May 17, 2018

PostNL tells man to move to avoid van fumes

Filed under: General,Health,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 12:57 pm

Mailboxes-495x286

An Amsterdam resident asked on Twitter why PostNL’s delivery personnel leave their van on his street with the motor running, which is bad for the environment. PostNL’s Twitter team decided to mention their environmentally friendly plans to replace the diesel vans with zero-emission ones, but that it takes time. To drive their point home, PostNL told the man to shop for a new house in the country if he was worried about his one-year-boy inhaling diesel fumes. That’s corporate Dutch speak for “fuck you”.

A classic comment you’ll hear often in Amsterdam is ‘if you don’t like the noise or nuisance or whatever big city problem you’re whinging about, move to the country’. Many people, some with children some without, enjoy the big city vibe Amsterdam offers, but deep down inside would like their street or neighbourhood to be some sort of mini-village where the big city problems only affect the people living in the city centre, where most of the merriment and the tourists are. However unrealistic that is, the van has no good reason to leave its motor running and PostNL was not very customer friendly with their answer.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl)

Tags: , ,

May 15, 2018

Netherlands no longer in Top 10 LGBTI countries

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:01 pm

The Netherlands is no longer in the Top 10 of countries that have well regulated LGBTI rights, now sitting in eleventh place, according to the Rainbow Europe Index 2018.

One of the sticking points is not having any explicit inclusion in the law that says discriminating against transgender and intersex people is illegal. As well, Belgium is doing a better job, something that often provides a ‘wake-up call’ to the Dutch.

Malta is at the top of list, followed by Belgian in second place and Norway in third place.

(Link: parool.nl, Photo of Gay flag by sigmaration, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , , ,

May 12, 2018

Dutch stumble upon possible toddler planet

Filed under: Science by Orangemaster @ 10:32 am

IMG_5901

During a look up in the sky, an international group of astronomers headed by Dutch researchers from Leiden University may have found a ‘growing’ planet.

The astronomers were examining the dust disc around the young double star CS Cha when they saw a small dot on the edge of their images, which turned out to be a small planet of only ‘a few million years young that moves along with the double star. CS Cha and its special companion are located some 600 light years away from earth in a star formation area in the southern constellation Chameleon.

In the future, the researchers want to examine the star and the companion in more detail using the international ALMA telescope on the Chajnantor plateau in the North Chilean Andes.

(Link: universiteitleiden.nl)

Tags: , ,

May 11, 2018

HEMA pulls bad protractors before finals

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 5:18 pm

800px-Protractor2

Lonneke van Krimpen was studying for her final exam in geometry at the secondary school level and noticed something was off. She did a practice question from a 2014 exam and noticed that her protractor was wrong. A friend of hers apparently had the same issue and so they told HEMA that their protractors were badly made.

HEMA was happy to be told this especially before the entire country takes their final exams. They said they have pulled their protractors from the shelves, flagged their inventory, and even blocked any sales of them at the cash register. As well, anyone with a bad instrument can trade it in for a good one.

The specific problem is that between the 50 and 60 there are 11 spaces, and between 60 and 70 there are 10, when in both cases there should be nine.

(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo of Protractor by Richard Wheeler (Zephyris), some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , ,

May 10, 2018

Cider from discarded apples in Groningen

Filed under: Food & Drink,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 2:11 pm

Screen Shot 2018-05-09 at 16.03.17

A group of four middle school friends who call themselves the Doggerland team is launching their first cider made from leftover apples from gardens and orchards in the Groningen area. At the end of last year, people could donate their leftover apples for the cider and it’s now time to taste the results. In April, two ciders were launched: Gembergloed (with ginger) and Honinghout (with honey).

Doggerland explains that people with apple trees sometimes experience the harvest as a problem: they make apple pie and some compote, and then they are stuck with hundreds of kilos of apples that fall on the grass, get jammed in the lawn mower or attract wasps. “We wanted to do something about the unwanted apples and decided to make cider”, explains Marleen, one of the founders of Doggerland.

If you live in the Groningen area and donate a minimum of 10 kilos of apples to them, Doggerland will hook you up with some cider in return. There’s even a Facebook group for this very transaction. The cider is being made in the Biotoop, a former biomedical centre of the University of Groningen in the town of Haren, aptly being brewed in the old chemisty laboratory.

(Link: voordewereldvanmorgen.nl)

Tags: , , ,

May 9, 2018

Dutch orchestra gets first female conductor

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 3:43 pm

The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, which ranks third in the hierarchy behind the Concertgebouw and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, has just appointed its first ever female conductor, the American Karina Canellakis, 36, who will succeed German conductor Markus Stenz in September 2019.

Canellakis, the first woman music director of a major Dutch orchestra, made her debut at the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Utrecht and Amsterdam, with works from Britten, Shostakovich and Beethoven. In 2016 she won the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award. Canellakis was also assistant to Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden in Dallas and is being introduced to Dutch media as his protegée. She credits her first conducting opportunity to a stint at the Berlin Philharmonic Academy, when Sir Simon Rattle offered her the baton.

(Links: nu.nl, slippedisc.com, Photo of Carlo Antonio Testore violin, Milan, 1738 by Jason Hollinger, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

May 8, 2018

Veenendaal wants input for new mayor

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:27 am

VanderLaan2

While the Dutch cannot vote for their mayors because mayors are still appointed, the city of Veenendaal has decided to let residents choose what qualities they want in a mayor, a bit like letting children ‘give their input’ on what they want for dinner and eventually serving them some sort of mash. I understand this is trying to get folks involved, but the best way to let people give their opinion is to let them vote for their mayor, something Veenendaal is not in a position to offer, but trying to alleviate.

Should the new mayor be an ‘enthusiastic renewer’ or more of a ‘stable factor’? Should they be ‘visibly active’ or more ‘involved in the background’? Folks of Veenendaal, tell them what you want in a survey. And you can continue to ‘give your opinion’ until May 16. Piet Zoon is currently acting mayor of Veenendaal, after Wouter Kolff left in September 2017.

Last month, the town of Stadskanaal appointed a mayor for all of 15 minutes, as they could not appoint new councillors without one, which the law has no provision to deal with.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl, Photo of deceased former mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard van de Laan)

Tags: , , ,

May 7, 2018

Dutch mortgages too tough to read

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:15 pm

According to Utrecht University, Dutch mortgage deeds have been recently called one of the most unintelligible documents to read in the Dutch language. Sure, it’s full of jargon and legal terms, but it is also contains too much information per sentence, sentences that are too long in any case, unnecessary auxiliary verbs and one of my pet peeves, too many passive sentences. Even campaign flyers and research articles are written more succinctly than mortgage documents, a conclusion linguists reached after analysing the written materials of 42 mortgage deeds from 21 agents.

And even after simplifying the 42 deeds, only 69 percent of respondents said they understood the newer version, as compared to 57 who understood the old versions.

Besides barely understanding what you’re signing up for even for native Dutch speakers, many articles will tell you that the Dutch have the highest household-debt levels in the euro zone, which is all due to mortgages costing more than the value of people’s homes. Amsterdam being the place to be for many people, it is currently on a real estate bubble list, moving from ‘overvalued’ in 2015 and 2016 to ‘bubble risk’ in 2017.

(Link: nu.nl)

Tags: , ,

May 5, 2018

Rabobank uses animal and plants for client privacy

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 1:14 pm
privacy

To comply with the General Protection Data Regulation that will enter into force on 25 May 2018, the Dutch bank Rabobank has found a nifty way of using client data without having to ask permission: by assigning Latin animal and plant names to their clients data, pseudonymising it. They also claim it’s something they were toying around four years ago when the GPDR wasn’t on anybody’s radar, but yeah, Google was doing that back then as well with animal and creatures names that anonymised Google docs users.

Special software was developed by IBM to make people’s data unrecognisable, but still useable for analysis. The software is currently part of a service aimed at a small group of financial organisations. Later, it will also be used in retail and healthcare.

(Link: bright.nl)

Tags: , , ,

May 4, 2018

‘Mistaken tourists’ show up for ‘Queen’s Day’ in Amsterdam

Filed under: General,History by Orangemaster @ 11:30 am

Celebrating its own bizarre fifth year anniversary this year, the ‘mistaken tourists’ (‘vergistoeristen’, in Dutch, a contender for the best word of the year 2018 in my view), are people who still show up in Amsterdam on 30 April on what used to be Queen’s Day, The Netherlands’ national holiday, dressed in orange garb and wondering where the party is.

In 2014 Queen’s Day was renamed King’s Day and moved to King Willem-Alexander’s actual birthday, 27 April, except if that day falls on a Sunday, then it’s on 26 April. The culprits seems to be outdated guide books and sites, holding on tight to Queen’s Day on 30 April and in doing so, pissing off a lot of tourists and giving us a chance to admire their editorial skills.

However, why would tourists and even websites have any reason to think a national holiday has moved back three days and can move around a bit more if 27 April falls on a Sunday? I wonder how many more years this will last, although I wonder if we’ll make it to a tenth year anniversary. Maybe then we should actually throw a party for the tourists.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

Tags: , , ,