September 30, 2011
Time for a funny clip. Historically, the Dutch did lots of bad things and according to some advert on telly just this evening, the Dutch were the last to abolish child labour in Europe, but skip that and have a good haha laugh.
Seamail for Mark Zuckerberg from the Dutch National Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum) to announce its new Facebook page.
(Thanks Jeroen!)
Tags: Facebook, Zoek de Nederlander
Owner Elles Hetebrij of the Hete Brij pub in Zwolle has had it with anti-social behaviour from mobile gamers, and has banned the Scrabble like word game Wordfeud from her establishment, De Stentor reports.
Sometimes the bar is filled with people playing Wordfeud. Nobody is talking to each other or to the bartender any more, much to his chagrin. […] We talk to our patrons about their behaviour. If you want to be on an ‘island’, you might as well play at home. This is a brown café where the atmosphere needs to be lively.
Manager Patrick Hugen added:
People even interrupt their game of darts to enter a word. This has to stop.
Wordfeud is a game that’s played on a mobile phone against Internet opponents. Is it really that addictive? I find that hard to believe. What do you think?
(Illustration: Wordfeud screenshot)
September 29, 2011
Amsterdam has four hotels on the 2011 Dirtiest Hotels list on Tripadvisor.
First and second place are in Turkey, 3rd, 4th and 5th are in London, 6th and 7th are in Amsterdam, 8th is in London, and 9th and 10th are in Amsterdam. Recap: Turkey = 2, London = 5 and Amsterdam = 4.
Last year’s list is mostly shameful for the UK with 8, Italy with 1 and the Netherlands (Amsterdam) with 1.
“Free mice with every room!” and “All the sheets were spotted with hundreds of red dots.” sound quite disgusting to me.
(Link: welingelichtekringen.nl, Photo is of a reputable, bicycle friendly hotel away from the nasty downtown hotels)
September 28, 2011
Twenty years ago today jazz legend Miles Davis died, leaving a trail of trumpet clad jazz music that is still highly appreciated today by die hard jazz fans and new generations of fans. Most of us probably own Kind of Blue, or have heard of it. My dad played it all the time — on vinyl.
However, a few Dutch music critics were not amused when NRC newspaper came out with a free book about Miles containing a free CD re-issue of Birth of The Cool, originally released on Capitol in 1957. And that’s where the commotion started: according to music critic Gijsbert Kamer who writes for De Volkskrant, the Birth of The Cool is not a Blue Note label recording and the NRC should not have implied that it is. But he’s technically wrong: the CD re-issue offered in the book is from EMI who owns Blue Note, making the CD a Blue Note record today, whether we like that or not. Even the book says that the album was released on Capitol in 1957.
The NRC has to quote Blue Note on the CD because that’s who owns the rights today to that record. It’s up to the reader to figure out when and where the record was originally recorded, if they even care. A newspaper gives away a free book with a free newspaper: score! If people want to know more about Miles, it’s up to them.
Then it gets more amusing: Kamer either ignored, chose to ignore or didn’t know that his own employer, De Volkskrant put out a box set by American jazz sound engineer Rudy van Gelder in 2006 with — you guessed it — a Blue Note packaging, including Birth of The Cool.
Problem is, Rudy van Gelder never originally produced Birth of The Cool, he was only involved in the re-issue, which is the one both newspapers are peddling, although NRC never mentions Rudy van Gelder anywhere. In other words, De Volkskrant critized the NRC of parading the CD as a Blue Note CD (which it is today), while they themselves did the exact same and also got the producer wrong.
Birth of The Cool was “originally released as singles, eight of the tracks were compiled in 1953 on a 10″ vinyl album in Capitol’s Classics in Jazz series, and Birth of the Cool was released in 1957 as a 12” LP that added the remaining three unreleased instrumental pieces (“Move”, “Budo” and “Boplicity”). The final track, “Darn That Dream” was included with the other eleven on a 1971 LP. Subsequent releases have been based on this last arrangement.”
So Birth of The Cool changed, grew and got remastered over the years.
Let’s listen to Miles playing in Amsterdam in 1957 and move on, shall we?
Tags: Blue Note, Miles Davis
September 27, 2011
To be eligible for child care benefits a woman with a disabled husband was advised by the tax office to get a divorce.
The husband needs constant care, which he gets in health care facilities, and is rarely at home. The tax office figured the man does not work (duh) therefore he has time to take care of the kids, meaning she has no reason to receive child care benefits.
As a solution, the caring tax people suggested she get an actual divorce (not a separation) and then she could get benefits. She was also given the advice over the phone.
Never mind the ‘get a divorce’ bit, which was probably very shocking and insulting to the woman, the fact that a divorce would solve this problem instead of adjusting the rules is insane.
(Link: binnenland.nieuws.nl)
Tags: disabled, divorce, tax office
September 26, 2011
Mark Wagenbuur published this video of road workers resurfacing Parklaan in Den Bosch back in May, but I felt it was still interesting enough to share with the one or two of you who don’t already religiously follow his work. He wrote an accompanying piece at the A View from the Cycle Path blog.
Note that alongside the regular black asphalt for cars, two strips of red asphalt are laid. These will become the bike lanes. Two workers are continuously measuring the width of the prospective bike lines. I am not sure, but I assume this is to make sure the bike lanes have a minimum width. Remarkable, as there is no legal requirement to do so.
I don’t know why they use red for bike lanes. According to a 2002 article called Fietsvoorzieningen brengen kleur op straat by Fietsberaad, the decision is mainly a political one. It highlights that politicians supposedly care. Fietsberaad said in 2002 that red asphalt is three times more expensive to make.
Note that the famous Dutch Tiger Stone automatic road paver can also do bike paths by simply putting in the right coloured bricks.
(Video: Youtube / Markenlei)
Tags: Den Bosch, Mark Wagenbuur, roads
September 25, 2011
Delft based klezmer band L’Chaim uploaded a video of their song A Goet Vol Glezele to Youtube last month. The video was recorded at coffeehouse Uit de Kunst, which is also the site of the country’s smallest art gallery, Voor de Kunst, housed in an old phone booth.
Why a phone booth? Owner Tijn Noordenbos explains to Bright.nl: “The quay had collapsed, which caused a tunnel to the houses to be exposed. When it turned out that I had to pay for the repairs, I decided that I got to determine how those repairs were going to be executed. [There is now a hatch covering the tunnel.] You don’t throw a phone booth as easily into the canal as you do a flower box.”
(Video: Youtube / L’Chaim)
September 24, 2011
A couple of days ago visitors to the Assen race track (home to the Assen TT) noticed this Nissan GT-R supercar in a brook. According to Autogespot.nl the driver lost control of the car during a high speed turn, sped across the bike path, and ended up in the drink.
In June this year somebody drove a GT-R at its 310 kph top speed through Haarlem. If only idiots drive these machines, I suggest the police arrest the drivers as soon as they get behind the wheel.
(Video: Youtube / Martinimaster)
September 23, 2011
A list by Copenhagenize Consulting puts Amsterdam straight at the top of 80 major cities world-wide as the most bike-friendly place to be.
The city scored high in almost every of the thirteen categories that the candidates were judged on: “The cycling atmosphere is relaxed, enjoyable, and as mainstream as you can get. This is the one place on the planet where fear-mongering about cycling is non-existent and it shows.”
Numbers two and three were Copenhagen and Barcelona, Montreal came in eighth as the best of the Americas.
Copenhagenize Consulting is run by Mikael Colville-Andersen who started the Copenhagenize blog—extolling the virtues of bicycling—after he had noticed that an ordinary photo of an ordinary woman riding an ordinary bike could draw an extraordinary response from a global audience. There but for the grace of god was the world spared the term Assenize. (Disclaimer: I am not dissing David Hembrow, just mocking the phrase.)
(Photo by Facemepls, some rights reserved)
Tags: cities, Copenhagen, Montreal
September 22, 2011
The effects of the vegetarian pseudo-scientific smear campaign against meat eaters keep spreading like an oil spill. Professor Roos Vonk (pronounced Rose Vonk) from the Radboud University in Nijmegen seemed to be little more than a victim of her Tilburg colleague Diederik Stapel at first, but when it turned out that she herself is a vegetarian (most of the time) people started wondering if perhaps her own research was skewed by her preferences.
Vonk denied this, although later she bravely admitted that it was justified for people to harbour suspicions. Vonk’s alma mater’s academic integrity committee has since started looking into her possible involvement.
And now the university is making itself look bad by censoring its own internal weekly magazine, the ‘competing’ student-run magazine ANS reports. The weekly, called Vox, was not allowed to publish a column that mused about how the academic community could learn from the mistakes that were made. Spokes person Willem Hooglugt told ANP last Tuesday that “we maintain radio silence, both internally and externally. This is a conscious choice. When we allow dissent [sorry, my bad—ed.] discussion, objectivity could suffer, and we wish to avoid that.”
This excuse would not emanate the stench of a blatant cover up if Vox did not proudly proclaim on its website’s front page that it is independent, and that its independence is anchored by both an editorial charter and an editorial council (see illustration). Needs more cowbell, that page.
Disclaimer: I myself studied at Radboud University back when it was still the Roman-Catholic University of Nijmegen, and wrote for ANS. The university often came across as deeply conservative, parochial, and surprisingly distasteful of students. (Example of the latter: the dining hall was regularly checked for people that should not be there, i.e. people who were neither student nor university employee. Somehow the security personnel only checked people that looked like students, even though the place was rife with families with children, pensioners and truckers.)
(Screenshot: Vox)
