August 12, 2010
The verdict is in: the beer bike is too wide to be on the road as a bike and cannot be wider than 1,50 metres. A recent accident in Amsterdam involved a beer bike that was 2,20 metres wide and made it more of a vehicle than a bike, which is illegal.
People do have to peddle it to move it forward:
(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo of Beer bike by Taco Witte, some rights reserved)
Tags: bere bike
August 11, 2010
Political party Leefbaar Rotterdam plans to start a black book of the dirtiest places in Rotterdam. The scuzzy places will receive the Golden Cockroach award. Naming and shaming is apparently still considered a good way to get people to clean up their trash, but that remains to be seen — literally.
People from Rotterdam can send in pictures of oveflowing rubbish bins, rubbish on the street and whatever else fits the bill. Leefbaar Rotterdam plans to post the pics on its website. Mmm!
I snapped this rubbish bin on Queen’s Day in Amsterdam a few years back. Notice how small the rubbish bins are. Plastic and glass bottles can easily be recycled at the supermarket, but not cans. Cans here are mostly made of steel and a bit of aluminium and are fished out before the rubbish goes to the incinerator.
I can tell you that these bins fill up very quickly with beer and cola cans, especially if there’s a party going on.
(Link: telegraaf.nl)
August 10, 2010
Back in July, an organiser of a Texas Hold’em poker game in The Hague was found not guilty, as his tournament was considered a game of skill rather than a game of chance. This, of course, irritated the Attorney General who wants to outlaw these poker games and is appealing the decision. Since the government has a monopoly on games of chance, it is missing out on this poker money.
In the mean time, while the Dutch have been months without a government (we had elections, but the parties can’t agree who will form the coalition), a café in the town of Glane in Twente is playing poker to its heart’s content. The current (‘demissionary’) Minister of Justice told the café to stop, but the court ruling is still on the café’s side: poker is currently considered a game of skill and not a game of chance.
So, the question still stands: will poker games be outlawed or will the appeal work? First, a new government and then we’ll see.
(Link: depers.nl)
Tags: gambling, poker, Texas Hold'em, Twente
August 9, 2010
A court ordered last week that the national care monitor NZA can no longer demand of psychiatrists that they provide details about their patients’ mental health problems.
Nationale Zorg Autoriteit, which monitors the application of the health care laws and sets prices where necessary, bases its rates for psychiatric care on so-called ‘diagnosis-treatment combinations’ (DBCs) and requires psychiatrists to report the DBCs they have used for specific patients.
The court (College van Beroep voor het bedrijfsleven, i.e. ‘college of appeal for businesses’) held on August 2 that since insurance company employees who were not bound by medical confidentiality had access to the DBCs, the NZA had not given enough weight to the privacy interests of patients.
NZA now gets to go back to the drawing board and come up with new plans for a rate structure that does not (or to a lesser extent) compromise patients’ privacy.
Last year, political blog Sargasso already pointed out that once these data are out from under the protective umbrella of medical confidentiality, they can easily be abused by for instance the government, which could, for example, decide not to hire somebody as a civil servant based on their detailed medical history.
Tags: NZA, psychiatric care
August 8, 2010
Martin Wisse has got a good tip:
A can’t miss bargain to be had at De Slegte in Amsterdam right now: copies of Gr’omnibus, a treasure trove of sequential art from Groningen, the Athens of the North; an invaluable treasure now yours for only two euro fifty! Why you should bother? Because you get to sample some 40 odd (some very odd) Dutch (as well as the occasional furreign) cartoon talents, culled from the pages of one of the most consistent of Dutch underground comix zines, Gr’nn.
Groningen (Grunn in the local dialect) is one of [the interesting cities outside the Randstad], a university town big enough not to be overwhelmed by it with a decent local art scene and night-life, a city in which over the years a thriving alt-comix scene has been established.
In 1996 a few of them started Gr’unn, which since then has published a lot of up and coming cartoonists. People like Barbara Stok, Mark Hendriks, Amoebe, the Lamelos collective, Marcel Ruijters, Reinder Dijkhuis, Berend Vonk, all had strips in Gr’nn. […]
So if you’re in Amsterdam and you want a cheap way to sample a huge chunk of the contemporary Dutch comix scene, go get Gr’omnibus from de Slegte. It’s in the middle of Kalverstraat so even tourists should be able to find it.
He is right you know, and today I grabbed myself one of the last four copies. You guys need to hurry!
De Slegte is a chain store for second hand and remaindered books, and very popular in this book-mad country.
Illustrations: cover artist unknown, Vlerk, Jan Krol, and Nico Visscher respectively.
August 7, 2010
The Amsterdam Historical Museum and Mediamatic have teamed up to do something different. Rather than have you look at historical objects from a safe distance, they will let you buy them for 1 or 2 euro each.
The organisers have set up a vending machine for this purpose just inside the museum’s front entrance (you don’t have to pay an entrance fee). Blogger Kim Phu has already spotted the first people who merely swung by to shop. Apparently, the tea towels are a steal at two euro a piece.
Some of the objects on display / for sale:
The exhibit lasts until August 29, and is accompanied by a really nice website where the background of every object is explained in a video. There are 40 different objects for sale.
See also:
(Photo of an ‘automatiek’ by Fabio Bruna, some rights reserved)
Update 16:57: Since I had to be in the neighbourhood today I popped around and shot a couple of photos:
Tags: museums
August 6, 2010
A friend over at Time Out magazine said that the Amsterdam Tourism and Congress Bureau (ATCB) was “digging their own gay grave” as they pulled the cover of the magazine sold in their tourist shops (VVV) because it portrays two men kissing. According to Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool, the ATCB had a problem with this illustration.
The ATCB explains that the VVV ‘took out’ the cover as per their monthly agreement with the magazine because it was ‘too edgy’ and ‘not suitable for tourists’. Time Out doesn’t have a problem with the decision because it does not affect them financially or otherwise, but many people including the media see it as a highly questionable, possibly anti-gay decision.
It’s too bad some people think the 1.5 million tourists that come to Amsterdam for things like drugs, prostitutes and the gay scene would all of a sudden have problems with gay men. Let the tourists think for themselves, statistically 10% of them are gay too.
(Link and image: at5.nl)
Tags: Amsterdam, Censureship, gay pride
August 5, 2010
Besides the very cute cake, there’s also a whole bunch of Piet Mondriaan inspired things.
(Link: pietmondriaan.com, photo: trendbeheer.com)
Tags: Piet Mondriaan
August 4, 2010
It sounds a lot like a soap opera: daddy was all for it, mommy was too, then she changed her mind. Lawyers got involved, child services got involved and stalled last year’s plans, and then the girl ‘threatened’ to emigrate.
Then, the Dutch public had their opinion, which ranged from ‘let the girl do her thing, you only live once’ to ‘what kind of horrible parents lets a teenager sail alone it’s dangerous’, as if the parents couldn’t vouch for their daughter’s talent. I couldn’t resist mentioning that Mike Perham and Zac Sunderland, both boys, were encouraged for their feats and wondering if Laura Dekker was a boy would that have made a difference.
And to ward off future criticism, if and when Laura Dekker does become the youngest person to sail around the world solo, all the Dutch, including the ones with the forked tongues will be all thrilled that she did it after all. If she crashes and burns, I’ll let you go all out in the comments, but for now, let’s see what happens first and comment later.
(Link: dutchnews.nl, photo of an entirely unrelated boat by the US Navy)
Tags: Laura Dekker, sailing
August 3, 2010
A late night Dutch television show once featured soap star Elizabeth Hubbard, aka Lucinda Walsh on As The World Turns (ATWT), talking about her role on the world’s longest running soap, scheduled to stop next month after 54 years.
Elizabeth Hubbard currently lives in the province of Friesland with – you guessed it – a Dutchman.
The last episode of ATWT has Lucinda ending up in Amsterdam, where she might end up buying a house in real life. She has a guest spot on Dutch soap ‘Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden’ (‘Good Times, Bad Times’ – GSTS) for twee weeks, playing Sair Pointdexter, Irene Huygens’ mother from America.
Hubbard plans to learn Dutch (something everyone wants to hear) and keep busy with writing and the likes. ATWT is about one and half year’s behind, so that’s still a ways to go before it finally stops.
You can catch Hubbard using Dutch words and making jokes (in English with Dutch subtitles):
(Link: nieuws.nl)
Tags: As The World Turns, Friesland
