March 13, 2021

World premiere: Dutch hospital to recycle costly cancer medication

Filed under: Dutch first,Health,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 3:22 pm

The Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Gelderland together with Dutch hospitals Jeroen Bosch ziekenhuis, St. Antonius and UMC Utrecht are setting up a trial to reuse unused costly oncology medication.

In the Netherlands at least 100 million euro worth of medication is thrown away each year, waste that increases the cost of healthcare. Too much medication is being prescribed, which leads to environmental waste because it often ends up in nature.

Of course, the ‘recycled’ medication will be subjected to rigorous quality control from pharmacists, with a temperature chip added to the sealed packaging. Based on the results, the RUMC will see if they cannot implement the program in more places.

(Link: gelderlander.nl)

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April 11, 2019

Nijmegen’s new square has the wrong name

Filed under: Art,History by Orangemaster @ 8:17 pm


The city of Nijmegen, Gelderland has named a square downtown after three figures from the city’s history, but has managed to spell their last name incorrectly.

Name after Medieval painters and brothers Herman, Paul and Johan, the square is called ‘Gebroeders Van Limburgplein’ (‘Brothers Van Limburg square’). Thanks to recent research done by an employee of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the proper spelling appears to be ‘Van Lymborch’, something the museum is calling an important milestone in the lives and work of the brothers.

Famous Dutch historian Johan Huizinga wrote their last names as ‘Van Limburg’ at some point and everybody just followed suit. In English, they were known as the ‘Limbourg brothers’. However, in Nijmegen documents from the fifteenth century, the spelling Van Lymborch was used. Lymborch was a dutchy located between the city of Achen in Germany and the city of Liège in Belgium. Now a city, it is called Limbourg, and has nothing to do with the Dutch province of Limburg as people thought.

Nijmegen’s Gebroeders van Limburg festival will be held in August and also get a name change to the Gebroeders Van Lymborch festival. The name change will not affect any addresses on the square as they are new houses with nobody living in them yet. That’s obviously way better than in Soesterberg where the street changed name overnight (possibly by mistake) and nobody told the residents.

(Link and photo: waarmaarraar.nl)

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February 11, 2019

Train app to find a seat in real time rolls out

Filed under: Dutch first,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:19 am

For years, there’s been a Dutch Rail app called ‘NS reisplanner’ (‘NS travel planner’) that helps you sort out train travel. Soon enough, the app will also let you find an actual place to sit in the train, in real time.

After a successful trial that started last year in April, the ‘find a seat’ feature will be integrated into NS reisplanner, with specific trains gradually added, such as Utrecht-Nijmegen. The app uses a sensor per train carriage to see if there’s anywhere to sit and displays the information in the app using the colours green, orange and red. As of next year, the whole country should be covered, according to a spokesperson from Dutch Rail.

The app is available for both iPhone and Android in Dutch and in English.

(Links: rtvutrecht.nl, androidplanet.nl, Photo by Flickr user UggBoy hearts UggGirl, some rights reserved)

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August 15, 2018

Pastafarians cannot adorn colanders on official photos

Filed under: Religion by Orangemaster @ 7:29 pm

fsm-dennis-van-zuijlekom

Today the Dutch Council of State Administrative Jurisdiction Division has ruled that Pastafarianism, or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is not a religion, which means wearing a colander by the adherents of this social movement cannot be regarded as an expression of religious belief.

Before I get into this, we told you back in 2016 that the Utrecht Chamber of Commerce had recognised the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, citing there was not a sufficiently solid legal basis to continue to refuse them status. However, the Pastafarians booked a loss.

The whole story hinges on a woman from Nijmegen who had applied for an ID card and a driving licence by submitting photos in which she was wearing a colander on her head, as a holy symbol of Pastafarianism. The mayor of Nijmegen refused to issue the requested documents because the woman’s head was covered, saying they did not meet the applicable legal criteria. Long story short, Pastafarianism does not have the required ‘seriousness and cohesion’ expected from a religion according to Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This Batman’s Joker wannabee from Hellevoetsluis had his picture taken hat and all, which is also not allowed, but when he argued it was ‘for his religious belief’, he was allowed to leave it on at the time.

(Link: raadvanstate.nl, Photo of a Pastafarian worshipper in full regalia by Dennis van Zuijlekom, some rights reserved)

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June 12, 2018

A solution for morons who blab at concerts

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

Called the ‘Dutch disease’ by both the Dutch and foreigners, it’s terribly irritating when concertgoers talk through a concert. I can’t say there’s nothing worse than that because they are also morons who let their phones ring or block your view while filming, and a few other annoyances of that category. In any case, it’s disrespectful and a big problem.

Luckily, The Hague pop venue Paard had already introduced in February the ‘lul-niet-lolly’ (roughly, ‘don’t-blabble-lollypop’) and it’s now caught on at another 22 pop venues, including 013 in Tilburg, de Oosterpoort in Groningen, Doornroosje in Nijmegen, Rotown in Rotterdam, and de Effenaar in Eindhoven.

You suck on a lolly and you’re not ruining the concert experience for someone who actually cares about the money and time they spent to get to the show. It’s so bad sometimes that bands from other countries are warned this might happen and that it’s a shameful cultural phenomenon. I’ve even seen acts stop playing and tell the persons talking if they are enjoying the show and then tell them to shut the hell up or even leave.

If people want to act like children, they might as well suck on a lollypop to keep quiet.

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of South African rapper Jack Parow by Orangemaster)

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June 4, 2018

Nijmegen business pays employees in bitcoin

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:41 am

bitcoin-key-fob-btc_keychain

As of July, Dutch financial company BTC Direct in Nijmegen, Gelderland will be paying its 33 employees in bitcoins, something no other Dutch company does at present.

The company trades in bitcoin and wants to set a bit of an example, hoping it will become “a full-fledged means of payment”. As well, many of their employees were already buying bitcoins with their salary and they all said yes to being paid in bitcoin, although not their entire salary. Some of the cryptocurrency-savvy personnel have even asked to have part of their salary in cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin.

According to BTC Direct, Nijmegen and nearby Arnhem have hundreds of places that now accept bitcoin.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl, (Photo by BTC Keychain, some rights reserved)

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October 16, 2017

Dutch students demand courses in Dutch

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:05 am

Second-year psychology students at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen have started a petition to be given courses in Dutch as promised when they registered for university.

The university decided to merge English and Dutch courses together and without any proper warning, students showed up to classes that were given in English ‘Dunglish’, aka in Dutch ‘steenkolenengels’.

Not only were the students promised Dutch classes, but their exams will be in Dutch, so having classes in poor English is making life worse for them and their Dutch-speaking teachers who, according to many, are not good enough to teach in English.

Although discussions are ongoing, the university has decided to blame the students for their lack of English. The university admitted to “not communicating properly beforehand about the language switch”, which is Dutch for ‘sorry not sorry’ and then proceeded to say that students use textbooks in English, so they shouldn’t really be complaining.

Well, they’re complaining because they feel they’ve been lied to and although everyone understands you want to cater to the British and others paying money to study for cheap in the Netherlands, you’re screwing your own people who also pay good money to study. Somehow, it makes sense for Dutch teachers to teach mainly Dutch students in Dutch in their own country!

Dutch psychologists will probably have Dutch clients, and Dutch students should have a say in their own education. There’s no way the university can guarantee a decent level of English in this case, bringing the entire quality of education down and cowardly resorting to blaming students in order to push their Dunglish agenda through purely to make more money off the non-Dutch students, or so it seems.

(Link: gelderlander.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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July 4, 2017

Colourful photos of bike crates and old graffiti

Filed under: Art,Photography by Orangemaster @ 2:38 pm

Bike-crate-AMS

Although these crates can be found on bikes all over the country, these ones on instagram are from Amsterdam. The gallery features milk creates, supermarket crates, baskets and wooden boxes, to name but a few of the creative ways people kit out their bikes. As opposed to other western countries, the Dutch are more about dumping their bags and groceries in the front crate than cycling with a backpack.

And then across the country in Nijmegen, Paul de Graaf took pictures of the 30 odd years of graffiti peeled off the sides of punk rock venue Doornroosje, with a cool timeline from 1984 until today. He says it is a lot like the rings of a tree. Besides having the biggest names in music play there, Doornroosje is also known as one of the first places in the country that openly sold sold marijuana and hash.

Graffiti-Doornroosje

(Links: instagram.com , imgur.com)

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August 14, 2016

Four Days Marches lottery inconsistency proven by maths

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 6:06 pm

Lottery-4daagse

Using probability theory, four students at the Institut Mines-Télécom in Paris penned a paper entitled ‘Failure is Also an Option’ to prove that the best chance of being allowed to participate in the 100th edition of the International Four Days Marches Nijmegen (aka ‘Nijmegen Vierdaagse’), which was held from 19-22 July 2016, was if one failed that year’s event.

The world’s most famous walking event attended by some 40,000 participants from around the world and featuring international armies and hardcore walkers alike, has a drop-out rate of about 10%.

Initially, the rules governing participation were the following: A walker who succeeds the n-th walk is admitted to walk at year (n + 1). Walkers who fail a walk enter a lottery. If they win the lottery, they get tickets to the walk. Walkers who fail two successive draws are admitted to the walk following the second lottery failure. In 2013, while computing our chances to be admitted to the centennial walk, we noticed a rather counterintuitive fact: By purposely failing the 97-th walk, walkers can actually increase their chances to attend the centennial walk.

We notified this inconsistency to the organisers and never got an answer, but the rules were subsequently changed.

(Link: www.improbable.com, image: www.ens-paris.fr)

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June 24, 2016

Robot to carve stone apostles for Nijmegen

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

Jurgen Braun who restores statues has programmed a robot to carve the 12 apostles out of stone for the Latin school in Nijmegen, Gelderland, a national monument.

The apostles’ socles were eroding and the statues became dangerous, which is why they were taken down. The robot, that hails from Tienhoven, South Holland, can produce one apostle in a week by working 24 hours a day, something a human just can’t do.

Although the robot can do a lot itself, an artist has to intervene in order to complete the statues properly because robots aren’t perfect, explains Braun.

Have a look (in Dutch):

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of Nijmegen and the Waal river by Rein Ketelaars, some rights reserved)

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