March 7, 2012

Headscarf for women’s football teams means game on

Filed under: Design,Fashion,Religion,Sports by Orangemaster @ 2:13 pm

As of this summer, female football players will again be allowed to wear headscarves during professional football matches. Thanks to a highly functional design from Cindy van den Bremen of capsters.com (see range of headscarves) headquartered in Eindhoven, football governing body FIFA has decided to drop its 2007 ban on the hijab aka headscarf and the girls can now hit the pitch and play.

Back then traditional headscarves were said to be dangerous, which they probably were, but a proper Dutch design has now helped to reverse the ban, allowing women from predominantly Muslim countries to play more football.

Van den Bremen felt the ban was a big fuss over not much and didn’t see the difference between a headscarf and having a pony tail in one’s hair. You can also pull really hard on the collar of a male player’s T-shirt too she explains.

“The sporting headscarf is not just a commercial success. It has won a Good Design Award in Japan and a place in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.”

(Links: www.rnw.nl, www.ad.nl, Photo by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

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March 6, 2012

Hospital in Arnhem has separate ER for children

Filed under: Dutch first,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 11:27 am

The Rijnstate hospital in Arnhem, Gelderland now has a separate ER (Emergency Room) for children, following demands from paediatricians that children would be better served by not coming into contact with wounded adults.

Only in children’s hospitals do they have ERs for children obviously, and paediatricians probably felt the pressure of finding a better way to reassure their small patients admidst big world chaos.

A quick Google search in English leads me to believe that this seems like a good idea and quite common in other countries. There is also a growing number of ERs for the elderly as well, something I can imagine this country either should have or could really use.

Why is this news in the Netherlands? I’m sure budgets play a role, but again it seems this country is lagging behind world trends. I say ‘seems’ — someone enlighten us: have doctors been pleading for years to get this set up and finally someone listened?

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl)

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March 5, 2012

BodaBoda produces pillow seats for bicycle luggage carriers

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 2:50 pm

It certainly surprised one American tourist when he noticed several women giving their male friends a ride on their bicycle’s luggage rack on a sunny afternoon in 2006. Why wasn’t the man doing the work? Lack of courtesy? Emancipation? The reason is much more prosaic, I am afraid. Luggage racks are pretty hard on one’s behind. And the unspoken rule in the Netherlands is that the owner of the bike gets to decide who gets to sit where.

Three Utrecht students are now selling seats for the luggage rack. According to De Pers they noticed bicycles in Kenya kitted out with such seats:

Crossing the border between Kenya and Uganda in a motorised vehicle costs a lot of money. That is why people get off the bus and walk the two miles to the other side. Cyclists saw a gap in the market and started carrying people across the border. They would advertise their services asking “Border? Border?” That is how the bodaboda was born.

Quax [one of the Dutch students] would ride one of those bikes, and being white, people would stare at him, especially the time he offered to give his landlord a lift to the station. “The people who saw us did not believe their own eyes. This should not be. This should be the other way around. A white person should be on the back”, Quax said.

The seats cost between 20 and 27,50 euro, or 35 euro if you want your own design printed on them. You can also buy a complete bodaboda bike for 300 euro (shown above).

The students from Utrecht are happy when they spot the occasional bodaboda rider in their home town. In Kenia in the meantime the bodaboda has really taken off, and more and more often bodaboda riders use motorcycles. The Star publishes articles on boda etiquette (“place your hands on the rider’s hips around the waist”), and a local government has set aside 2.5 million Kenian shillings to train 500 bodaboda riders, also according to The Star.

Just remember, next time you hear Gers Pardoel sing “why don’t you hop on the back of my bike”, he’s not necessarily being a gentleman, unless he owns a bodaboda seat.

Illustration: bodaboda.nl.

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March 4, 2012

Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet says “Limit copyright on images”

Filed under: Photography,Technology by Branko Collin @ 3:19 pm

Engelfriet writes on his blog:

An [Internet trend] I had not seen before, Pinterest, is a service that lets you publicly bookmark images, a sort of virtual notice board. […] Is this legal, can anybody just make a collection of images from everywhere without the rights holders’ permission?

No, this is not legal. […] If I were older and more cynical, I would now announce the bankruptcy of copyright law for images. Everybody, and I mean everybody, thinks it is normal that you take images off Google for your mood boards, blogs, and Facebook accounts. And this is happening on a grand scale. The uploaders are difficult to track, middlemen are not accountable, and notice-and-take-downs are a lost battle.

[…] If half of the country breaks the law, it is time to start wondering if the law should not be changed.

In the comments Engelfriet (who incidentally has helped us in the past and who regularly comments here too) gives several examples of road rules that have been adapted following civil disobedience: on one hand, cyclists can now turn right on a red light in certain situations, but on the other, they are still obliged to use bike lights when it’s dark outside. Compliance with the latter rule has, however, been increased with safety campaigns and stricter policing.

(Illustration: pinterest.com)

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March 3, 2012

Frost sinks popsicle stick boat

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:12 pm

Ship yard Aquaverium in Grou, Friesland has told former American stunt man Rob McDonald to remove his sail boat The Thor from its premises after the boat sank, Algemeen Dagblad reports.

McDonald built his boat from 15 million ice cream sticks in five years time and with the help of 5,000 school children. He was planning to cross the Atlantic Ocean with it, using his trip to raise funds for the Sea Heart Foundation charity. Its sea-worthiness had already been proven with a trip to London.

Unfortunately cancer grounded its captain. McDonald told Algemeen Dagblad that a group of business people had promised to take care of the boat, but ended up leaving Aquaverium themselves: “I am in shock. I wanted to do something fun for sick children with the boat, and I am especially sorry for them and for those who have helped me.”

The frost that got the nation so excited has destroyed the hull of the boat, and now the yard wants McDonald to remove its wreck. “We feel sorry for him, but nobody ever paid for his spot. […] We have tried to bail out the boat, but it is not working well because of the boat’s remarkable construction.”

In 2010 De Pers wrote that Aquaverium and McDonald had closed a long term lease agreement for a mooring spot. At the time, McDonald had put the boat up for sale at Marktplaats.nl.

McDonald is looking for a new spot to moor his boat.

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March 2, 2012

Mobile euthanasia units to perform home deaths

Filed under: Dutch first,Health by Orangemaster @ 12:51 pm

As of yesterday, euthanasia in The Netherlands can also be performed by mobile euthanasia units. The ‘Life End’ clinic will be working with six mobile teams of doctors and nurses to perform euthanasia throughout the country, starting in The Hague.

Contrary to factless nonsense spewed by certain American politicians who would rather divert attention to a small country 6,000 km away than look at the mess in their own back yard, doctors as well as the rest of The Netherlands are definitely worried about these mobile teams carrying out the proper evaluation of patients. Some 1,000 patients have submitted a request to receive the services of the travelling clinic, having been refused euthanasia from their general practitioners. More often than not, the motivations are religious or ethical, and sometimes doctors are not well enough informed about the law, and are scared to perform euthanasia.

The scheme is an initiative by the Dutch Association for a Voluntary End to Life (NVVE), a 130,000-member euthanasia organisation, the biggest of its kind in the world. Euthanasia has been legal since 2002, and physician-assisted suicide is not punishable if the attending physician acts in accordance with criteria of due care.

(Links: www.nrc.nlwww.guardian.co.uk, Photo: Salem graves by by Alanna Ralph, some rights reserved)

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March 1, 2012

‘My fast Internet connection is more accessible than yours’

Filed under: General,IT,Online by Orangemaster @ 10:30 am

As of today, the Dutch University of Twente in Enschede has the fastest Internet connection in the world, clocking in at 1 Gigabit upload and download speed. The only thing that comes close is the Google campus in Stanford, California. However, the big difference is Twente is the first university to be able to offer super fast Internet to its students and campus residents, while the Google connection lets people connect to and from home, but isn’t campus wide.

IT department and students set up the network at Twente, not some corporation. “There are strict rules regarding the use and content of the university network. The upload limit of 50 GB per week will be maintained and any complaints about illegal uploads will be treated seriously.”

Stanford, it’s your move.

(Link: www.utwente.nl, www.npr.org)

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February 29, 2012

Acquired by Facebook while not even a member

Filed under: IT,Online,Photography by Orangemaster @ 11:07 am

Today, Dutchman Dirk Stoop is the Product Manager at Facebook in charge of photos, as photos are the main reason people use Facebook. When Facebook first started allowing users to tag each other in photos in 2006, suddenly 70% of users came back every day, while 85% came back every week.

In July 2011 Stoop starting working for Facebook when his software company Sofa B.V. was acquired, with the goal of having Stoop work for Facebook.

The funny part is that Stoop himself only joined Facebook in April 2011 and is now in charge of what makes Facebook a huge success. Yes, you could file this posting under ‘Zoek de Nederlander’ (’Find the Dutch person’).

(Link: www.businessinsider.com, Photo of Facebook friends by Dan Taylor, some rights reserved.

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February 28, 2012

Bam! First roller derby bout in the Netherlands

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Branko Collin @ 10:43 am

Last Saturday the entire 24 Oranges team (yes, all two of us!) were at the first official roller derby match (’bout’ in derby jargon) of the Netherlands, held in Amsterdam between the Amsterdam Derby Dames and the Roller Girls of the Apocalypse (Kaiserslautern, Germany).

Roller derby is a full contact sport on wheels in which designated scorers need to pass a pack of blockers for points. We covered the basics before in an article about the first unofficial match (‘scrimmage’) last year.

Oohs and aahs ensued in the packed and beautiful Apollohal (on regular days a basketball venue) whenever Amsterdam’s Abs of Steel stepped on the floor, as even those among the visitors who had never been to a bout saw how she tossed unwilling opponents aside like rag dolls. You can see her earn that Most Valuable Player award in this video by Paul Siegman:

Despite heavy resistance from the German women, the Amsterdam Derby Dames kept adding to an early lead and in the end won the match 105 – 69. Our very own Orangemaster could not compete because of a broken leg she got in a practice match in Antwerp, but this did give Nasty Moves (her derby name) a chance to keep people entertained with music and informed on Twitter of the score.

Currently there are 12 roller derby leagues in the country. The women-run sport was re-started and re-imagined around 2001 in Texas, USA, and has made great strides ever since in that country, and is slowly and steadily growing in popularity in the rest of the world.

As always I will be adding a photo impression to our Flickr account later on (see the sidebar).

Update: the photos have been uploaded to Flickr.

(Video: Youtube / Paul Siegman)

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February 27, 2012

‘We’re sending an Indian to the Eurovision Song Contest’

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 12:06 pm

Even national television was trying to hold back its astonishment when they heard that Joan Franka from Rotterdam dressed in a Sioux-like costume won the right to represent the Netherlands at the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, Azerbaijan. I have nothing against her song, but maybe Buffy Sainte Marie could have a good laugh with us.

Last year, bookies rated Dutch Eurovision entry as hopeless, so here it is for anyone who missed it. We were collectively embarrased when Dutch gay-oriented icons The Toppers sang a mouthful of clichés and blinded the audience with lights as camouflage. I was already traumatised with the Netherlands’ entry from 2006, which I called ‘de trommelende trutten’ (roughly ‘the drumming bimbos’) who sang in a nonsense language to boot.

But this year, a shy singer with a guitar and some high notes won over the Dutch for reasons all the ones who didn’t vote for her couldn’t explain, like some sort of schism. Two promising soul singers where also in the running, both with problems in the interpretation of the songs they sang, but got nailed by Hiawatha, Pocahontas, Winnetou, and other nicknames. Leave out the costume and at least we won’t get laughed at this time. Yes, the costume refers to the song, but please get rid of it.

If she wins anything, I’ll whip out my peace pipe.

UPDATE: here it is.

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