December 2, 2010

The News Kids film: white trash is hot

Filed under: Fashion,Film,Music by Orangemaster @ 10:28 am

A film nobody has really been waiting for is coming out on 9 December: the New Kids film ‘Turbo’. Website Flabber also tell us that they’ll be a German version of the film as well because these wild and crazy guys have fans in Germany. Yes, it sounds and even looks like an American film trailer, but do not be fooled by the voice-over! The English subtitles are both inaccurate on purpose and not on purpose (the swear word ‘kut’ (used like ‘damn’ or ‘shit’, but meaning ‘cunt’) is left intact, while ‘your fired’ should be ‘you’re fired’. And it’s so not about the dialogue.

From the province of Noord-Brabant or just Brabant (there’s no South Brabant, that would be Brabant in Belgium and a long story), the New Kids are popular because they represent relatively modern Dutch white trash with accompanying music, known as happy hardcore and matching late 1990s clothing: sporty camping comfort with mustaches and mullet hairdoes.

“They’re basically always drunk, driving around and destroying everything that comes in their way, which sometimes leads to getting a good beating themselves.”

For the beginners, it’s time to learn what ‘doe normaal!’ (literally, ‘act normal’!, meaning ‘stop it!’), a lesson you’ll not soon forget.

(Link: flabber)

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December 1, 2010

Please remove the jet fighter from your garden

Filed under: Art,Aviation,Comics,History,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:09 pm

Artist Marte Röling (often misspelled Martha) has a Lockheed F-104 starfighter in her garden in Uithuizen, Groningen that apparently has to be removed if she hasn’t removed it already. Although it has been sitting there since 1989, some boffins at the Ministry of Defense now think it could be slightly radioactive. Röling received the starfighter as a long-term loan art project. This reminds me of some Peter Tooms in Schoonloo, Drenthe who has a Russian MiG in his yard, although maybe it has been removed as well.

Back in 1976 Prince Bernhard (husband of Queen Juliana) cashed a US$1.1 million bribe from American aviation company Lockheed to ensure that the Lockheed F-104 would win out over France’s Mirage 5 made by Dassault for the purchase contract. Long story short, Bernhard refused to admit it, but after his death in 2004, it turned out to be ‘highly plausible’, but I don’t know if proven is the right word. Lockheed deposited large sums of cash into an account of some guy called Victor Baarn, a person that could never be traced. Co-blogger Branko tells me that Dutch comic strip artist Martin Lodewijk has been milking that story for ages, as in almost every Agent 327 comic book (a character loosely based on James Bond) the secret identity of Victor Baarn threatens to come out.

UPDATE: This was our 1,500th posting, hurrah!)

(Link: rtvnoord)

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November 30, 2010

Radio station gives away chihuahua as prize

Filed under: Animals,Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:13 pm

North Holland radio sation WildFM felt like giving a prize away that was not the usual fare: a chihuahua, a type of dog that became increasingly popular once American socialite Paris Hilton was seen with one. Other unusal prizes the radio station has given away in the past include a breast enlargement (how very man friendly) and a dream wedding worth 50,000 euro.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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November 29, 2010

Surinam’s deed of independence has been lost

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 2:13 pm

A reporter from Surinam daily De Ware Tijd has discovered that the document in which former Queen Juliana recognised the independence of Surinam in 1975 has been lost.

Home Affairs Minister Soewarto Moestadja, has started a search and is focussing on three leads. The document that signifies the birth of a nation may be in the vault of the national bank, it may be in the national archive, or it may have been lost to the flames of the fire that destroyed the Ministry of General Affairs during the 1980s.

The Netherlands still has its own copy of the deed of recognition, somewhere.

In 1667 the Netherlands ‘traded’ New York (then New Amsterdam) for Surinam in a treaty that concluded the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In reality both colonies had already been conquered by respectively the English and the Dutch, and the treaty merely cemented the status quo. The independence 318 years later was accompanied by the same lack of dramatics, as Surinam asked for independence in 1973 and received it two years later.

(Link: Waterkant.net, Photo by Ian Mackenzie, some rights reserved)

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November 28, 2010

Internet use of lesser educated people trumps that of better educated people

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 1:53 pm

Says the Trend Report Computer and Internet Usage 2010 of the University of Twente (PDF, p. 54):

The differences [in the amount of Internet use] are the most noticeable where education and social position are taken into account. On average people with a lesser education use the Internet more per day than people with a higher education— some 3.1 as compared to 2.6 hours. The unemployed and people unfit for work use the Internet on average 4.0 and 4.1 hours respectively per day, whereas working people average 2.6 hours. This suggests that the available time is an important factor. […] In the past 20 to 25 years it was the better educated who were the pioneers of Internet access.

The report unfortunately does not define ‘better educated’ and ‘lesser educated’ (in fact, it measures along three education levels, but does not define any of them).

Also notable is that the higher educated use the Internet far more to educate themselves further than the lesser educated do. (p. 41)

(Link: Blik op Nieuws. Photo by Woolie Monster, some rights reserved.)

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November 27, 2010

Statue of angel with cell phone for Den Bosch cathedral

Filed under: Art,Religion by Branko Collin @ 12:02 pm

Sculptor Ton Mooy has revealed to Omroep Brabant that he is a working on a statue of an angel with a cell phone. (Photo and video)

The angel is to replace a worn out statue in the cathedral of Den Bosch. The cell phone will have just one button: for a straight line with God.

According to Mooy, he also wanted to give the angel jet engines, and a skirt instead of pants, but those ideas went too far for the church’s art committee, NOS Headlines reports.

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November 26, 2010

Stop snoring by learning the didgeridoo

Filed under: General,Music,Science by Orangemaster @ 11:46 am

Boffins over at the sleep research centre of the Canisius-Wilhelmina hospital in Nijmegen have concluded that learning how to play the Australian musical instrument didgeridoo helps reduce snoring. The specific training of the mouth and throat muscles to play this instrument apparently help reduce sleep apnea, which causing snoring.

Some 50 people were given a didgeridoo training for four months, which was not easy as one third quit, claiming they were not able to sustain the necessary circular breathing, never mind the time committment. No definite conclusions were drawn with such a small bit of research, but the boffins could be on to something. The Dutch were inspired by the Swiss who did something similar and obtained similar results.

To wipe away the associations some of us have of digireedoo players being Caucasian dreadlock-wearing backpackers who play on the street as they need cash while on vacation in major cities during the summer, have a look at the cool, modern sounding didgeridoo player jamming with South African rapper Jack Parow live at De Nieuwe Nor in Heerlen a few weeks back.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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November 25, 2010

Dutch not amused by overpriced lolly at amusement parks

Filed under: Food & Drink,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:40 pm

The rocket (raket), the Dutch lolly invented in 1962 that never crash landed, is apparently way too pricy for the Dutch at amusement park Kabouter Plop in Coevorden, Drenthe, a Belgian ‘invention’.

For a Dutch treat that is often handed out for free around the country, the Dutch have complained that they just couldn’t get themselves to pay EUR 2,50 for it. The same themed amusement park also exists in Belgium where the price of the rocket is not an issue.

There have been so many complaints from the Dutch that not only it is news, but the solution has been to pull the product from the Dutch amusement park. Dutch kids will have to wait until they get home to have a rocket and stick to whatever other overpriced junk food the amusement park has to offer.

(Link: zibb.nl)

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November 24, 2010

Permanent play street in part of Potgieterstraat

Filed under: Automobiles,Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 4:00 pm

We saw this huge on-street playground under construction at the Potgieterstraat in Amsterdam yesterday. It is basically taking over the space where the road was.

This used to be a one-way street for cars, with a two-way bike path and a smaller playground. The neighbourhood wanted more room for children to play and so the decision was made (PDF) to ban cars from this part of the Potgieterstraat altogether. You can still bike through it though.

I did some Googling. Play streets have been a feature of Belgian cities since the 1970s, and have also been introduced to London and New York. In all those cases the play streets aren’t permanent fixtures, and cars are never completely banned from the street.

In a way this Amsterdam variant isn’t that much different. Bicycle streets are fairly common here, something I only really started to appreciate when Google Streetview came around, and I noticed that I could not get views for many streets in Amsterdam simply because the Streetview car wasn’t allowed to go there. Bicycles are kept separate from the playground though.


Illustration: the old situation, as seen from the other side.

Furthermore: Orangemaster points out to me that the De Genestetstraat has been a play street for two years. It took a prolonged legal battle for the borough to push this one through—perhaps that is why the Google Streetview car was able to take pictures there.

(Source second photo: Google Streetview)

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Parliament pushes for prenuptial agreements

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:42 am

According to NRC newspaper, the Netherlands is one of the few countries in the world where marriage takes place in a standard way under community property (joint ownership) rather than separate property. Drawing up a prenuptial agreement (the Dutch have surely heard that in American television series) costs money and sharing all your stuff is still considered the right thing to do here, someone please tell me why. A prenuptial agreement not only provides in case of divorce, but also protects property during the marriage in case of a bankruptcy or the likes. Don’t give me that it’s all about trust argument because most of the time in heterosexual marriages women get more than they brought in stuff-wise, a reason some women marry in the first place.

Putting aside gay marriage for a moment, women were traditionally dependent on men, and so community property made sense. The politicians who submitted this proposal to parliament to have the rules changes feel married people should have more say in their own marriages like the rest of the Western world, and parliament agrees.

(Link: nrc.nl, Photo of Wedding cake by philipyk, some rights reserved)

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