June 30, 2013

Dutch woman suffers from ‘foot orgasms’

Filed under: Health by Branko Collin @ 6:21 pm

International Business Times writes about an anonymous 55-year-old woman who experienced spontaneous orgasms that started in her left foot:

The woman, known in the study as Mrs A., said the sensations started after she received treatment on her foot a year and a half ago from a sepsis infection. Doctors said her foot may have experienced ‘partial nerve regeneration’ whereby the brain may misinterpret foot stimulation as originating from the vagina, according to the study’s results.

Doctors said the woman’s MRI scans showed no foot abnormalities, but another test showed differences between the nerves of her right and left foot.

One Dr Waldinger of Utrecht University has been treating the problem with an anaesthetic. The woman has been foot-orgasm-free for eight months.

(Photo of a Fernando Botero statue in The Hague by Photocapy, some rights reserved)

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June 29, 2013

Dutch postal strike ends after reaching an agreement

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 3:10 pm

I write this while waiting for a package to be delivered by PostNL which could take a while because the strike at the package delivery division of the former Dutch state monopolist ended yesterday and the delivery people still have a backlog to contend with.

Since its privatisation PostNL seems to have dealt with a constant flow of bad press by changing its name every five years. The company started out as Koninklijke PTT (‘koninklijke’ means ‘royal’). In 1996 it became TPG Post and in 1998 the telephone and mail divisions split into two companies, the former getting the name KPN, the latter becoming TNT, Wikipedia says. TNT later became PostNL. (There are actually solid reasons for all the name changes, but those solid reasons only highlight the company being adrift.)

Nobody seems to know why the former state rail monopolist Nederlandse Spoorwegen (which is still a monopolist, just no longer legally so) messes up all the time, but at least with PostNL there seems to be a couple of reasons. The rise of the Internet appears to have killed off much of the need for mail and the liberalization of the postal market makes it so that when in the past a house was passed by one postal worker a day, now it’s several. PostNL responded to the rising cost of labour by hiring cheaper workers. They gave it a nice spin by labelling the process “[offering] jobs for people distant from the labour market“.

In 2012 PostNL decided to pay their workers for overtime; before that workers were being paid for a mythical number of hours that they should be working according to some bean counter rather than the number of hours they actually worked. In the same year Dutchnews.nl reported that the “Dutch jewellers and goldsmiths’ federation has advised its members to stop using PostNL to deliver packages because so many disappear en route to their destination”.

This week’s strike is fairly unique. PostNL is responsible for delivering about 70% of the packages, but hands those packages over to smaller one-person delivery companies. The people who strike are not employed and therefore not unionised, which means that they strike on their own dime. The largest Dutch union, FNV, decided to help out with the negotiations nevertheless, Omroep West writes. The union is also labelling the workers as ‘schijnzelfstandigen’, self-employed people that in reality work for just one customer without receiving the many benefits and protections employees have under Dutch law. RTL Nieuws reports that online stores have suffered millions in damages because of the strike.

The agreement between PostNL and its freelancers states a new rate for delivery of packages and the setting up of a grievances committee that the freelancers can use to complain about working conditions, Dutchnews.nl reports.

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June 28, 2013

Uselessly small parking spaces pop up in The Hague

Filed under: Automobiles,Nature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:15 am

Parking in The Hague neighbourhood of Oud-Leyenburg is apparently a problem, which is why the city is working on it by creating some 500 parking spots. However in the Soesterbergstraat, construction workers worked some magic to get a round a tree that they didn’t have permission to move and have created a few completely useless ‘parking spots’.

On my street, Smart brand cars, which are very small, park quite creatively as well. Even Smarts wouldn’t fit in the wee spots The Hague has created. Smurf parking only?

(Link: www.omroepwest.nl)

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June 27, 2013

Amsterdam gets pop-up restaurant for single diners

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:57 pm

Perfect for singles and anyone who wants to dine alone without getting looks from the staff when they take away the extra set of utensils from the table, Dutch social-design agency Marina van Goor and branding agency Vandejong have launched pop-up restaurant ‘Eenmaal’ (in Dutch meaning both ‘one meal’ and ‘once’), the first one-person restaurant in the world (so they claim), located in Amsterdam West.

I do expect anybody who will want to try out the place with a friend or date will get frowned upon if they try and move the table and chairs together. The point of the designers is, “to demonstrate that eating in solitude can be a good thing”. The restaurant will only be open to the public for two days on Friday 28 June and Saturday 29 June, and you can reserve using the link below.

No one has any idea about the food or prices, as it’s mostly about the concept.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com, Photo by FotoosVanRobin, some rights reserved)

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June 26, 2013

Music blog EHPO calls it quits

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 6:09 pm

After blogging for five years Niels Aalberts, the former manager of Kyteman’s Hiphop Orkest, will discontinue his popular blog for musicians, Eerste Hulp Bij Plaatopnamen or EHPO.

Aalberts feels he has said what he had to say and that his blog has run its course: “What I dreamed about five years ago has now become reality. Beginning musicians can do many things themselves, professionally, quickly and cheaply. […] What I tried to do with EHPO is done. I am sure to return to blogging, but in a different way and about different subjects.”

EHPO told musicians how to use social media, how to deal with contracts, what venues there are to sell music and so on. Aalberts also let producers and marketers from major Dutch acts use his site to tell their story. Both David Schreurs of Caro Emerald and Fulco Polderman of Marco Borsato used the site to explain how they marketed their respective acts.

The name is a pun and literally means First Aid For Music Recordings. The Dutch phrase for ‘first aid’ is ‘eerste hulp bij ongevallen’ and is abbreviated as EHBO.

See also:

(Link: Jeroen Mirck)

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June 25, 2013

Dutch brick and mortar stores that accept Bitcoins

Filed under: Dutch first by Branko Collin @ 10:46 pm

Z24 reports that the first ‘physical stores’, as they call it, have started to accept the virtual currency Bitcoin.

Expat supermarket Taste of Home in Haarlem and bar De Waag in Delft (not to be confused with the bar and high tech society of the same name in Amsterdam) both accept the currency. Currently about five people pay their bar tabs at De Waag using Bitcoins.

Irishman Pail Desgrippes, co-owner of Taste of Home, has an IT background. One of the reasons for considering Bitcoin even before he and his partner started their supermarket was the publicity it would generate. “But I also like the idea of being independent from banks. We also get to save on transaction costs and offer our customers an extra payment option.”

Currently the number of Dutch brick and mortar stores that accept Bitcoins seems to be outnumbered by the amount of websites that report on the number of Dutch organisations that accept Bitcoins. At the moment Wat Is Bitcoin? has the longest list.

See also: Bitcoin income shall be taxed, Dijsselbloem says.

(Photo of a detail of De Waag in Delft by M.M.Minderhoud, some rights reserved)

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June 24, 2013

Ninety-nine years of Tour de France in comic book form

Filed under: Bicycles,Comics by Branko Collin @ 2:11 pm

Next Saturday the hundredth edition of the toughest bicycle race on the planet will start, the Tour de France.

Dutch comics artist Jan Cleijne has written and drawn a book called Helden van de Tour (Heroes of the Tour) in which he reviews the past 99 editions.

Het Friesch Dagblad notes that with the hundredth Tour ahead of us, the market is about to be saturated with bicycle racing books. “But it looks like Helden van de Tour will be one of the winners. […] A jewel of a graphic novel.”

Sevendays.nl writes: “Comics artist Jan Cleijne visits all the historic highs and lows, from World War I to the scandal surrounding Lance Armstrong, and talks about what the Tour is all about: endurance. He lets us experience the blizzards, the puddles, a 70 metre drop, glorious victories and molten asphalt. His drawings take on the colours of the stories, ochre during the climb of an arid Mount Ventoux, gray during the hellish ride of 1926 through the Pyrenees.”

“The book is an homage to a race that is worthy of its legends, but it also puts the focus where it hurts,” Zeit Online writes. “The author, born in 1977, is an enthusiastic amateur rider himself and it shows. His voice is critical throughout the book but also emphatic. Precise and loving are the brush strokes with which the Dutchman paints both the drama of the famous riders and the small anecdotes that take place near the sidelines. […] It is a funny but also a serious book.”

You can find a couple of sample pages at Manners.nl under the ‘Klik dan hier’ link.

Illustration: “In 1951 the yellow jersey was worn for the first time by a Dutchman. His name was Wim van Est. He had never seen a mountain before in his life. The ascent was very slow. The descent was much too fast.” (Miraculously Van Est survived.)

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June 22, 2013

Rob Scholte Museum opens for one more day in Den Helder

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 12:13 pm

Painter Rob Scholte has opened up his collection of contemporary art to the public.

Lost Painters points out that Scholte owns lots of works from artists of his own generation—Peter Klashorst, Mel Ramos, Georg Dokupil, Rene Daniels, Rob Birza, Rob van Koningsbruggen and Jeff Koons—but the online art magazine is especially enamoured with a large collection of covers that Jan Sluijters created for magazine De Nieuwe Amsterdammer (later De Groene Amsterdammer, now just De Groene). Sluijters, a well-known painter in his own right, sharply criticized the profiteering attitude of the Dutch government during World War I through his covers. Scholte displays 70 of them in chronological order.

The exhibit in an office building next to the Den Helder railway station lasts only four days. You will have to be quick if you want to catch it, the last day is tomorrow.

If you cannot make it the report at Lost Painters has got plenty of photos of the exhibit.

(Illustration: one of Sluijters’ WW I covers)

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June 21, 2013

The Dutch PhD ceremony: pomp and linguistic circumstances

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:34 am

I attended my first-ever PhD defense in the Netherlands at the University of Amsterdam this week. One of the candidates presented in English and the other in Dutch. In a ceremony open to the public attended by friends, family, colleagues and the curious, a master of ceremony (‘pedel’, a woman this time) with a ‘pedelstok’ (big staff with rattling bits on it) led a procession to bring the defense committee (‘opponents’) to their box seats wearing traditional black robes and caps. After an hour of Q&A chaired by the University’s rector with some tough questions the master of ceremony called ‘Hora est!’ (‘Time’s up!’ in Latin) and then the gang retreated for private consultation. It reminded me of church or court (we had to get up often), but it felt like being in an old Dutch painting.

Basically it’s a ceremony where the candidates have to defend some valid points that could surely be addressed in postdoctoral research, but then research is something that is never finished at any academic level.

The one thing that struck me as odd was that the English-speaking candidate was mostly asked if not only asked (if I remember correctly) questions in English to which they answered in English, while the Dutch candidate had to answer many questions in Dutch asked to her in English. In other words, the native Dutch speaker was technically at a disadvantage in their own country. As well, the native English speakers asked questions in English to which they could not really understand the Dutch answer. I find this proof positive of how much the Dutch have to continuously adapt to the use of English at the most important moments of their lives. The Dutch candidate was visibly more nervous as well.

We once wrote about the ceremony from an Australian blogger’s perspective.

Another post by a Chilean claiming that being exposed to public criticism shouldn’t be done at a purely ceremonial event.

And another post says the reception afterwards felt like a wedding reception (I agree), but it did feel like being ‘fired at’:

“Several months before you expect to get your degree you must finish your thesis and send it off for approval of your committee. When you get the “OK,” you are officially done with the analysis and writing! Now you can look forward to becoming your own personal party planner. ”

(Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Effeietsanders, some rights reserved)

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June 20, 2013

Nijmegen to let people choose the model of their home

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 4:03 pm

Nijmegen plans to let potential home buyers pick from 30 different models that have a DIY look to them. Buyers must meet a lot of financial conditions, as the Dutch have very strict rules related to housing.

“The scheme is modeled on the self-built success of another Dutch city, Almere, where hundreds of new homes have been built since 2006 by individuals given free reign to do with plots of land as they wish.” Wired magazine, who picked up the story, also picked the most extreme model that does look like a shack made of discarded Eur-pallets, giving way to snarky comments.

In 2008 we claimed that anything went in Almere when it came to architecture because it was a ‘planned city’ built on a polder, which means urban planners had a field day. And we also told you how cool housing can be in Nijmegen as well.

It is true that ‘affordable’ housing has a reputation for being of poor quality, something I can vouch for personally after being forced to move out of a flat with cement rot in Amsterdam and seeing an entire neighbourhood of badly built flats destroyed in Rotterdam.

Let’s see how this project in Nijmegen pans out.

(Links: www.ugenda.nl, www.wired.com. Photo of Nijmegen and the Waal river by Rein Ketelaars, some rights reserved)

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