November 20, 2012

No more weed pass, but registering patrons remains

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:13 pm

Many people thought that a weed pass for NL residents only implemented earlier this year was not going to make it nationally on January 2013 — and they were right. After forced down the throats of the provinces of Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg, giving other provinces an unfair business advantage, the cities of Haarlem and Amsterdam in North Holland started poking holes in the legislation, finally watering it down. Yesterday, the Minister of Justice Ivo Opstelten scrapped the plans and has decided to let municipalities deal with it locally.

Asking a coffeeshop owner to keep a database of weed smokers already raised privacy issues as did a legitimate business refusing customers based on their nationality and residence status. Now that bigger cities with more tourists have said they can’t be bothered to burden coffeeshops with screening clients, some NL residents will still have to prove their status to buy weed by way of a proof of residence document obtained at city hall, which costs some 10-12 euro.

Since such a document is only valid for a few months, the law would imply that smokers have to continuously stand in line and pay to get this document in order to continue to buy weed, which sounds like a bureaucratic waste of time. As well, some argue, it means the city knows you smoke weed legally, while ordinary smokers, fans of prostitutes or alcoholics, also legal habits, don’t have to register themselves anywhere.

Regardless, it was all a big waste of time and we’re back to square one seven months down the road.

(Links: www.elsevier.nl, www.nu.nl)

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November 19, 2012

Dutch Prius drivers use too much petrol

Filed under: Automobiles,Sustainability,Technology by Branko Collin @ 11:25 pm

A study by broadcaster NOS shows that owners of plug-in hybrid eletric cars use “80 percent more fuel than the fuel economy estimates found in the manufacturers’ specifications”, Autoblog writes.

The article suggests that car owners buy their Priuses for the government rebates more than for saving the environment. Government incentives include “no purchase tax, zero percent additional tax liability and no road tax until 2016” according to the article. Car owners can request charging stations near their house according to Verkeersnet. The city of Utrecht even throws in a free parking spot.

On average the drivers in the study paid 73 euro more per month than expected by using petrol when they could be using electricity.

Some of the people in the study managed to only achieve a petrol use of 13 kilometres per litre, others got to a far more respectable 250 kilometres per litre.

(Photo by DaveOnFlickr, some rights reserved)

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November 18, 2012

Rumble in Limburg over fake accents on children’s TV show

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:39 pm

Yesterday the city of Roermond in Limburg played host to the official reception of Saint Nicholas in the Netherlands, and the city was the centre of attention in the week before in children’s news show Sinterklaasjournaal.

One of the features of the show are street interviews with a band of jolly Limburgers that turned out not to be Limburgers at all, but actors from Holland that could not be bothered to learn the local accent well.

Sinterklaasjournaal broadcaster NTR told De Gelderlander that they asked all of two (!) actors from Limburg to appear on the show, “but they both couldn’t come. The list runs out at some point.”

Limburg has a rich stage tradition, producing many great actors and directors. Perhaps these actors were too expensive for a two-bit (but still tax-funded) operation like NTR?

Children from Roermond told another public broadcaster, NOS, that “they are mocking us, and that is just wrong.” Another child had a practical solution to help heal all wounds: “I think Saint Nicholas should give more gifts to the children of Limburg this year.”

(Photo: screenshot of Sinterklaasjournaal. Link: Marc van Oostendorp)

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November 17, 2012

Caspar Berger’s self-portrait

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 2:43 pm

Sculptor Caspar Berger made a bronze self-portrait based on a 3D scan of his skull.

At his website he writes:

In this project, Self-portrait 21, the 3D copy of the skull represents the true image (vera icon). This image has formed the basis for a facial reconstruction by a forensic anthropologist, who received the skull anonymously accompanied only by the information that it belonged to a man in his mid-40s born in Western Europe.

If you want to see if the forensic anthropologist did a good job, here is a photo of Caspar.

(Photo: Caspar Berger. Link: Boing Boing.)

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November 15, 2012

World’s first emergency broadcast system using text messages

Filed under: Dutch first,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:04 am

The Dutch government has just launched the world’s first nation-wide text message emergency alert system, called NL-Alert, which allows authorities to warn people within the immediate vicinity of an emergency situation (e.g. a major fire or flooding) by sending a text message to their mobile phones about what to do in that event.

All mobile phones users in the affected area will receive text messages automatically, as long as NL-Alert has been activated, the phone is switched on and has normal reception. It is also free to use and you do not need to register to use it.

Considering the goal is to keep people safe, I’m a bit surprised that the website is only in Dutch and that the warning messages will only be in Dutch, contrary to a lot of other less important government information about, oh, taxes. The other thing is, it assumes everyone has a mobile phone, but then again I assume that someone with a mobile phone will be decent enough to warn any phoneless person.

This seems like a very modern response to the quasi obsoleteness of television and radio for up to date information, which nobody except the elderly, housewives and the unemployed listen to during the day. Most major emergencies are often communicated by mobile phone to the media by Twitter and the likes, so it makes sense that the information from the government be broadcast by mobile phone. Granted, cell broadcasting is totally different than using the Internet, but both make use of mobile phones.

My phone, the HTC One X was already configured to receive cell broadcasting messages, a system which is designed to simultaneously deliver messages to multiple users in a specified area.

(Link: www.iamexpat.nl, Photo by William Hook, some rights reserved)

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November 14, 2012

The Netherlands’ reputation as a tax haven is alive and well

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:20 am

Last year, The Guardian wrote a column on how the Netherlands is a tax haven for multinationals. In fact, if you Google ‘Netherlands’ and words like ‘tax avoidance’ or ‘tax haven’, you’ll see how gladly the country enables companies like Amazon, Google and Starbucks.

Back in 2002 Portugal got pissed when they calculated the insane amount of money they were losing to the Netherlands, while Dutch telly pointed out that “empty shell corporations pump 8,000 billion euro through the Netherlands”.

It’s bad enough the country’s 16.5 million residents have to deal with explaining themselves when it comes to prostitution and drugs, what we could do without is having to explain why our government wants to be the whore and pusher of corporations. Grab a hot beverage and read The central role of Dutch financing companies in tax avoidance strategies.

In the Netherlands, complex tax law constructions apparently allow companies to show losses in one or more countries to pay taxes at a lower rate in another. While most of it is probably legal, like many capitalist constructions, it screws billions of people over around the world. And the Netherlands thinks that’s ethically fine for some reason.

If you want more information, this is also a nice read from the Netherlands Comparative Law Association. The conclusion says a lot: “The Netherlands has a long-standing tradition of providing tools to address tax avoidance.”

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November 13, 2012

A hand grenade pops up in potatoes

Filed under: Food & Drink,History,Weird by Orangemaster @ 7:38 pm
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It’s déjà  vu time, as grenades like to hide in potatoes.

A standard fragmentation hand grenade used by Americans in WWII was found in a bunch of potatoes at a potato processing plant in Dronten, Flevoland today. Dozens of bombs, bullets and grenades from the war are found every year in this area.

Here’s an upbeat video about finding grenades in potatoes in Europe, with an interesting find at the Netherlands’ biggest amusement park the Efteling earlier this year.

(Link: www.dutchnews.nl, Photo of grenade by macspite, some rights reserved)

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November 12, 2012

Life line for Frisian studies

Filed under: Science by Branko Collin @ 8:15 am

During one of his last days in office former Education Minister Halbe Zijlstra has saved the bachelor programme Minorities and Multilingualism: Into the Frisian Laboratory at the University of Groningen (RUG).

The minister granted the program a subsidy of 120,000 euro per year, the provincial government reported last Tuesday. The RUG will sponsor the programme for the same amount.

In 2010 only one person studied Frisian at the RUG.

Frisian is one of the two official languages of the province of Friesland, the other being Dutch.

Halbe Zijlstra was born in Friesland in 1969, in the town of Oosterwolde.

(Photo by Rupert Ganzer, some rights reserved)

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November 11, 2012

Love letter to the landscape of Holland

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:14 am

American blogger Abi Sutherland currently lives just North of Amsterdam, and she is slowly getting used to the fact that there are no mountains here:

This is a good spot. The bike path runs between two strips of water, both bright with reflected sky. To my right is a narrow patch of reeds, its leaves beginning to turn purple-brown with autumn. The last light of the day gives them a bit of its orange, a parting gift of warmth and richness. To my left, the fields stretch out for kilometers, flat and treeless. Only the livestock and the woodwork—bridges and little stretches of fence—break the landscape between me and the outlines of the distant trees and towns. Above it all, the sky is full of light.

[…]

This is nothing like anything I have ever known. If my love of California came through the front door and my love of Scotland through the side, this sudden, inarticulate love of the Netherlands is the unexpected guest who appears one day in the living room, ringing no bell and answering no invitation. And yet here it is, and it draws me out of the house and away from the cities every bright day. I go out for half-hour rides and come back three hours later, windblown and bright-eyed.

Go read.

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November 10, 2012

Teenager from Helmond buys ticket to space

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:36 am

Last Sunday Rowin Hellings (18) from Helmond near Eindhoven bought himself a ride on a suborbital space flight.

The flights were being sold as part of a sales promotion by German consumer electronics chain Media Markt. In 2014 Hellings will be flying aboard an XCOR Lynx rocket plane. His ticket was sponsored by his parents and cost 73,333 euro, according to Eindhovens Dagblad.

Although Media Markt charged the regular price for the flight, they padded the purchase with 6,600 euro worth of consumer electronics.

Earlier this year Sabine van der Sluis (33) won a flight on the Lynx as part of a loyalty scheme promotion, AD wrote back then.

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