February 9, 2018

Crates of porn handed over to Dutch library

Filed under: Literature by Orangemaster @ 8:47 pm

book_stack

The Dutch National Library based in The Hague has received a collection of pornographic books, part of which is specifically about fantasies set in WWII. Former conservator of the Paleontology and Mineralogy Cabinet at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Bert Sliggers, donated 100 crates of erotic literature, spanning from the end of the 19th century to today.

The library plans to hold an exhibition entitled ‘Porno op Papier’ (‘Porno on paper’), featuring a deal of his collection. Sliggers never hid the fact that he collected pornography. His collection starts in 1880, with books that were censured for various reasons. And one of the weirder genres he owned was Nazi porn. “Even after WWII this type of pornography sold well, in the hundreds of thousands of books.”

(Link: www.telegraaf.nl)

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February 7, 2018

Giving bamboozle structures the attention they deserve

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 5:54 pm

Bamboozle

Timo Scholte of the Eindhoven University of Technology has given bamboozle structures some proper attention.

“They consist of 51 equilateral triangles, meeting pairwise at an angle of about 70.5 degrees (arccos 1/3). The four colours correspond to the four orientations of the triangles. There are 15 yellow triangles, and 12 triangles of each red, green, and blue. The smallest cycle involves 10 triangles.”

Stay with me.

“Though the search for new bamboozle structures proved unfruitful, we found that the hexagonal bamboozle structure was in fact not a bamboozle structure, discovered that the square bamboozle structure and the four-coloured rectangular bamboozle structure actually form continuous families, and gained a better understanding of the bamboozle structure and what areas should be considered to find a complete list of possible structures.”

Class dismissed.

(Link: improbable.com, Photo: win.tue.nl)

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February 6, 2018

Dutch supermarket offers pink baskets for singles

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:26 pm

I think I can often tell if someone is only buying food for themselves, but that means absolutely nothing about the state of their love live. Maybe because Valentine’s Day is around the corner or spring, or both did the Jumbo supermarket in Woerden, Utrecht decide to let singles use pink shopping baskets to advertise their singledom. Frozen pizzas and beer it is, then. Or rice crackers, almond milk and tampons, that sort of thing.

Jumbo says it has done this before and that it was a success. How on earth they can claim it was a success if they have no way of knowing if it was, except possibly that nobody complained about it. By Dutch standards, that would indeed be a major success.

(Link: ad.nl, Photo by Doratagold, distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)

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February 4, 2018

Groningen Rhapsody, protest song about earthquakes by Maartje & Kine

Filed under: Music,Nature,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 4:37 pm

The ninth largest gas field in the world is located under the Dutch province of Groningen and extensive exploitation has led to an instability of the ground. In 2015 local comedy duo Maartje & Kine wrote this parody of a famous rhapsody in which they lament the troubles the region has seen.

groningen-rhapsody-maartje-kineThe lyrics are in Dutch, but you could try your luck with YouTube’s automated translation. Here are some quotes to get you going.

“Open your eyes, look at your barn and see… [a crack].”
“Our cows only produce milkshake these days.”
“He is the minister, evil and sinister.”

Last month, Groningen was hit by a gas exploitation induced earthquake that registered 3.4 on the Richter scale. It was the strongest quake in Groningen since 2012 and the fifth quake that month. As a result, 3,000 citizens filed insurance claims, on top of the 100,000 claims made earlier.

(Illustration: partial screenshot of the video, YouTube / Maartje & Kine)

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January 29, 2018

Dutch orchestra LUDWIG wins Grammy award

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 2:21 pm

On Sunday, 28 January 2018, Dutch classical music orchestra LUDWIG won a Grammy in the category Best Classical Solo Vocal Album with ‘Crazy Girl Crazy’, directed and sung by Canadian conductor and soprano Barbara Hannigan, aka the ‘conducting soprano’.

Peppie Wiersma, artistic director of the collective, qualified this feat as ‘quite incredible’. “We’ve only been doing this for a few years and this is our first CD. The fact that we’re the only Dutch winners makes it extra special”. The album Crazy Girl Crazy includes the Girl Crazy Suite, with music written by George Gershwin and lyrics by his brother Ira Gershwin.

Despite receiving no subsidies or not really doing any fancy marketing (a very big point of contention in the Netherlands), LUDWIG was very quickly successful and has won many Dutch prizes since their debut in 2014.

The only other Dutch person to be nominated for a Grammy this year was conductor Reinbert de Leeuw in the category Best Classical Compendium, but unfortunately, he did not win. The 79-year-old De Leeuw was said to have been ‘a bit disappointed’.

Here is LUDWIG performing in concert.

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of Carlo Antonio Testore violin, Milan, 1738 by Jason Hollinger, some rights reserved)

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January 25, 2018

Dutch florist to donate kidney to competitor

Filed under: Health,Science by Orangemaster @ 1:13 pm
tulips2.jpg

A florist in the town of Oostvoorne, South Holland has agreed to donate one of his kidneys to his competitor.

Jan, 62 and a florist, has a genetic kidney disease, inherited from his father who died at age 69. Jan’s problems are not yet critical, but he’ll need a kidney soon. Dick, 55 and a competing florist, is a match and is willing to donate his kidney to Jan. Sadly, Jan’s two sons also have the same genetic disease, but at least they’ll have a father for a much longer time if all goes well, and hopefully more resources to solve their predicament.

Everybody who knows Jan and Dick in Oostvoorne are impressed with the gesture. “I barely take aspirin. I can do without one of my kidneys”, says Dick. Jan was speechless when he found out that Dick was willing to donate one of his kidneys. “You’re not going bankrupt are you?” said Jan to Dick when Dick came over to tell him the good news. “No, I came to tell you I’m going to give you a kidney”.

Dick found out that Jan needed a kidney through two social workers. And although he did talk about donating with this wife, he says he went behind her back to the hospital first to see if he was a match.

You can bet the media will be covering this when it happens.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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January 24, 2018

Sexist carnival theme gets students’ funding cut

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:07 pm
carnaval

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Eindhoven University of Technology, Jan Mengelers, ‘blew up’ at a student association for using a sexist and ‘rapey’ carnival themed party on campus entitled #nietoo intended as a play on words and a rhyme of #meetoo.

Translated into English, the theme is ‘What women want doesn’t count’ (‘De wil van de vrouw doet er #nietoo’), with a wonderful image of a young woman with tape over her mouth and #nietoo stamped on it. These are future engineers in the making; their parents must be proud.

Mengelers gave the representatives of this student association, which I have a feeling has little or no women in it, a stern talking to on the same day he found out and in true straight up Brabo style told them this conversation wasn’t going to be a long one and told them their annual funding has been cut off.

The student association plans to publicly apologise, cancel the party and investigate internally. In one month, these morons will have to talk to Mengelers again and see if they’re still the cavemen they’ve shown us they can be.

update: The poster in question (see link), which was a bit tough to read, also reads ‘for 18 years and up and 5 years and under’ which shocked a lot of people more than the sexist remarks.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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January 22, 2018

Hanging off a Dutch train is dangerous

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:58 pm

intercity-train-dutch-rail-kismihok

There’s possibly (but hopefully not) a new trend in jackass land, and it’s about hanging onto a moving train on the outside like James Bond, but then for real and purely for shock value.

The Climbing Dutchman is pissing off Dutch rail operator ProRail with his extremely dangerous stunts, but he couldn’t care less, and has done it before. While ProRail says that this is ‘intolerable behaviour and against the law’ and has filed a complaint with the police, The Climbing Dutchman’s answer was, “go ahead and complain to the police again”, implying that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be caught.

ProRail is trying to have this video deleted from YouTube, but of course, it can still easily be found, which says a lot about YouTube.

Update December 2018: new video, as the old one had been deleted.

(Link: ed.nl,Photo by Flickr user Kismihok, some rights reserved)

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January 20, 2018

Former Dutch Prime Minister has his first joint

Filed under: Dutch first,Health,History by Orangemaster @ 12:33 pm

Dries van Agt, 86, served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from late 1977 until late 1982. Of all his achievements, the one that stands out for many is the introduction of ‘turning a blind eye’ (in Dutch, ‘gedoogbeleid’) to the use of marijuana and hash 42 years ago as of January 17, 2017, which was a world’s first.

Van Agt was Justice Minister before he was PM, and together with Irene Vorrink the Minister of Health at the time, they are the reason why the world assumes pot is legal in the Netherlands when it fact, it is absolutely not. They are also the reason why the Dutch have been making a distinction between soft drugs and hard drugs since 1976.

In November 2009 Van Agt received the Cannabis Culture Award of the Hash, Marihuana & Hemp Museum in Amsterdam, but this week he was awarded the Koos Zwart Award in Tilburg, an annual award given to people who have been instrumental in moving towards legalisation and normalisation of cannabis in the Netherlands. The award is named after hash activist Koos Zwart who died in 2014 and who happens to be Irene Vorrink’s son. The former premier held a speech in 2016 at the Cannabis Liberation Day in Amsterdam to plead for the legalisation of marijuana.

And on January 17, Van Agt smoked his first ever joint (pic).

(Link: www.vice.com)

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January 18, 2018

Films of things blowing away in Netherlands

Filed under: Architecture,Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 1:54 pm

Trains have stopped, planes are grounded, a lot of public transport is interrupted, a lot of bikes and scooters outside 24HQ have tipped over, and there’s a whole lot of Dutch reports of different things being blown around. Here’s a selection:

Here’s a video of all kinds of stuff blowing over.

See what happens to these solar panels.

And who needs the gym when you can do exercises with your car door.

Some people couldn’t take their train this morning because a trampoline rammed a train in South Holland.

UPDATE: This roof blowing off in Rotterdam Charlois is quite spectacular.

(Photo of solar panels by Mhassan Abdollahi, some rights reserved)

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