June 26, 2018

Suriname’s slave registries now accessible online

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 7:35 pm

As of today, everybody online can access and search the Surinamese slave registries of the Dutch National Archives, in Dutch.

Started in summer 2017, it took 700 volunteers many months to digitise the entries about 80,000 slaves registered between 1830 and 1863, after which slavery was abolished. Slave owners were obliged to register the details of the slaves in their possession: details such as date of birth, the mother’s name, release or sale, if they had leprosy, and other matters that were important for determining their worth. This project was carried out as a collaboration between the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen and the Anton de Kom University of Surinam and financed thanks to donors.

One of the difficulties in searching the archive even today is that back then, slaves could not have last names. Their proper last name can be found on emancipation documents of 1863 and put together, many people can track the history of their ancestors.

(Link: nu.nl, Photo by Ian Mackenzie, some rights reserved)

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June 25, 2018

Dutch surgeon’s bad online buy turns good

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 9:33 pm

Dutch surgeon Harm Rutten in Eindhoven wanted to buy a camera that fits onto his surgeon’s headlamp so that his team could follow the operations he carries out on very small parts of the human abdomen.

Sadly, he bought a camera system off Chinese website Alibaba, but the camera didn’t do what it was supposed to do. He fired off a disappointed email and figured that was the end of it. Unexpectedly, the Chinese engineering firm that made the product contacted him and within days sent an engineer over to see what they could do to make their product work the way the surgeon needed it to work.

A Chinese engineer came all from China to Eindhoven, saying “I want to offer hospitals good solutions. It is nice to be able to help doctors”, which sounds like an excellent can-do attitude to me.

And if you follow the link below, there’s a film to see the result.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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June 24, 2018

Dutch robots win big at Robocup 2018

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 4:21 pm

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Last weekend the Eindhoven University of Technology won two major European prizes at the RoboCup 2018, held in Montreal, Canada. The team from Eindhoven won the Middle Size League, which is the most important football category where two robot teams play real football against each other without any human intervention. However, the final was won by the Portuguese CAMBADA 2-0. In all, 35 countries were competing for prizes.

Eindhoven University of Technology also won a prize with their robot Amigo in a category that tests the socially helpful abilities of robots in a home environment. Amigo beat the first and third places of the championship last year, both from Germany.

(Links: bright.nl, robocup2018.org, Photo of RoboCup2013 in Eindhoven by RoboCup2013, some rights reserved)

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June 22, 2018

‘Don’t mess with stroopwafels’, says American airline passenger

Filed under: Aviation by Orangemaster @ 10:07 pm
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An American passenger on United Airlines was upset when their usual stroopwafel was replaced by a ‘maple wafer cookie’, which I bet has ‘pole syrup’ instead of any kind of actual maple syrup in it. Québec, which produces 75% of the world’s maple syrup, colloquially refers to fake maple syrup as ‘pole syrup’ – maple-flavoured corn syrup, fictitiously coming from telephone poles rather than sugar maple trees.

Jeroen Daelmans of the Daelmans in Nieuwkuijk, Noord-Brabant responded in the media with surprise about United pulling their stroopwafels as well as being stunned by the public’s response to being denied his company’s product. He hopes United will listen to their passengers and get back to serving the beloved treat.

We know all too well here in the Netherlands that you don’t mess with stroopwafels, and hopefully international businesses will get the message as well.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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June 21, 2018

Frisian wheat fields to feature big artworks

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 8:56 pm

As of next week, some Frisian wheat fields along the Wadden dike in het Bildt (now part of the new municipality Waadhoeke), will feature carvings by several Bildt-based artists and others carved into those local wheat fields.

In 2017 artist Marco Goldenbeld tested creating artworks in those fields, one of which was inspired by M. C. Escher’s ‘Impossible Cube’, a two-dimensional figure that resembles a perspective drawing of a three-dimensional one, with its features drawn inconsistently from the way they would appear in an actual cube, shown above.

The specific location of the artworks will be between Oude Bildtzijl and De Westhoek in Friesland. Besides the initiator Henk Rusman, other participating artists include Bowe Roodbergen, Marco Goldenbeld, Rinus Roelofs, Hans Kuipers, Roland de Jong and Ria Groenhof.

(Link and photo: sense-of-place.eu)

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June 19, 2018

Shortbread cookies as cancer patients taste them

Filed under: Food & Drink,Health by Orangemaster @ 4:15 pm

Imagine eating good old fashioned shortbread biscuits, but with an extra ingredient, spilanthol to give you the impression of how it is to taste biscuits the way a cancer patient tastes them.

The Internet tells us that spilanthol is a plant whose medicinal uses includes treating tooth pain and infections of the throat and gums. In other words, when you eat these cookies, they are tasty, but the spilanthol slowly takes over and makes the whole inside of your mouth tingle in an unpleasant fashion. And drinking water doesn’t help, which makes the whole experience ‘disgusting’, according to the Dutch who tried the biscuits.

That is the taste sensation of the ‘Awareness Through Experience’ (ATE) biscuit, developed by Robert Greene, chairman of the Hunger and Thirst foundation. The biscuits were made by chef Christian Boomker.

Before Greene himself was diagnosed with colon cancer, he was a nurse in an oncology department. Knowing that half of patients are underfed due to the terrible taste they experience when eating, he wanted to find a way to share this impression with others and draw attention to the issue.

(Link: nos.nl, photo by Maëka Alexis, some rights reserved)

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June 17, 2018

This slab H sprouts serifs until it no longer can

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 10:23 am

Typographer Just van Rossum used his brother Guido’s programming language Python to create a capital letter H in which each serif (the dangly bits at the ends of the stems) sprouts its own serifs, creating a recursive H in the process.

Typotheque in The Hague made a limited edition poster of this design:

Slab serif typefaces are characterised by angular terminations at the end of strokes. Just van Rossum designed this ultimate Slab Serif capital H, with an ever-expanding number of serifs. Each H has four serifs, each of which becomes an H by sprouting additional serifs.The serifs on those serifs sprout their own serifs, on and on and on up to the thinnest line that offset press technology can handle.

See also: Geeked out coin wins design comp for another example of Python-based algorithmic art.

(Photo: Typotheque)

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June 15, 2018

Teenage girls help police catch pickpockets in Rotterdam

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:24 pm

Two teenage girls in Rotterdam have quite the hobby: they hang out in the main shopping area, track pickpockets, film them on their phones, and report them to the police.

Both girls, who want to become police officers when they grow up, say that they can easily spot pickpockets because their clothes are usually ‘one year out of style’. The dynamic duo work together with a police officer who goes through their footage and presents them to colleagues.

Not only do the girls want to become police officers later on, but they say that their dream would be to set up a livestream to follow the activities of pickpockets.

(Link: nu.nl, Photo by Facemepls, some rights reserved)

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June 14, 2018

Vlieland on world’s most expensive beaches list

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:53 pm

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Dutch travel site TravelBird has published The 2018 Beach Price Index, which caught the Dutch media’s attention, as the Frisian island of Vlieland took spot 31 of the 327 world’s most expensive beaches.

According to the media, local businesses are scratching their heads as to how they got so far up the list, but did not contradict the prices quoted by the site. According to TravelBird, besides Vlieland being the most expensive beach in The Netherlands and after calculating the prices of things such as sunscreen, deck chair, beer, ice cream, lunch and facilities, Vlieland will run you 53,26 euro.

Sure, a ton of beaches in Norway, the United States and France are way more expensive than the Dutch ones: everything is expensive in Norway (a country not in the EU – a reminder), while the United States and France both have very prestigious beaches. However, if we run down the other four Wadden Islands, North Holland’s Texel is ranked 78, the Frisian island of Terschelling is 97, the Frisian island of Schiermonnikoog is at 164 and the Frisian island of Ameland is ranked 187 (seen in the photo).

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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June 13, 2018

Van Haren loses red-soled shoe case

Filed under: Fashion by Orangemaster @ 3:45 pm

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While the score was 1-1 at half time for German-owned Dutch shoe chain Van Haren that had received advice from top experts that they would most probably win their case against French brand Louboutin with their trademarked red-lacquered sole, Van Haren has now lost their case at the European Court of Justice, making it a 2-1 victory for Louboutin.

A few years ago, German-owned Dutch shoe chain Van Haren was selling red-soled shoes that were very similar to Louboutin’s iconic high heels. Louboutin was not amused and took Van Haren to court. The European Court received advice from their top experts that ‘you can’t trademark a colour if it stops the competition from making wares with the same functionality, especially combined with the form’, and most folks thought that’s the way the ruling would go, but it didn’t.

Yesterday, judges rejected the official advice of their own top lawyer who said in February that the red soles could not be trademarked. Louboutin has faced a series of legal battles over its distinctive soles. A Paris appeals court in May ruled against the French shoe company Kesslord after it sold red-bottomed shoes and ordered it to pay 7,500 euro in damages to Louboutin.

(Link: phys.org, Photo of Louboutin shoe by Arroser, some rights reserved)

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