March 27, 2007

Four star hotel for alcoholics

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Orangemaster @ 7:13 pm

The town of Oirschot in the province of Noord Brabant will open the very first four star resort for alcoholics. The hotel, which will be called RoderSana, is scheduled to open in May. According to interim director Van der Meer, regular care facilities are full of drug addicts and there is no room for alcoholics. Moreover, he says that treating alcoholics is totally different than treating drug addicts. This will be the first facility in The Netherlands dedicated to kicking the drinking habit, as alcholics usually have to be treated outside the country.

(Link: fok.nl)

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March 26, 2007

The Netherlands boast the cheapest Big Mac

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 4:51 pm
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The Dutch sell the cheapest Big Mac at 2,95 euro. In Belgium it costs 3,40 euro, in Denmark 3,72 euro, and in Germany 2,99 euro. It is the first time since the Big Mac Index was started in 2002 that The Netherlands is the cheapest Big Mac country of Western Europe.

As a comparison, Switzerland is the most expensive at 3,91 euro, while the Ukraine is the cheapest at 1,32 euro (not part of Western Europe according to the index).

(All these food postings!)

(Link)

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March 24, 2007

Yeah, it’s pancake day!

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:01 pm
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Today was the first edition of National Pancake Day in the Ouwehands Dierenpark Rhenen. More than 20 cooks made thousands of pancakes for thousands of visitors, especially children. The Nationale Pannenkoekendag was organised by Tefal, in honour of the 40th year anniversary of the pan manufacturer. Tefal’s goal is to hold a National Pancake Day every fourth Saturday in March. According to Tefal, England, Ireland and Australia have been celebrating Pancake Day for centuries.

Well, the Russians have a very old tradition called Maslenitsa, which involves a whole week of pancake eating in February, with lots of real butter.

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Food that tastes like less

Filed under: Food & Drink,Health,Science by Orangemaster @ 9:23 am
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Scientists in Wageningen are developing a new generation of foods that can help prevent obesity by getting people to eat less. The Top Institute Food and Nutrition is also developing food ingredients which can stop obese people from developing diabetes. Such nutrients could eventually be used in any kind of food. The Dutch public health agency concluded in a research report last year that 25% of deaths and serious illness caused by overweight and obesity would be avoided if adults shed 3 kg.

Eating right and exercising is pretty straight forward, but accommodating the obese seems more lucrative. As the article states, “such innovative products have higher margins than those of selling a tomato or a bottle of milk.”

(Link)

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March 23, 2007

Pick of the day

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:53 am
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Dutch bank ABN Amro is currently having all its ATMs cleaned following the results of a nation-wide survey on nose-picking. The survey showed that ATMs and bankcard devices in shops are covered in bacteria coming from people’s noses.

The hygiene survey was conducted by Dutch health magazine GezondNU. Some 90% of the population admits picking their nose. Half of them do it once of several times a day. Men pick their noses much more than women do. Favourite nose-picking places include on the couch and in the car. More than 50% of people deposit their ‘findings’ in a handkerchief. Almost 10% eat them. One third of men roll them into a ball and then flick it away.

(Link)

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March 22, 2007

Another day, another flying car

Filed under: Automobiles,Gadgets by Branko Collin @ 11:55 am

Flying cars are a thing that overenthusiastic inventors have been promising the world for almost as long as the automobile itself exists. The last of these inventors are the Dutch company PAL-V. They’ve got a hunch that thanks to relaxed regulations and improved technology, their motor-cycle-with-roof cum gyrocopter might just succeed this time around. I especially love their use case. If business were this brisk, you probably would not need a flying car.

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March 21, 2007

Olympic rowers offering job aboard boat

Filed under: General,Sports by Branko Collin @ 7:20 pm

Golly! This here digital revolution hasn’t passed by the Netherlands’ finest athletes. The Holland 8 (the Olympic rowing team) are looking for a new coxswain, and are using Monsterboard to help them in their search. (Via :)= Esc.)

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They swear they won’t swear

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:46 am
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The town of Rijssen-Holten in the Province of Overijssel will pay a visit to the Elsrock metal festival on Saturday, 25 August to make sure that the bands don’t use blasphemous language. Mayor Bort Koelewijn has recently announced that the town will sue the organisors of the festvial if the lyrics contain any references deemed unacceptable from their orthodox Protestant point of view.

The organisors of Elsrock has assured the town that the bands will not use any blasphemous language. Yet, the reisdents of the town are still not convinced. The SGP (Dutch Political Reformed Party) is also not convinced and would like to ban the festival altogether.

(Link, Via Taalpost)

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March 20, 2007

Dutch radio DJ to spin at North Pole

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 2:33 pm
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3FM DJ Michiel Veenstra is planning to broadcast from atop the North Pole for five days starting April 23. For the occasion, 3FM has been rebaptized Noordpool FM. The idea is to raise awareness for the greenhouse effect and figure out how The Netherlands can help find a solution to the climate problem. The last broadcast on April 27 will be at the actual pole, the northernmost point of the earth. This is the first time anyone has attempted to do a live radio broadcast from this location.

(Link)

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Computers learn to talk to each other

Filed under: IT by Branko Collin @ 8:25 am

When a PC talks to a printer, the PC has to know in advance how to address the printer and what the printer is saying.

On March 21, PhD student Jurriaan van Diggelen will defend a thesis that suggests a system where ‘agents’ (autonomous computer programs that act on behalf of a user) learn to communicate with other agents on their own. Such self-learning software could for instance be used to search the Internet for cheap holiday packages, collecting the necessary information from the servers of travel agents, airlines, hotels and so on, even though the program would initially not know how to talk to these servers.

The thesis is called Achieving Semantic Interoperability in Multi-Agent Systems (PDF). Via Web Wereld.

Van Diggelen tested his theories with a sophisticated RSS agregator. He identifies a translation problem: different systems know about the same concepts, but give them different names. The agent has to learn the names that apply to the same concept. A second problem is one of specialisation: “So you don’t know about ‘football’, but do you know about ‘sports’?”. The aggregator could reply “Yes,” and provide a more generic answer than it was looking for, but still one that could be presented to the user.

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