October 31, 2008

Woody Allen’s first gig in the Netherlands

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 9:00 am

For the very first time Woody Allen will be performing with his New Orleans Jazz Band on Sunday 21 December in the Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam. He is a clarinetist – not everyone knows that, as I just had to explain to a Dutch person over coffee why I said “performing”. Woody Allen is also a huge jazz fan, something that’s pretty obvious if you’ve seen any of his films. The music always has a prominent place in his films, usually jazz from the 1920s to the 1940s.

In this video he’s playing in Budapest with the New Orleans Jazz Band. He has been playing clarinet since he was 15 and started performing in the 1960s with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Funeral and Ragtime Orchestra.

I remember a time in the 1980s when he was a regular at Michael’s Pub in New York City on Tuesdays, but never saw him because I was way too young to get in.

(Link: rtvnh.nl)

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October 30, 2008

New Dutch rare groove compilation

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 9:01 am
Dutch rare groove vol. 2

Back in 2005, initiated by the hip Bert and Arjo of Black Audio Market, a CD compilation project called Dutch Rare Groove (CD below, artwork by Bert) compiled by Dutch funk lover and DJ Sjeng Stokking showed the world that the Dutch did have the groove, it just had to be put on a CD.

And since Stokking had plenty of other obscure material waiting to be pressed, he decided to release Dutch Rare Groove volume 2, with 18 very rare, funky tracks, recorded in the Netherlands mostly during the 1970s. And just like volume 1, the extra tracks on the second CD count as well: 14 remixes by people such as Eboman, Perquisite, Git Hyper, Kraak&Smaak and DJ Maestro. Both State Of Monc and Monsieur Dubois reworked some oldies into unique, fresh tracks. Out in stores as of 24 October, Dutch Rare Groove volume 2 will also be presented live on 23 December at the Melkweg, in Amsterdam. Dutch rare grooves volume two includes tracks such as “It’s Time To Get Funky” by Billy Jones, “Street Rondo” by Thijs Van Leer, “Catch Fire” by Rob Franken Organization and “A Box For Leslie” by Jack Van Poll.

Dutch rare groove

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October 29, 2008

Sailor drowns because of language barrier

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:38 pm
Sailor\'s cap

Let me see if I get this straight. On Tuesday, 28 October a Czech sailor fell off a German boat into a canal in the province of Limburg, which borders Germany and French-speaking Belgium. A French sailor saw this and ran to warn the Dutch sluice guard in French. The sluice guard could not understand French at all and the fire brigade came 30 minutes later when the man had already drowned.

“Despite the large number of international boats on the canal, sluice guards are not required to speak several languages.” However, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Water Management said that “attention is paid to French and German” and that the “French sailor could have just dialled ‘112’ (the Dutch emergency number)”.

“Attention paid to French and German” means absolutely nothing and was said rather sheepishly in the video (link below). The French sailor not speaking any English is odd too, as I assume the sluice guard spoke some English, as most Dutch do, and that would have sped things up. Working on the border of two other countries and not understanding any French is weird, even though it is not required, but that’s just me. As well, most Dutch who live on the border with Germany do understand some German, but asking the French to speak German or Dutch for that matter is a stretch.

Just like in aviation, everyone could try and learn some English to avoid this kind of deadly mix up. And expecting sailors to know all the different emergency numbers throughout Europe is unrealistic.

Why doesn’t the EU have just one emergency number? Too much to hope for maybe.

(Link: nu.nl)

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Lambiek comic book store turns 40

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 8:22 am

Not withstanding a recent lament (Dutch) by Dutch comic giants Hanco Kolk and Jean-Marc van Tol about the decline of the local comics scene, comic book store Lambiek is still going strong. Next week the store even celebrates it’s fortieth anniversary. As they put it themselves: “[Lambiek] is probably the oldest existing comics shop in the world.”

The store in the heart of Amsterdam, just off the busy Leidsestraat, is named after a character from the popular Flemish series Suske & Wiske who in turn was named after the beer. To those who don’t shop for comics in Amsterdam—what’s wrong with you?—Lambiek is probably best known for its online comiclopedia, an encyclopedia of comic artists from around the world in English and Dutch.

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October 28, 2008

University cracks Internet security of the future

Filed under: IT,Science by Orangemaster @ 9:50 am
Binary code

Researchers of the Eindhoven University of Technology have managed to crack the McEliece cryptosystem. This system is a candidate for securing Internet traffic in the ‘Post-Quantum Computing’ era, when the superfast computers of the future will be in use. The scientists presented the crack as well as a new encryption key.

Last weekend’s successful attack was done using a large number of computers linked together throughout the world, explained Eindhoven University of Technology professor Tanja Lange. Together with her student Christiane Peters they presented a new encryption key with which the McEliece code will be immune to quantum computers.

Banks currently use the RSA code from 1977 to secure electronic transactions. A quantum computer would have little problems cracking this code, something that takes an ordinary computer three weeks. This is why researchers are looking for something better now before the introduction of quantum computers, which according to Lange is another 10 years away.

(Link: tue.nl)

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October 27, 2008

Dutch woman works on Obama’s campaign in the US

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:37 pm
Kirsten Verdel with Robert Kennedy Jr.

Thirty-year-old Kirsten Verdel of Rotterdam (seen here with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) currently works at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the research department, helping with campaign strategy for Barack Obama.

“I’m not allowed to vote here, so what I’m doing is the next best thing,” Verdel said. “It’s a way to be involved, and that’s important because what happens in the U.S. directly impacts not just people in America, but people around the world, and not just world markets, but global policy.”

Verdel has effected change in her own country as a member of the Dutch Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid, or PvdA). She served as an elected member of the provincial parliament in South Holland and worked as a policy analyst for the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs. As a campaign manager in six elections in the Netherlands, she most recently helped secure the Senate-level election of a former Dutch minister.

Amazed by the financial and human capital involved in the 2008 presidential election, Verdel said in the Netherlands, all political parties combined spend the equivalent of $35 million for a national campaign. In America, one party can spend that sum in less than a week.

“Endorsing a candidate in the Netherlands would be like saying, ‘We’re not objective, we pick sides,’” she said. The role of Dutch newspapers “is not to endorse any position, but to write about it.”

Read the entire story here.

(Link: america.gov, photo: Kirsten Verdel. Thanks to the author Victoria Colette Reynolds for the tip!)

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Healthy purple tomatoes may fight cancer

Filed under: Food & Drink,Science by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am
Purple tomato

British and Dutch scientists have developed a new, purple-coloured tomato. Research shows that this tomato is very healthy and protects people against the onset of some types of cancer.

According to the research institute Plant Research International of the Wageningen University, two genes of the snapdragon flower (antirrhinum) have been added to the tomato through genetic modification. These genes are needed to produce anthocyanins, purple-coloured antioxidants, which can also be found in blackberries, strawberries and cranberries.

Not only do anthocyanins protect against certain types of cancers, but also against heart and vascular diseases. Moreover, anthocyanins are said to be anti-inflammatory. The new tomatoes worked well on mice that are very prone to getting cancer.

(Link and photo: gelderlander.nl)

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October 26, 2008

Blog08: ‘Build something you love’

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 1:40 pm
Gabe Mac and Pete Cashmore

Just like a real rock show, there was a spontaneous afterparty at Blog08 which consisted of a bunch of speakers and attendees taking a ferry boat to Amsterdam North and knocking back some bottled Heineken out of crates in a bunker. Here you have Pete Cashmore of Mashable (I said he was American, but he’s Scottish) being vlogged by Gabe Mac of Mobuzz.tv in the perfect grunge setting.

I had a great time, met tons of people from the Netherlands, England, Estonia, Slovenia and what have you and have enough tips to keep me and 24oranges busy for a while (see photo below). I very much enjoyed the casually dressed atmosphere and my first time using a Twitter back channel (constantly updated micro-blogging comments on screen), which was a real source of ‘infotainment’.

Blog08, the one-day extravagaza dedicated to blogging, vlogging and the blogosphere organised by Einstein generation hopefuls Ernst-Jan Pfauth and his mate Edial Dekker was a success that needs an encore in 2009.

Check out more photos here on Flickr.

Rocking blog

(Photos: Natasha)

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October 25, 2008

Man harassed by police for 13 years after identity theft

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:39 am

A Dutchman of Surinamese decent has been fighting the police, customs and the DoJ for the past thirteen years after a criminal junkie kept pretending to be him, says the national ombudsman. The anonymous man has a criminal record of 43 crimes, none of which he committed. Although the police knew almost from the start that a criminal junkie kept using the man’s identity, they never succeeded in entirely clearing his name. Instead, the treatment the victim received over the years at the hands of the police and customs got worse and worse. Among other things the man was arrested for reading a newspaper and his house was searched in the presence of his two young children.

When the man asked the police what they were going to do to clear his name, he bluntly got told to change his identity.

The ombudsman concludes:

“Kafka'” and “Kafka-esque” are terms in danger of becoming over-used when describing government actions, but in this case the label is entirely deserved.

The government will introduce a law next year that should miraculously help minimize mix-ups such as these by limiting civil freedoms even further and by increasing the number of points of failure, though the ombudsman seems quite happy with (part of) the proposal.

(Edit 22-5-2018: replaced link to Ombudsman press release by link to Ombudsman news article)

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October 24, 2008

Amsterdam 200 years older than previously believed

Filed under: History,Science by Branko Collin @ 7:55 am

Amsterdam is 200 years older than is commonly assumed, says historical geographer Chris de Bont. The settlement was originally started in 1000 AC instead of 1200 AC, which is still pretty young. De Bont bases his conclusion on the patterns formed by old brooks. “I found the same patterns elsewhere in the region where farmers lived around the time,” De Bont told print daily Metro, “so it’s logical to assume that farmers also created the patterns in Amsterdam.”

According to Volkskrant, De Bont also claims that parts of the rivers Amstel and Zaan were dug, and that the IJ used to be a big swamp instead of a waterway. De Bont’s assertions are part of his PhD thesis which he gets to defend next Tuesday at Wageningen University.

Illustration: one of the earliest city maps of Amsterdam (1544) by Cornelis Anthonisz. after one of his own paintings. Check the larger version at Wikimedia Commons, it’s pretty detailed and a great demonstration of how little the inner city has changed in 500 years (they built a McDonald’s in the Kalverstraat and that new-fangled ‘palace’ on Dam Square, and that’s about it).

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