March 9, 2012

Stealth cheese steals show, cookbook wins in Paris

Filed under: Food & Drink,Literature by Orangemaster @ 4:24 pm

Yes, the Netherlands took first prize at the World Championship Cheese Contest in the US and kicked Switzerland off its pedestal this week, but a group of five women from Groningen also won a Gourmand World Cookbook Award in Paris recently for the cookbook, ‘Koken Met Kruidnoten’ by Karin Sitalsing. They won the award for the illustration of a cookbook that features a lot of ‘kruidnoten’ recipes from local chefs Pierre Wind and Siemen de Jong.

Back to the cheese bit: the winning cheese, Vermeer, is a low-fat Gouda type cheese by Campina from Wolvega, Friesland, and is only called by that name for export, as nobody had ever heard of it until a few days ago. Remember, this is a country that boats Australian Homemade as a Dutch chocolate brand.

(Link: www.rtvnoord.nl, Photo of totally unrelated Gouda by Jon Sullivan, released into the public domain by its author)

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March 8, 2012

Dutch women are unequal, change is slow

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 5:38 pm

Women make 20,8% less than men in the Netherlands. They work in sectors that pay less because more women work in them, causing a vicious circle. They work less and earn less because they have to take care of their children, as men apparently don’t and it’s cheaper if they do it because they get paid less anyways. Bosses know they can offer women less money at the start of a job because women don’t negotiate. Sectors where more men work actually pay better. Some 75% of women work part-time and do not stand up for their rights, resulting in less pay and fewer rights. Foreign women are easy to discriminate against because they don’t know the rules or the law (been there, done that). Women’s jobs have less social status. Women aren’t usually bosses and prefer to be more low key, earning less. Older women earn a lot less than older men and female students earn less than male students even in their first job.

If you still think International Women’s Day is fluff, think again.

(Link: www.loonwijzer.nl, Photo of Birthday cake by C J Sorg, some rights reserved)

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24 Oranges goes mobile

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:38 am

Starting today 24oranges.nl has a mobile version of its website.

You can access this version using the same address as always. The mobile version is much leaner and is optimised for small screens. We use the very popular WP Touch plug-in for this.

If you are reading this on a mobile device and still see the old design, tell us which device you are using in the comments and we’ll see what we can do. The desktop version of this site should work well on tablet-sized screens and bigger, while the mobile version is intended for phone-sized devices.

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March 7, 2012

Headscarf for women’s football teams means game on

Filed under: Design,Fashion,Religion,Sports by Orangemaster @ 2:13 pm

As of this summer, female football players will again be allowed to wear headscarves during professional football matches. Thanks to a highly functional design from Cindy van den Bremen of capsters.com (see range of headscarves) headquartered in Eindhoven, football governing body FIFA has decided to drop its 2007 ban on the hijab aka headscarf and the girls can now hit the pitch and play.

Back then traditional headscarves were said to be dangerous, which they probably were, but a proper Dutch design has now helped to reverse the ban, allowing women from predominantly Muslim countries to play more football.

Van den Bremen felt the ban was a big fuss over not much and didn’t see the difference between a headscarf and having a pony tail in one’s hair. You can also pull really hard on the collar of a male player’s T-shirt too she explains.

“The sporting headscarf is not just a commercial success. It has won a Good Design Award in Japan and a place in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.”

(Links: www.rnw.nl, www.ad.nl, Photo by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

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March 6, 2012

Hospital in Arnhem has separate ER for children

Filed under: Dutch first,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 11:27 am

The Rijnstate hospital in Arnhem, Gelderland now has a separate ER (Emergency Room) for children, following demands from paediatricians that children would be better served by not coming into contact with wounded adults.

Only in children’s hospitals do they have ERs for children obviously, and paediatricians probably felt the pressure of finding a better way to reassure their small patients admidst big world chaos.

A quick Google search in English leads me to believe that this seems like a good idea and quite common in other countries. There is also a growing number of ERs for the elderly as well, something I can imagine this country either should have or could really use.

Why is this news in the Netherlands? I’m sure budgets play a role, but again it seems this country is lagging behind world trends. I say ‘seems’ — someone enlighten us: have doctors been pleading for years to get this set up and finally someone listened?

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl)

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March 5, 2012

BodaBoda produces pillow seats for bicycle luggage carriers

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 2:50 pm

It certainly surprised one American tourist when he noticed several women giving their male friends a ride on their bicycle’s luggage rack on a sunny afternoon in 2006. Why wasn’t the man doing the work? Lack of courtesy? Emancipation? The reason is much more prosaic, I am afraid. Luggage racks are pretty hard on one’s behind. And the unspoken rule in the Netherlands is that the owner of the bike gets to decide who gets to sit where.

Three Utrecht students are now selling seats for the luggage rack. According to De Pers they noticed bicycles in Kenya kitted out with such seats:

Crossing the border between Kenya and Uganda in a motorised vehicle costs a lot of money. That is why people get off the bus and walk the two miles to the other side. Cyclists saw a gap in the market and started carrying people across the border. They would advertise their services asking “Border? Border?” That is how the bodaboda was born.

Quax [one of the Dutch students] would ride one of those bikes, and being white, people would stare at him, especially the time he offered to give his landlord a lift to the station. “The people who saw us did not believe their own eyes. This should not be. This should be the other way around. A white person should be on the back”, Quax said.

The seats cost between 20 and 27,50 euro, or 35 euro if you want your own design printed on them. You can also buy a complete bodaboda bike for 300 euro (shown above).

The students from Utrecht are happy when they spot the occasional bodaboda rider in their home town. In Kenia in the meantime the bodaboda has really taken off, and more and more often bodaboda riders use motorcycles. The Star publishes articles on boda etiquette (“place your hands on the rider’s hips around the waist”), and a local government has set aside 2.5 million Kenian shillings to train 500 bodaboda riders, also according to The Star.

Just remember, next time you hear Gers Pardoel sing “why don’t you hop on the back of my bike”, he’s not necessarily being a gentleman, unless he owns a bodaboda seat.

Illustration: bodaboda.nl.

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March 4, 2012

Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet says “Limit copyright on images”

Filed under: Photography,Technology by Branko Collin @ 3:19 pm

Engelfriet writes on his blog:

An [Internet trend] I had not seen before, Pinterest, is a service that lets you publicly bookmark images, a sort of virtual notice board. […] Is this legal, can anybody just make a collection of images from everywhere without the rights holders’ permission?

No, this is not legal. […] If I were older and more cynical, I would now announce the bankruptcy of copyright law for images. Everybody, and I mean everybody, thinks it is normal that you take images off Google for your mood boards, blogs, and Facebook accounts. And this is happening on a grand scale. The uploaders are difficult to track, middlemen are not accountable, and notice-and-take-downs are a lost battle.

[…] If half of the country breaks the law, it is time to start wondering if the law should not be changed.

In the comments Engelfriet (who incidentally has helped us in the past and who regularly comments here too) gives several examples of road rules that have been adapted following civil disobedience: on one hand, cyclists can now turn right on a red light in certain situations, but on the other, they are still obliged to use bike lights when it’s dark outside. Compliance with the latter rule has, however, been increased with safety campaigns and stricter policing.

(Illustration: pinterest.com)

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March 3, 2012

Frost sinks popsicle stick boat

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:12 pm

Ship yard Aquaverium in Grou, Friesland has told former American stunt man Rob McDonald to remove his sail boat The Thor from its premises after the boat sank, Algemeen Dagblad reports.

McDonald built his boat from 15 million ice cream sticks in five years time and with the help of 5,000 school children. He was planning to cross the Atlantic Ocean with it, using his trip to raise funds for the Sea Heart Foundation charity. Its sea-worthiness had already been proven with a trip to London.

Unfortunately cancer grounded its captain. McDonald told Algemeen Dagblad that a group of business people had promised to take care of the boat, but ended up leaving Aquaverium themselves: “I am in shock. I wanted to do something fun for sick children with the boat, and I am especially sorry for them and for those who have helped me.”

The frost that got the nation so excited has destroyed the hull of the boat, and now the yard wants McDonald to remove its wreck. “We feel sorry for him, but nobody ever paid for his spot. […] We have tried to bail out the boat, but it is not working well because of the boat’s remarkable construction.”

In 2010 De Pers wrote that Aquaverium and McDonald had closed a long term lease agreement for a mooring spot. At the time, McDonald had put the boat up for sale at Marktplaats.nl.

McDonald is looking for a new spot to moor his boat.

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March 2, 2012

Mobile euthanasia units to perform home deaths

Filed under: Dutch first,Health by Orangemaster @ 12:51 pm

As of yesterday, euthanasia in The Netherlands can also be performed by mobile euthanasia units. The ‘Life End’ clinic will be working with six mobile teams of doctors and nurses to perform euthanasia throughout the country, starting in The Hague.

Contrary to factless nonsense spewed by certain American politicians who would rather divert attention to a small country 6,000 km away than look at the mess in their own back yard, doctors as well as the rest of The Netherlands are definitely worried about these mobile teams carrying out the proper evaluation of patients. Some 1,000 patients have submitted a request to receive the services of the travelling clinic, having been refused euthanasia from their general practitioners. More often than not, the motivations are religious or ethical, and sometimes doctors are not well enough informed about the law, and are scared to perform euthanasia.

The scheme is an initiative by the Dutch Association for a Voluntary End to Life (NVVE), a 130,000-member euthanasia organisation, the biggest of its kind in the world. Euthanasia has been legal since 2002, and physician-assisted suicide is not punishable if the attending physician acts in accordance with criteria of due care.

(Links: www.nrc.nlwww.guardian.co.uk, Photo: Salem graves by by Alanna Ralph, some rights reserved)

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March 1, 2012

‘My fast Internet connection is more accessible than yours’

Filed under: General,IT,Online by Orangemaster @ 10:30 am

As of today, the Dutch University of Twente in Enschede has the fastest Internet connection in the world, clocking in at 1 Gigabit upload and download speed. The only thing that comes close is the Google campus in Stanford, California. However, the big difference is Twente is the first university to be able to offer super fast Internet to its students and campus residents, while the Google connection lets people connect to and from home, but isn’t campus wide.

IT department and students set up the network at Twente, not some corporation. “There are strict rules regarding the use and content of the university network. The upload limit of 50 GB per week will be maintained and any complaints about illegal uploads will be treated seriously.”

Stanford, it’s your move.

(Link: www.utwente.nl, www.npr.org)

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