September 18, 2011

Illegally fast mopeds sold everywhere

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 10:32 am

Last week consumer watchdog show Kassa sent reporters with hidden cameras to 10 moped shops, and found out that all of them sell mopeds with illegally tuned up engines. Some of the sales people even volunteered to tune up the engines.

The Dutch traffic code defines two different types of mopeds, the bromfietsen which may go as fast as 45 kilometres per hour in built up areas, and the snorfietsen, which can only go 25. Bromfietsen are not considered cool though, because their drivers are obliged to wear helmets and must mix it with the cars.

Besides the maximum speed there is no technical difference between a bromfiets and a snorfiets. The speed is limited by a chip that either the shop attendant or the owners can swap out.

Although moped riders only make up one to two percent of road users, they are responsible for 10 to 20 percent of all accidents in the Netherlands. According to cyclists union Fietsersbond, 2,000 cyclists had to visit the emergency room after a collision with a moped last year. Snorfietsen are allowed to use bike paths, where some of them terrorize cyclists.

Dealer association BOVAG played a nifty game of pass the buck during the show, claiming that if shop keepers do not volunteer to swap out speed limiters, customers will take their business elsewhere. The association feels the ball is in the politicians’ court now.

(Photo by the inestimable Facemepls, some rights reserved)

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September 17, 2011

Judges not allowed to piece verdict together on the internet

Filed under: General,IT by Branko Collin @ 1:43 pm

The appeals court of Den Bosch got bitch slapped by the Dutch supreme court for inserting its own facts into a verdict without giving the parties involved a chance to respond.

A legal guardian had bought a license for Smart FMS, a sort of bookkeeping package, to take care of the accounts of his ward. It’s not clear to me who sued whom, but at some point the protagonists of this case found themselves in front of the appeals court of Den Bosch. And when the dust settled and the verdict came out, it turned out that the judge had been googling for extra information, and had concluded that

this software is first and foremost a system to aid the guardian’s administration, and it only helps clarify the payments of the clients as a side-effect. The clients furthermore have no say about the usage of this particular system, assuming they are even willing to bear the costs, and are capable of using it. […] Although the guardian did not provide [this court] with information about the software, the internet did.

The guardian was not pleased, as he had had no chance to defend himself against the court’s allegation. Last week the supreme court agreed with him. That the parties involved in legal proceedings have a right to be heard is a Dutch legal principle.

(Link: Iusmentis. Verdict in Dutch at Jure.nl.)

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September 16, 2011

Man arrested after trying to pay for pizza using stolen coupons

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Branko Collin @ 10:02 pm

A 22-year-old man from The Hague was arrested today at a pizza place on the Laan van Meerdervoort when he tried to pay with stolen coupons.

The owner called the cops because the coupons had not been published yet. In fact, they had just been printed, and had been stolen earlier that same day from a car in the Torenstraat.

While in gaol, the suspect will have plenty of time to listen to André van Duin’s song Pizza: “Wait a bit … a little longer … a little longer … even longer … pizza!”

(Link: Police Haaglanden region. Photo by Uggboy, some rights reserved)

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September 15, 2011

2012 government budget hack explained

Filed under: IT by Branko Collin @ 7:24 pm

Ha ha! As Dutch News reports:

The government’s 2012 spending plans have been leaked on the internet, a day ahead of their official publication.

A spokesman for the finance ministry has confirmed the leaked documents are genuine. They were apparently found by hackers on a part of the government website which was not protected by a password.

And here’s how NOS Nieuws explains the hack:

[Somebody] typed in the address of last year’s budget, and changed ‘2010’ in ‘2011’.

The original budget busting tweet can be found here.

Traditionally the yearly budget is presented on Prinsjesdag, Day of the Princelings, after the Queen addresses both houses of parliament in joint session. Reporters who promise to not divulge the contents of the budget get an advance copy—others just wait until the traditional leak. In 2007, the budget was sent to the press in the form of a USB stick.

Dutch News has the low down on the contents of the budget, by the way.

(Photo of marechaussée practicing at the beach for a Prinsjesdag parade by the ever prolific Facemepls, some rights reserved)

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September 14, 2011

Dutch punk band Heideroosjes calls it a day

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 9:57 pm

Arguably one of the Netherlands’ best known punk bands internationally, De Heideroosjes from Horst aan de Maas, Limburg, have decided to stop making music after 22 years. Their last album entitled Cease Fire will be out on 21 November. The band started out called Fire, so this last album has a full circle ring to it.

Founded in 1989, the band has been on Epitath records in California for years, arguably one of the world’s best punk labels. They sing in English, Dutch, German and the dialect Limburgish (see below). Contrary to so many other bands, De Heideroosjes have had the exact same band members ever since they started, and they claim that stopping won’t be easy to do.

And in 1998 friend and music lover Guuz Hoogaerts wrote their biography entitled ‘De Heideroosjes, een teringtyfustakkeband’ (‘De Heideroosjes, a freakinfuckinfantastic band’)(rough translation, pardon the pun, the Dutch bit is in reference to one of their older songs), being a big fan of good music from Limburg. The book tells us how the band earned their internal status not by ‘blowing the right people’, but through hard work, great songs and remaining true to their ideals.

Even Lady Gaga actually ‘ripped off’ the intro of De Heideroosjes’ song ‘We Are Share the Same Sun’ in Electric Chapel. Follow the above link and compare, I’m convinced.

De Heideroosjes – Jerry rules in the land of the free (in English)

De Heideroosjes – Boore Lul (‘Dumbass farmer, rougly) (in Limburgs)

De Heideroosjes – Wurst und Käse (Sausage and Cheese) (in German)

(Link: volkskrant.nl)

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September 13, 2011

Blinded by false research about meat eaters

Filed under: Food & Drink,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:02 pm
anti-meatjpg

Professor Diederik Stapel from the University of Tilburg was recently suspended for making up research that the media actually took seriously and wrote about. The university is apparently looking into his previous ‘research’.

His latest nonsense that hit the papers was that meat eaters are more ill-mannered (aggressive, selfish, asocial, you know) than vegetarians. Professor Roos Vonk of the Radboud University in Nijmegen ran with this story and got nailed for doing so, once the media figured out it was made up. She claimed that she never thought for a moment that it could be false. Vonk explained that her expectations were that vegetarians were more empathic towards others than meat eaters, which turns out is 100% pure crapola. Vonk used to chair the animal activitst group Wakker Dier and is a member of the Party for the Animals. Call me crazy, but I suspect she’s a vegetarian.

She candidly admitted to have been stupid about trusting this research as she did have some doubts about Stapel’s methods. Human behaviour has shown throughout history that people believe what sounds good to them all the time.

And if Vonk truly believes that meat eaters are douche bags, she’ll want to buy into any nonsense that says what she would like to think could be true, making her vulnerable and gullible. You could argue that by not eating meat you’re doing a good thing, but placing yourself above others for that reason makes you a douche bag and in this case, a blinded, crappy scientist. It insults the intelligent, open-minded vegetarians and vegans out there that are not douche bags, for starters.

Oh and if you need to believe that your lifestyle choices are better by denigrating others, you’re also a douche bag.

UPDATE: Vonk eats meat sometimes, albeit organic. She admitted on Dutch telly that if the research had shown the opposite or that it didn’t matter what people ate, she wouldn’t have bothered with it. She also thinks meat eaters have a superiority complex, while she’s in fact the one thinking she’s a superior douche bag.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl, Photo: veggieunwrapped.com)

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September 12, 2011

Zone 5300: Fool’s Gold special

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 8:23 am

Woot! Fool’s Gold gets six pages in the autumn edition of Zone 5300, instead of its usual two. Like.

Frits Jonker and Milan Hulsing are assisted this time by Erik van der Heijden who waxes lyrically (and analytically) about his collection of golden age advertising key fobs. The golden age of advertising key fobs, that is, i.e. the late sixties.

There’s also a long interview with the comics intendant of the Fonds BKVB (the state sponsored Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture), Gert-Jan Pos, who got to give a lot of cash to comics makers in the Netherlands in the past two and a half years, and whose office is about to end.

Until September 21 the foundation is organising an exhibition of up and coming comics artists, among which Artez Zwolle graduate Jasper Rietman (illustration) who hopes to be published abroad in the near future.

Marcel RuijtersThere are a bunch of long(ish) stories by Marcel Ruijters (illustration, about the chess games of Teresa of Avila), Rob van Barneveld (invisible guinea pigs), and Maaike Hartjes (weddings in Hong Kong).

Another long comic is a story from Pieter van Oudheusden and Jeroen Janssen’s upcoming album (as yet nameless) loosely based on the all too short life of “perhaps the Brian Wilson of the nineteenth century” (as Van Oudheusden puts it), Franz Schubert. The short story Der Tod und das Mädchen (illustration) focuses on how Schubert got syphilis.

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September 11, 2011

Bettie Serveert reunites with drummer for band’s twentieth birthday

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 3:21 pm

Twenty years ago Bettie Serveert was the sort of indie rock band that made producers everywhere pay attention, but they never managed to surpass the success of their debut album Palomine.

Yesterday the band reunited with former drummer Berend Dubbe for a special birthday gig on which they played the entire Palomine album at Paradiso in Amsterdam. According to 24 Oranges reader Jeroen Mirck, who was there, “Bettie Serveert played songs like Tomboy, Balentine, Kid’s Allright and Brain-Tag with as much urgency and as dynamically as in the early nineties, as if the songs had been written yesterday.”

The name “Bettie Serveert” means “Betty to serve” and is a reference to Betty Stöve, a Dutch player who managed to reach the Wimbledon tennis finals in 1977.

Listen to title track Palomine here.

(Photo: bettieserveert.com)

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September 10, 2011

Laura Dekker in Australia

Filed under: General,Sports by Branko Collin @ 11:23 am

Two weeks ago ‘sailor girl’ Laura Dekker reached the shores of the Northern Territory of Australia, and not a moment too soon.

Her boat Guppy was in desperate need of repairs as both the genoa and the rudder had broken down. In Darwin she re-united with her father who had flown in to celebrate her sixteenth birthday (September 20). From that day on she has about a year and week to complete her global circumnavigation if she wants to become the unofficial record holder of being the youngest person solo sailing around the world.

In the past months Dekker sailed past the country of her birth, New Zealand (she has dual citizenship), even though she professed a desire to visit. Says stuff.co.nz:

Her manager, Australian Lyall Mercer, [said] today Dekker did not take her New Zealand nationality lightly and had especially embraced it since starting to feel “disconnected” from The Netherlands after courts there stopped her from embarking on her trip when she was 13.

“Yet she has failed to find any support from New Zealand, unable even to source a New Zealand flag that she wants to fly from her boat ‘Guppy’ for the duration of her trip,” Mercer said.

I wonder if there is not more to that story. In August 2009, Elsevier reported that the New Zealand authorities had threatened to seize Laura’s boat for reckless behaviour if she ever entered one of the country’s ports while sailing alone.

The best place to follow Dekker’s exploits is still her blog, which she keeps in both English and Dutch. Dekker spends her days playing the guitar, writing her book, and reading. Still no word on if she has ever touched her homework.

See also: more stories about Laura Dekker.

(Photo of an entirely unrelated boat by the US Navy)

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September 9, 2011

Satnav on smartphone guided by music

Filed under: Music,Technology by Orangemaster @ 4:53 pm

Aspiring boffins at the Eindhoven University of Technology have developed a smartphone app for Android that helps cyclists navigate to their destination by using music. By using the phone’s satnav, a cyclist can listen to their favourite tunes the way they always do, but, for example, when they have to turn left, the music will be harder on the left, allowing the cyclist to focus on the road.

The application can be used around the world and can be downloaded as of next week for lucky Android users. iPhone users will have to wait, something that is often the other way round.

I’ve seen or heard nothing of this app, but I already have some issues with it. Using satnav (GPS function) on a smartphone sucks energy out of a battery like a vampire sucks blood (comes with a warning, too), so I cannot imagine using something like this for a real long bike ride that would require any serious directions. Is this something we really need? Will the app respond fast enough or even properly? Some of the best satnavs for cars have problems with certain countries and small roads. When do people need a map when they’re on a bike? That’s right, for a long ride. By then your phone will have died and you’ll have to sing the rest of the way. And I’m not even going to get into people who are hard of hearing or easily distracted.

If anyone uses this in the near future, please tell us about it.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl)

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