February 19, 2012

US presidential candidate’s Minute of Lies

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 12:14 pm

Said conservative US presidential candidate Rick Santorum during a campaign stop:

Well in the Netherlands people wear a different bracelet if you are elderly. And the bracelet is ‘do not euthanise me’. Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands. But half the people that are euthanised every year, and it’s ten percent of all deaths, half of those people are euthanised involuntarily at the hospitals, because they are older and sick.

And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country. Because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, that they will not come out of that hospital to [inaudible].

Look at what has happened just in our tolerance of abortion. Fifty years ago, people who did abortions, sixty years ago, people who did abortions were, you know, in the shadows, or people who were considered really bad doctors. Now abortion is something that is just accepted. Well, of course people do abortions, it’s legal, it’s fine, there are no moral and ethical problems. This is the erosion, and it happens in the medical profession, and it can happen very fast, and I think Obamacare will lead us down that road.

None of this is true, of course, and even though it is the weekend the Dutch press is already having a field day with this. NRC writes: “Santorum thinks he knows the Netherlands“. Powned dubs Santorum’s “a surreal view“, OK, so maybe not a field day. Everybody knows that you just let a madman spout his gibberish, I guess.

Should this mentally unhinged person ever become president of the USA though, he will control the world’s largest arsenal of chemical and nuclear weapons. Besides that minor worry, just enjoy this bit of mainstream crazy, because it does not get much sillier than this.

(Video: Youtube / RightWingWatch.org. Photo by Gage Skidmore, some rights reserved.)

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February 18, 2012

Dutch banks won’t employ anti-skimming hook

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 5:56 pm

Banks like ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank refuse to fit their ATMs with special anti-skimming devices that have proven successful on ticket vending machines, Webwereld reported last Wednesday.

This despite the fact that, according to the same publication, skimming is still very much a problem in the Netherlands. In January the police caught a Romanian gang of skimmers that stole from the bank accounts of thousands of people.

Dutch Rail and Amsterdam’s public transport company GVB claim that since they introduced the so-called anti-skimming hook, their ticket vending machines have no longer been misused by skimmers.

The hook lets you insert your bank or credit card. If skimmers manage to remove the hook, the entire machine shuts down.

ING and Rabobank claim that they employ their own anti-skimming technology, ABN Amro says that it isn’t easy to fit existing machines with the hooks. Bank cards both chips and magnetic strips on them, the latter being susceptible to misuse. Banks have started a campaign to encourage consumers to use the chip rather than the magnetic strip. The latter cannot fully be replaced, as magnetic strips are still required in countries like the USA which have yet to adopt the chip-based technology.

(Photo of an anti-skimming hook discovered during a police raid, by Politie Haaglanden)

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February 17, 2012

Members of Parliament call each other Muppets

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Orangemaster @ 1:13 pm

Dutch Green party politician Ineke van Gent called Labour Party Jacques Monasch one of the old whinging geezers Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets during a debate on the high speed train line. She opened the door for him to quip back at her with, “I won’t tell you which Muppet you remind me of”, which most probably meant Miss Piggy, as she’s quite corpulent and blonde.

And if that banter wasn’t insignificant enough, a national supermarket had people saving Kermit points to be able to score Muppet hand puppets, but oh no, they’ve run out and people are pissed, small children are disappointed and a meltdown is in progress.

When the well-known character of said national supermarket commercials finally meets Kermit (notice the magical Dutch to English translation), he impolitely talks over him, calls his friends up and acts like a total douche.

(Link: www.telegraaf.nl)

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February 16, 2012

A warehouse full of works by Karel Appel found in the UK

Filed under: Art,History by Orangemaster @ 2:03 pm

Reported as missing or stolen long ago, more than 400 works by Dutch painter, sculptor and poet Karel Appel were found in a bunch of crates, in a British warehouse.

The artist, who died in 2006 at age 85, was one of the founders of the Cobra movement. Just before he died in 2006, he designed a postage stamp for an exhibition on visual artists entitled ‘Kunst’ (‘Art’), the last work of art he ever made.

Now we wait and soon find out what kind of goodies we missed.

We once wrote about a film, The reality of Karel Appel, which also featured some music by Appel.

(Link: www.bbc.co.uk, Photo of Karel Appel, Elephant by Comicbase, some rights reserved)

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February 15, 2012

‘Some 60% of women cannot earn their own keep’

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:59 pm

You’d think a mobile euthanasia unit or a pedophile political party would be taboo in the Netherlands, but one of the biggest taboos I know of is about Dutch women not being able to earn enough money to pay their way through life. The irony is, according to a recent report by Delta Lloyd Group Foundation, 70% do believe it is important to be able to take care of themselves, but in actual fact, they don’t or don’t want to. (Some 75% of Dutch women work part-time and 40% of the population still believes that women with children should not work full-time.)

I’ve heard all kinds of arguments and personal stories from Dutch men and women in all kinds of situations (kids, no kids, divorce) that have made me understand why some women ‘cannot’ work (they lose money!) still today in 2012, and the government can be blamed for a lot of it: a too high standard of living as compared to other EU countries relies on the ‘informal’ network (moms, grandparents babysitting, neighbours caring for elderly), much like big companies used to abuse the environment and let governments pay to clean it up.

But not ‘wanting’ to work or work more in a recession — we are officially in one today — is making someone else (husband, partner, society) pay for you, when you should be helping yourself out, if not your family. It makes men and women continue to think that more than half of Dutch women are not equal to men. The entire Western world works, has families, raises children and runs businesses, so what’s the hold up?

(Link: www.telegraaf.nl)

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February 14, 2012

Travelling rubbish museum supports cleaners’ plight

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 11:50 am

Street combing is cool, but then so is calling rubbish art and exhibiting it at big venues, including the city hall of Heerlen, Limburg. Starting today, visitors there can have a look all kinds of things collected by cleaners who are trying to attract attention to issues such as being paid for sick leave and getting more respect.

This travelling exhibition already seen in The Hague, Groningen and Utrecht tells stories about some 1,000 found objects such as a gold bracelet, a can of cola, a teddy bear and a syringue. The idea is that cleaners reflect our society and are indispensable, while they are not treated fairly despite the relatively well-organised Dutch labour system. Cleaners all over the country have been striking as well to get their point across.

(Link: www.limburger.nl)

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February 13, 2012

Gliding along Amsterdam’s frozen canals

Filed under: Film by Branko Collin @ 6:34 pm

Somebody called Typevideos posted this beautiful little film of the citizens of Amsterdam enjoying the frozen canals on their skates on YouTube:

See also: Dutch Winter (video).

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Light tables keep dementia patients lively

Filed under: Design,Technology by Branko Collin @ 1:06 pm

Loek Canton graduated with honours as a design engineer in Delft last Friday with the design of a table that produces light. In cooperation with psychology students from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, he studied the effects of his table on dementia sufferers.

According to the Delft University of Technology, “fifteen elderly people took part. [Loek Canton] observed the effects of the light tables on the residents by interviewing participants and care staff. ‘The initial results provide a positive indication that the light tables have the desired effect on the activity and mood of participants’, says Canton. ‘When using the tables, residents sleep less, are more active and communicate more. The light tables were well received by participants, as they interacted with the objects.’”

(Link: De Pers. Video: Youtube / Loek Canton.)

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February 12, 2012

‘Street comber’ Krista Peeters makes one piece of art out of garbage per day

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 10:33 am

Krista Peeters calls herself the straatjutter, the ‘street comber’, and every day she makes one small art piece of stuff she finds on the street.

She keeps track of where her finds come from. The piece shown here is called ‘Why, thank you, they’re lovely! Let me get a vase…’, and was created from garbage found on 10 February 2012 on the Dapperstraat in Amsterdam: fake grass, a plastic thingamajig, 3 buttons, a lamp holder, a thumbtack, a plastic cap, half a bike light, something technical, and a bent safety pin.

According to Bright the artist is currently looking for a place where she can exhibit a year’s worth of works by March.

See also: “On the beaches of Texel only left shoes are ever found” (about the Netherlands’ beach combing culture).

(Photo of Friday’s art work by Krista Peeters)

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February 11, 2012

83-year-old woman gets 3D-printed titanium jaw implant

Filed under: Health,Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:35 pm

BBC News writes:

A lower jaw created by a 3D printer has been fitted to an 83-year-old woman’s face in what doctors say is the first operation of its kind.

The transplant was carried out in June in the Netherlands, but is only now being publicised. The implant was made out of titanium powder – heated and fused together by a laser, one layer at a time.

The operation was performed in a hospital in Sittard-Geleen in Limburg. The jaw was made by a company called Layerwise from Leuven, Belgium, which published this video of the process:

According to De Pers, the woman got to go home after just 4 days in the hospital. She will receive matching teeth ‘soon’.

(Video: Youtube / Layerwise)

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