spaink we witness a man who gets sentenced to a life of decreased mobility, as his handicap has advanced too much for him to safely drive a microcar any more.

Benenwagen literally means ‘leg car’, and is used in an expression. If whiny kids ask their parents “but how will I get there?” when a distance is trivial, the answer will be “use the leg car”.

De benenwagen, Het succesverhaal van de Canta, Karin Spaink, ISBN 9789038894928.

Disclaimer: I have known Karin Spaink for almost two decades, and have supplied one of the photos for the book. The photo shown here though is by the prolific Facemepls, and is ‘some rights reserved‘.

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June 16, 2012

Amsterdam discovers a new oldest house

Filed under: Architecture,History by Orangemaster @ 2:50 pm

For ages, the house hailed as the oldest in Amsterdam was the unique wooden house (‘Houten Huys’) from 1530 at No. 34 of the Begijnhof (map), one of the oldest inner courts in the city of Amsterdam, inhabited solely by unmarried women.

And now Amsterdam has a new oldest house, located at No. 90 of the Warmoesstraat, near the Red Light district and Central Station. Experts have dated the house back to 1485 by having its wooden structure analysed in a special lab in Berlin. The rich discovery also makes it the very first 15th century house to be discovered in the city.

A fire broke out in No. 90 back in 2010, and during the repairs, a building inspector noticed some very old details in the wood of this old house, also confirmed by the experts that tend to historical monuments and architecture. The façade of the building is from 1800, which is why no one bothered or noticed before.

(Link: www.rtvnh.nl, Photo of Warmoesstraat by Olivier Bruchez, some rights reserved)

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