March 24, 2011

Unemployed air guitar star fined

Filed under: Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:03 pm

Air guitar star Tremelo Theun is duking it out over money with the town of Hengelo, Overijssel. Bureaucrats have calculated that in addition to his unemployment benefits, he has earned about 3,760 euro that he didn’t declare, accounting for some 43 gigs since 2005.

He claims that he’s only had 32 gigs, that he once received 40 euro for costs and that with a few exceptions, he hasn’t made any real money. Bureaucrats have decided to multiply it all up and give him a fine for not declaring his earnings.

Twice world champion air guitar has had to lawyer up to fight the man.
Stay tuned (bad pun).

(Link: deweekkrant.nl)

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March 23, 2011

Toxic spider crawls out of a bunch of bananas

Filed under: Food & Drink,Nature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:30 am

It has all the trappings of the opening scene of a B-movie. Employees in the ‘quiet’ town of Bolsward, Friesland were working at the supermarket, doing their thing. All of a sudden, an employee was in the fruit section and saw something big and brown crawl out of the bananas to say Bom Dia! to the world.

It was big and is apparently high venimous. It was a Brazilian wandering spider (phoneutria nigriventer) that hitched a ride on a bunch of bananas from Costa Rica to the Netherlands.

If you get bitten by the Brazilian, it does things only its maker could have come up with after a bender of mojitos and samba. Here’s what Wikipedia tells us:

Aside from causing intense pain, the venom of the spider can also cause priapism in humans. Erections resulting from the bite are uncomfortable, can last for many hours and can lead to impotence. A component of the venom (Tx2-6) is being studied for use in erectile dysfunction treatments.

In true sober Dutch style, an employee caught the spider, put it in a jar, and eventually drowned it and threw it in the bin.

(Link: hartvannederland.nl, Photo of Ctenus exlineae (F Ctenidae) by Marshal Hedin, some rights reserved)

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March 22, 2011

New tulip named after Vincent van Gogh

Filed under: Art,History,Nature by Orangemaster @ 11:33 am

Spring and the Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden that attracts visitors from around the world has a new red-brown tulip named after Vincent van Gogh.

Omroep Brabant got an explanation from Amsterdam’ Van Gogh Museum that there is no relation whatsoever between the flower and Van Gogh. He’s never even painted tulips, but he did like flowers.

(Link: vangoghmuseum, omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of Van Gogh tulip by vangoghmuseum)

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March 21, 2011

Oldest graves of the Netherlands discovered in Rotterdam

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 8:31 am

BOOR wrote earlier this month:

During a dig in 2008 in the Rotterdam neighbourhood Beverwaard three pits with cremated human remains have been found. Carbon dating has revealed the remains to be 9,000 years old. That makes these the oldest graves in the Netherlands.

BOOR archaeologists studied the top of a river dune where a tram garage was to be built. The graves, dating from the middle stone age (8000 – 3500 BC), also contained burial gifts such as flint tools, a hammer and a wetting stone.

BOOR is the municipal bureau for archaeology of Rotterdam.

(Photo: BOOR. Link: Telegraaf)

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March 20, 2011

35 Dutch Sesame Street songs by Henny Vrienten

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 2:16 pm

Holly Moors points out that Rubinstein released a CD (accompanying a booklet) with 35 songs from the Dutch version of kids show Sesame Street.

The music on Vriendjes Voor Altijd (Friends Forever) was written by Henny Vrienten, the lyrics by various writers. Most of the songs are sung by characters unique to the Dutch version of Sesame Street—Mr Aart, Ienie Mienie, Tommie—with Big Bird (called Pino over here) making the odd appearance.

Hennie Vrienten was one of the front men of legendary Dutch pop band Doe Maar during its short life in the early 1980s (the band broke up because the members couldn’t handle their popularity!).

Moors has this to say:

[…] One big party. If you have children or grand children of the right age, the purchase of this booklet + CD are obligatory, but use any excuse to buy this jewel, because any music lover will appreciate this CD, no matter what age.

Listen for instance to the magnificently modern classic Dutch street organ song with a twist that Vrienten created for Mijn Broer (My Brother), or the lovely exotically bouncy Gasfornuis (Gas Stove). […]

Vrienten clearly treats kids like grown-ups, and the result is that you get to hear songs with surprising rythms, remarkable arrangements, and intelligent changes. Music you can listen to again (and parents of small children know how repetitive children’s music can get), and that even gets better upon hearing it again.

Moors’ review has samples of four songs, including the ones mentioned here.

(Cover image: Rubinstein)

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Nineteenth century X-ray machine put to the test

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 1:28 am

In 1895 high school director H.J. Hoffmans and hospital director Lambertus van Kleef from Maastricht decided to build their own X-ray machine, just weeks after Wilhelm Röntgen’s famous discovery. Gerrit Kemerink of Maastricht University has now fired the old beast back up again and managed to coax some good pictures from it. The BBC has both images of and by the machine, and reports:

Given that a high radiation dose might be required to carry out the tests, the team obtained a hand from a cadaver as their imaging subject – rather than the “young lady’s hand” listed in Hoffmans and van Kleef’s notes.

The team accordingly found that using a modern detector, a radiation dose 10 times higher was required from the antiquated system when compared to a modern one.

Using a photographic plate and the same imaging conditions Hoffmans and van Kleef used, a dose 1,500 times higher was required.

In Dutch X-rays are called ‘röntgenstralen’, after their discoverer.

(Via Boingboing)

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March 18, 2011

Starlings above Utrecht, three takes

Filed under: Animals,Nature by Orangemaster @ 1:56 pm

Ah yes, spring is coming and the starlings know this.

This video is nice and homemade:

This video felt the need to use music and is from afar:

This video has music and shows the starlings in smaller groups:

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March 17, 2011

Protestant church receives organ from anonymous donor

Filed under: Music,Religion by Orangemaster @ 2:38 pm

A generous Dutch churchgoer donated an entirely built church organ to the Reformed Protestant church in Diever, Drenthe. In true Dutch fashion, we have to tell you the price of it: about 350,000 euro. The Neo Baroque organ has 1147 pipes and will be officially put to use this weekend.

The organ photo here is of a Catholic church in Barcelona.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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March 16, 2011

Olympic tickets only for the Dutch, the rest use Visa

Filed under: Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:14 pm

The Volkskrant estimated that the Netherlands would be allocated some 100,000 tickets for the Olympic Games in London 2012, but apparently they are only up for grabs if you’re a card carrying Dutch person.

Non-Dutch Europeans in the Netherlands who want to buy tickets for the Olympic Games in London will have to pay by Visa card because the Dutch ticket allocation is only for Dutch nationals, the Volkskrant reports on Wednesday. The Dutch selling agent is only allowed to sell cards to Dutch nationals, and will charge them a 23.8% booking fee on top of the price of a ticket.

All ‘third party nationals’, a fancy term for non European, are obliged to buy tickets from the agents of their country.

(Link dutchnews.nl)

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March 15, 2011

‘Organic farming can be deceiving’

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 4:11 pm

When it comes to environmentally friendly products, we tend to collectively think that they’re automatically better than conventional products without even checking. The media and marketing play on these warm and fuzzy feelings all the time, which tends to be echoed by people whose need to believe always seems to outweigh checking the facts. Yes, these are nasty generalizations and yes, I too want to believe, but I don’t — yet.

After an aquaintance had posted an ‘I’m better than you because I eat less meat’ blurb on a mailing list, I promptly responded with our posting on producing meat is actually less damaging to the environment than producing cotton T-shirts. I’ll bet you she still buys cotton T-shirts.

However, I do agree that the video linked below seems to gloss over the issue of pesticides and other interesting comments the farmers were trying to make, but the deception is real: organic products have their own issues and according to everything I have read from several countries as an ordinary consumer, they are very often the same or only slightly better than conventional products.

And yes, killing animals is still killing animals, I got that part.

Watch the short video report: ‘Organic meat not better for the environment’.

(Link: Radio Netherlands)

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