August 21, 2010

Rail operator ProRail wants to rein in suicide by train

Filed under: Health by Branko Collin @ 12:33 pm

ProRail, the Dutch railway network operator, wants to diminish the number of suicides committed by people jumping in front of a moving train. The organisation aims at a reduction of 5% over the next four years. Currently, 200 people kill themselves by jumping in front of a moving train, which is 12% of the total number of suicides, the highest ratio in the region.

According to ProRail, about half of all suicides are committed by people who are undergoing psychiatric care. The network operator has already experimented by placing gates near psychiatric hospitals and by turning level crossings into viaducts.

The current policy of the Dutch Association for Psychiatry (NVvP) is to advise its members to send the suicidal out into the street. This policy is much to the dismay of the Union for Train Drivers and Conductors (VVMC) who point out that people jumping in front of moving trains are very traumatic experiences for their members.

(Photo by Jason Rogers, some rights reserved)

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August 20, 2010

‘Smoke flavoured beer curbs the urge to smoke’

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:09 pm
rauchbier

On Sunday 22 August retired entrepreneur Frits Langeveld from the Dutch island of Texel where many a good beer comes from will be presenting a new beer called ‘Tessels Wrakhout’ (not the one shown here) with a real smoky taste. So smoky according to some smokers that they don’t feel like reaching for a cigarette. The key ingredient is smoked malt that is apparently not used by breweries much, although German ‘rauchbier’ has been around for ages.

The idea was that smokers now have to go outside the bar to have a smoke and that maybe smoked beer is the answer to keeping them indoors and not interrupting the fun. It’s surprising nobody in the Netherlands thought of it this way before.

I think it’s exaggerated to call it innovative, in fact doing so is symptomatic of the rampant short-sightedness in the business community. I’d call it resourceful: finally looking outside Dutch borders for answers.

(Links: bizz.nl, bier.blog.nl, Photo of Bamberg Rauchbier by David Fischer, some rights reserved)

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August 19, 2010

Sail Amsterdam 2010, tall ship parade

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:20 pm

Our first video report. It’s got a few glitches as we are trying to get used to a new medium. Enjoy.

Today Sail Amsterdam 2010 started with the traditional parade of tall ships. Led by the clipper Stad Amsterdam, 30 tall ships and a lot of small boats entered IJ harbour, which is wedged between Java Island and Piet Heinkade.

Sail Amsterdam was first organised in 1975 and has since been held every five years. The festivities will continue for the next three days, and include live music and theatre. On Friday a parade of barely floating home-built boats will be held in the canals of Amsterdam, the so-called Pieremachocheltocht. Most of the tall ships can be visited for free between 10 am and 4 pm.

This year’s event drew criticism from ship owners, who feel they have to pay the organisers too much money. They think it is wrong that so much of the proceeds of an event that is heavily sponsored by the government disappear in the pockets of a nebulous agency, Sail Arrangementen. The latter replied in newspaper De Pers that they do not understand what all the hoopla is about, as the ships’ owners still sell a lot of tickets.

This is Natasha Cloutier for 24oranges.nl.

The performance at the end of the video was by De Zingende Kapitein. Photo below by the Koninklijke Marine (featuring the frigate HMS Tromp).

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Puzzleboards for your food and drink at parties

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 12:17 pm
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Dutch Design Studio OOOMS from Eindhoven offers a multipurpose and very elegant puzzleboard to liven up your parties. It can be used as a cutting board or serving plate and more puzzleboards can be placed together like puzzle piece to make a bigger and cooler one.

I like the fact that you can easily free up a hand to greet people, which is usually a problem at parties. My only comment is that most Dutch people drink beer at parties and not wine, so the beer glass has nowhere to go.

OOOMS also has fun wooden USB sticks.

(Link and photo: supermarkethq)

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August 18, 2010

Russian goes free thanks to Google translation error

Filed under: Online,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:24 am
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A Russian trucker in Dordrecht involved in a bar brawl was released because the summons he received was poorly translated from Dutch into Russian using Google translate. When the trucker was being questioned at the police station, he had a Russian interpreter and claimed to have understood what he had to do, although he never signed the summons.

The Russian interpreter showed up in court, but not the trucker. She was asked to then translate what was written in the summons. Instead of (here I am translating this from Dutch) ‘you are to appear in court on 3 August 2010’, it went more like ‘you have to avoid being in court on 3 August 2010’. In Dutch, ‘vóórkomen’, with the stress on the first syllable, means ‘to appear’, while ‘voorkómen’ means ‘to prevent’.

With Google translate, the Dutch infinitive verb ‘voorkomen’ (no way to indicate which of the two identically spelled verbs you want translated) still today produced the infinitive verb ‘to prevent’ ‘предотвращать’ (imperfective aspect) and not even a hint of the perfective aspect of the same verb, ‘предотвратить’. In any decent dictionary both aspects are given so people can use the right one.

In Russian, if you pronouce the perfective verb ‘to write’ ‘написать’ with the wrong stress, you’re pissing instead of writing, so yes, stress matters.

(Link: depers.nl)

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August 17, 2010

Netherlands wins world champion Stratego

Filed under: Gaming,General by Orangemaster @ 1:30 pm
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Out of four countries represented — the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and England — the Dutch won this year’s Stratego World Championships, held in Maastricht. With six victories and four draws Pim Niemeijer of The Netherlands became the new individual Stratego World Champion. Last year, Steffen Annies of Germany won the Stratego World Champion of 2009, the year before, Pim Niemeijer had won it.

And then we also wrote about a women’s championship, also won by a Dutch woman in Kiev back in 2008.

There are also Computer Stratego World Championships held around the world and there’s also my co-blogger’s time-old classic of placing all five of his bombs around his flag.

Stratego is a Dutch game published by Jumbo that was distributed internationally by Milton Bradley, giving the impression that the Americans came up with it, if you read Wikipedia. Read more about Stratego history with pics galore on Ed’s Stratego Site.

(Links: ad.nl, isfstratego)

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August 16, 2010

Amsterdam through the eyes of its photobloggers

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 8:00 am

Meet Amsterdam.

Perhaps all cities have photobloggers, but if that is the case, I seem to have missed them. However, the documentary photographers of Amsterdam pop up on my radar all the time. These men—always men?—aim to bring you at least one portrait of the city a day, slowly recording its history in extreme close-up.

Thomas Schlijper is perhaps their leader. A professional photographer, he nevertheless seems to find plenty of time for photographs taken just for fun. Shown here a fountain on Frederiksplein at dusk, and somebody else trying to capture the moment.

Marien van Os wants to become a better photographer, so he practises by publishing (at least) one photo a day at 1pictureaday.com. In this photo a heron stalks a fisherman on the Amstel river, waiting till the right moment.

This photo is by René Louman who often just leans out of his window to take a picture. I approve of this, because it would be a shame to waste a good window. Louman likes people. I don’t know exactly where this photo of a waitress wrestling a huge parasol was taken, but with all the fresh brick in Louman’s photos, I would guess the Oostelijk Havengebied (Eastern Harbour).

Others you may wish to check out:

  • Milo Vermeulen
  • Peter de Wit (Facemepls, whose Creative Commonsed photos we often use at 24 Oranges)
  • Marc van Woudenberg makes things easy on himself by photographing people when they look their best: on stately Dutch bikes.

Did I miss anyone?

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August 15, 2010

Zoo lures reporters with monkey see, monkey do story

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 4:43 pm

Ouwehands Dierenpark, a zoo in Rhenen near Wageningen, has successfully managed to lure reporters to its new orangutan enclosure with a story about behavioural conditioning.

The reporters’ banana took the shape of gymnast Epke Zonderland (silver medalist at the 2009 World Championships), who performed a couple of exercises on the parallel bars. The zoo had told the press it hoped Zonderland’s example would spur the orangutans on to use the climbing ropes in their new compound.

Reporters of amongst other BBC (video), Reuters and RTL Nieuws showed up last Friday to record footage of a lacklustre ape taking its first tentative steps on a tightrope. Seven trees in the enclosure contain a food lift that will carry fruit and other snacks upstairs as an incentive for the orangutans to walk their tightropes. In doing so the apes will alleviate both themselves and their human visitors of boredom, the zoo hopes.

(Photo by McSmit, some rights reserved)

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August 14, 2010

One in five elderly bullied by peers

Filed under: Science by Branko Collin @ 3:05 pm

elderly_manA study showed last year that 1 in 5 senior citizens in retirement homes are bullied by their fellow residents.

Hester Trompeter, student behavioural sciences at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, interviewed 121 residents. According to Trouw, the bullying took the shape of ignoring people, gossiping and systematically shutting others out from common activities. Study coordinator Ron Scholte added that since the interviewees represented the people willing to talk, the real problem might even be bigger.

Last week the Ouderenfonds (National Fund for the Elderly) called for a protocol for dealing with bullying among the elderly. On the fund’s website its director Jan Romme gave a harrowing example of a man who was afraid to leave his room for seven years and finally died in complete loneliness.

Romme sees as one of the causes of the bullying problem that the elderly no longer can choose which retirement home to live in. “Bullies are put in the same homes as their former victims, and have the advantage of having all the time in the world now, and of having been able to perfect their techniques.”

(Photo by Frank Mayne, some rights reserved)

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August 13, 2010

Rotterdam park gets gay sex signage

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:11 pm
homoplek

The city of Rotterdam has felt it necessary that the Kralingse Bos, a big park, get these colourful signs to warn families and the likes that gay men are getting busy (think closeted or married gay hooking up). The direction of the feet in this pictogramme is a bit confusing to those in the know. If gays are caught outside the marked zone in Rotterdam, they will be fined. The sign also implies that lesbians stay at home and watch telly. That was sarcasm.

Ironically, many of the places where straight couples and parties of three or more have sex in the woods or near the beach are illegal, and people just get fined. They should stay home and watch telly as well.

The person in charge of this typical show of Dutch tolerance was quoted as saying, “everybody has the right to have fun”. Straights, however, don’t have their own signs or special party places. Interesting reverse discrimination.

(Link and photo: rijnmond.nl)

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