June 15, 2012

KLM crowdsources its next destinations calendar

Filed under: Aviation,Photography by Orangemaster @ 3:14 pm

Dutch Daily News says:

Once a year, KLM publishes a popular wall calendar containing beautiful photos of its destinations. KLM will be taking a different approach this year. Photos submitted by social media fans, passengers and employees will play a central role in the 2013 KLM Fan Calendar. It’s going to be a genuinely ‘social’ calendar containing travel photos from people around the globe

Upload your pics for the Fan Calendar Competition.

Or don’t. Some people believe that crowdsourcing is a newfangled way for companies to get things done for free or cheaply, although I cannot imagine KLM not receiving enough good pics for its calendar.

(link: www.dutchdailynews.com, Photo of KLM A330-200 by caribb, some rights reserved)

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June 14, 2012

Dutch women enjoy sex less than men do

Filed under: General,Health by Branko Collin @ 8:56 pm

According to a study by Rutgers WTF, only 60% of all Dutch women enjoy sex, as opposed to 78% of the men.

The study was held among 8,000 people. Rutgers claims it is the largest study on sexuality ever done in the Netherlands.

The number of women using birth control has dropped from 70% in 2009 to 69% in 2012. Of the fertile women that have sex but do not want to get pregnant, 9% don’t use birth control.

Acceptance of transgender people is low. One in five Dutch people prefer not to be around people who are gender ambivalent, and a similar number thinks there is something wrong with those who do not consider themselves clearly male or female.

(Photo by Flickr user Spec-ta-cles, some rights reserved)

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June 13, 2012

A day in the life of a folding bike

Filed under: Bicycles,Film by Branko Collin @ 11:03 am

When young people go out and enjoy themselves in horror movies, you know things are going to go wrong. Same thing goes for when a Dutch man doesn’t lock his bicycle…

This 2009 short called Vouwfiets Vaterland was made by Marten van Warmerdam and Wouter Zaalberg, and follows a day in the life of a folding bike.

The 7:25 minute long movie was shot for the Nederlands Online Film Festival. ‘Vouwfiets’ is Dutch for folding bicycle, and Vaterland is a bicycle brand.

(Video: YouTube/NFF. Link: Rona Justine)

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June 12, 2012

Cow gives birth to calf on football pitch

Filed under: Animals,Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:05 am

On a football pitch in Leiden, a game of “Where will the cow poop?” took a very unexpected turn when a cow went for the corner flag and popped out a calf instead of a cow patty.

One guy hosting the event looked at another guy and said “Dude, there’s a calf coming out of this cow!”. The first guy thought it was a joke, but soon figured out it wasn’t. The event organisers wanted ‘relaxed’ cows since children were present at the event. Oh the irony!

The farmer who supplied the cows knew that that particular cow was pregnant, but she was supposed to give birth in about six weeks. Having been transported and subjected to the crowd, the cow was probably stressed and had it out in the corner — in just five minutes. Cow and calf are doing fine.

The person who picked the pitch parcel closest to the birthing corner won 250 euro.

(Link: www.leidschdagblad.nl)

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June 11, 2012

Polar bear tries to run, don’t get far

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 11:38 am

Last Tuesday the playful teen polar bear Vicks hurled rocks at the glass walls of his Blijdorp Zoo prison in Rotterdam , but ultimately shattered only 5 layers of the 7 centimetre glass wall (of an unspecified total number of layers).

Writes the zoo (in the video description):

The video shows that Vicks was simply playing with the stone and was not attacking the window deliberately. Shortly after 9 am Rob van der Horst (together with Ari Stolk) was unsuspectingly just shooting a film in he polar bear exhibit.

The strength of the window has been judged by various glass experts. Whether or not Vicks and his mum will be able to use their outdoor exhibit and the huge tank depends on the results of the investigation. The commitment of everyone in Rotterdam Zoo is to let Vicks stay in Rotterdam.

Some of the dialog at the end:

Gent 1: “Jesus, get out of here.”
Lady: “How is that possible?”
Gent 2: “The window is broken.”

And from there on it is a repetition of Jesuses and “The window is broken”. The matter-of-fact attitude by the people in the video may be explained by the fact that Blijdorp zoo has had high-profile break-outs in the past.

(Video: Youtube / Diergaarde Blijdorp. Photo of young master Vicks last summer by Flickr user jinterwas, some rights reserved. Link: Treehugger.)

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June 10, 2012

Three kids from Utrecht under supervision for being too fat

Filed under: Dutch first,Health by Branko Collin @ 11:42 am

Child protection services has placed three children from the same family in Utrecht, ranging from 6 to 13 years old, under the supervision of a guardian for being dangerously overweight, De Telegraaf writes.

The children weighed 15, 18 and 51 kilograms too much in November 2011. The parents fought the services’ decision in court, but in a decision published in May, an judge in Arnhem found against the parents. The court felt that although it was obvious that the parents cared about their children, they lacked both the drive and the skills to deal with their children’s bad health.

According to Dutchnews.nl, “this is the thought to be the first time children in the Netherlands have been subject to a court order because of their weight”. NRC writes that in the UK, dozens of children have been placed under supervision since 2006 for being obese. Child protection services told the newspaper that they will only place children under supervision “if the parents refuse voluntary help and the problems are such that the development of the child is halted or endangered.”

Supervision means that although the children will generally get to stay with their parents, the supervisor must be consulted for all major decisions regarding the children, and orders given by the supervisor must be followed.

A high profile supervision was the 2009 case of then 13-year-old Laura Dekker who wanted to sail around the world by herself. The intent then was to determine whether Dekker was fit to sail the world by herself, although in hindsight the effect mainly seems to have been to instill a severe dislike for Dutch bureaucracy in the teen sailor.

(Photo by Quinn Dombrowski, some rights reserved)

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June 9, 2012

Retro Dutch cycling jerseys

Filed under: Bicycles,Fashion,Sports by Orangemaster @ 8:51 pm

A website that specialises in vintage racing bikes from the Netherlands is about to produce a small collection of retro cycling jerseys, based on the coat of arms of Amsterdam and Utrecht as well as the one of the province of North Brabant. The three XXX (Saint Andrew’s Crosses) are part of the coat of arms of Amsterdam and have nothing to do with the modern, fake film rating of XXX, denoting porno films. Oh and 020 is Amsterdam’s phone area code, often used in conversation as a synonym for Amsterdam.

The designers wanted to have nice classic looking racing jerseys, but not those heavy wool ones you usually find in second hand shops with sponsoring of companies that you couldn’t care less about. Instead they opted for comfort and “being able to be proud of where you come from.” I know I’d love a Friesland or Limburg one.

For € 59,95 they’ll be making a limited batch of these jerseys if enough people want one. Send them an e-mail (klassiekeracefiets (at) hotmail.nl or .com) and get a nicely designed bike shirt with Amsterdam, Utrecht or Noord Brabant.

(Link: www.nieuwsuitamsterdam.nl)

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June 8, 2012

New cookie law confuses Dutch website owners

Filed under: IT,Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:36 pm

Hardly any Dutch website adheres to the new cookie law that came into force last Tuesday, online tech mag Webwereld reports.

The law, which is a strict implementation of the EU cookie directive, aims to protect website visitors’ privacy by making tracking illegal. Tracking is a way of building a profile of you and your likes by monitoring which websites you visit. This profile can then be used to tailor advertisements to your tastes, or for far more heinous purposes.

Among the larger sites only De Telegraaf has put up a banner informing visitors that it uses cookies, and that they can opt out. As Webwereld points out the banner is not in compliance with the law, which states that website owners must explicitly ask permission for every tracking cookie a site uses.

Enforcement agency OPTA says it is not their job to determine the contours of the law. “We expect the market to take care of that.” The agency told Webwereld it will start enforcing the law right away, but will first focus on “sites with dangerous cookies, and sites with cookies that are hard to remove.”

Arnoud Engelfriet points out that even the government is still serving cookies without permission at rijksoverheid.nl.

24 Oranges is currently looking at its cookie use and responsibilities before the law. As you may gather from the above article, this matter is more complex than it seems at first sight, so apologies for the delay.

In the meantime if you’re worried about your privacy—as you should—consider disabling third-party cookies in your browser and installing ad blockers. Neither method is perfect as far as I know.

(Screenshot: the Telegraaf cookie banner)

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June 7, 2012

Diehard elderly Frisian man finishes 240 km bike race

Filed under: Bicycles,Sports by Orangemaster @ 2:28 pm

The Fietselfstedentocht (Eleven Cities Cycling Tour), an annual event which was held last 28 May (on Whit Monday), is a 240 km long ride through 11 different cities in Friesland. This year marked the 100th year anniversary of the event, going strong since 1912.

This Frisian video is about Wiebe Idsinga, this year’s ‘hero’ of the race, and the last person to finish the ride.

Following right behind him is a journalist and a cameraman from Frisian television, mesmerised by his endurance and persistence. They ask him at some point if he’s tired because he’s not sitting up straight but it’s because of his two replacement hips! It reminds me of the Belgian film ‘Le vélo’ (in English, Ghislain Lambert’s Bicycle) where Ghislain is always last in the race but gets the most on air time due to his endurance and persistence.

“At the beginning, they tell him he still has 35 km to go. At the first stoppage, he is told that it’s past midnight and the race is officially over and he won’t have any further support. At the second stoppage, he is told in Dutch that he must stop or he won’t get recognition for what he has done so far, and after that he is driven to the end.

After he gets his medal, he says he’s going to bike home. You can see one of the officials do a facepalm because Idsinga lives some 15 km away. They offer him a ride home.”

(Links: www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com, www.nijsnet.nl)

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June 6, 2012

Speed skaters more popular than football players in the Netherlands

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 6:19 pm

Arjan Robben and Dirk Kuyt may be household names the world over, but this year they have to leave the strongest brand title to long track speed skater Sven Kramer.

A poll held by Hendrik Beerda Brand Consultancy confirms this. The first woman in the list of strongest brands is Ireen Wüst, also a speed skater, taking the number three spot between the two strikers.

A similar poll two years ago had football goalie Edwin van der Sar in the lead, but he has retired since then.

The Elfstedentocht and the Olympic Games switched positions as the most popular events, the latter taking over the number one spot, followed by the World Cup football and the Tour de France. The European Football Championship only came in fifth among events.

Outside the Netherlands Sven Kramer is perhaps best known for the gold medal he failed to win at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics due to a technicality. He has been ruling supreme in long distance and all-round championships since 2007, although he had to skip the 2010-2011 season due to an injury.

(Link: Algemeen Dagblad. Photo of Sven Kramer by Mingo Hagen, some rights reserved)

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