August 22, 2017

American crayfish ‘invading’ Utrecht

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 8:11 pm

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In the Leidsche Rijn neighbourhood in the west of Utrecht, American crayfish are ‘invading’ people’s gardens and scaring people walking their dogs as they walk on land. We told you about these pesky Procambarus clarkii, aka Louisiana crayfish last year, creeping around The Green Heart part of the country.

The red beasts love the stagnant water found in the Leidsche Rijn neighbourhood and bury their eggs in the area.

The options for getting rid of them include eating them, but you will need a lot of them to make a meal. And then there’s folks who give them to family around the country once they’ve caught them, increasing the risk of spreading the crayfish around even more.

The Internet says you can also keep them as pets in a tank.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl, Screenshot from Omroep West quoted in the posting).

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August 21, 2017

Weird and banned Dutch names

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:27 pm

Many Dutch names sound or look odd to people who can’t read the names in Dutch or have never heard them before like Joke (usually for girls), Freek (usually for boys) and Puk (unisex), but they are are quite normal.

However, some of the names that have been banned in the Netherlands since 1970 when the weed wore off when French law implemented by Napoleon in 1811 was applied, meant children had ancient names or names from the Holy Calendar.

Odd names:
– Dienaar van God (‘Servant of God’), banned in 2013.
– Jeanne d’Arc (banned in 1945 and again in 2009, but approved by an Amsterdam Court in 2010)
– TomTom (presented in Venray in 1999, but approved later on)
Geisha (presented in Groningen around 1985, but approved in 1990)
– Miracle of Love (approved Amsterdam 30 juni 1998, became Miracle-of-love)

Names that bureaucrats eventually accepted:

– Fleur de Mariage (French for ‘Flower of Marriage)
– Urine (as a female form of Uranus)

Names that were banned before 1970:
– Denis, became Dennis
– Pascale, the female version of Pascal, was eventually accepted.
– Other ‘normal’ sounding names like ‘Kitty’, ‘Willy’, ‘Loraine’, ‘Joey’ and ‘Savanna’
– A whole bunch of Dutch surnames that cannot be used as a first name

(Link: www.vernoeming.nl , Photo of Crying baby by Chalky Lives, some rights reserved)

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August 20, 2017

Donor fathers 102 children, national failure

Filed under: Science by Orangemaster @ 9:19 pm

A few months back there was the doctor who bragged about using his own sperm to inseminate his patients, and now one overzealous sperm donor has been caught fathering 102 children, exceeding the limit of 25.

Problem is, the amount children that can be produced from one sperm donor is limited to 25 at one clinic, but this guy went around to several clinics and kept on donating. For 10 years, the man donated all over the country, producing a total of 102 children. Lucky him, one clinic even bent the rules from 25 to 35 children and then there’s whatever he donated through the Internet.

Another man was also caught producing more children than legally allowed, with sperm donated through the Internet. For now the sperm of both men won’t be used anymore. There’s nothing being said about fertility clinics being more vigilant to stop donors exceeding the limit, which also includes egg donors. At present, clinics can’t share information for privacy reasons, although authorities had tired to set up some sort of database.

File this one under ‘epic fail’.

(Links: www.ed.nl, www.trouw.nl)

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August 18, 2017

Dutch artist gets trees to make music

Filed under: Music,Nature by Orangemaster @ 8:23 pm

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Earlier this year we posted about a tree that tweeted about the weather and life, but now vibrations can be measured on trees that can be turned into music.

Dutch artist Ben Barten has discovered that by placing sensors on trees and connecting an instrument to them, in this case a synthesizer, some sort of tree music can be made and it does sound quite melodic.

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of Elm tree by Sludge G, some rights reserved)

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August 16, 2017

Dutch farmers seek match for their farms

Filed under: Animals,General by Orangemaster @ 9:21 pm

According to Statistics Netherlands, some 60 percent of farmers aged over 55 in the Netherlands don’t have anybody to leave their land to when they retire. They say 15,000 farms could disappear over the next decade, with more than eight out of 10 sheep farmers, and with pig and cow farmers only doing slightly better.

Now there’s a service called ‘Farmer Seeks Farmer’ that matches up people looking for a farm with those who will soon want to get rid of theirs. Backed by the Young Farmers’ Association, pig farmer Sander Thus has help set up the online scheme putting farmers close to retirement age in contact with young wannabe farmers.

Since the scheme was launched in 2011, several dozen farms have moved outside of the original family owners to be taken over by a new generation of farmers. And Thus hopes the numbers will grow, with 135 people searching for land registered on the site, and some 35 existing farmers looking for new blood to farm their lands. “Today, most of the people looking to take over a farm are self-employed between 20 and 40 who don’t come from the farming world, but want to roll their sleeves up,” he explains.

(Link: phys.org)

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August 12, 2017

Canta manufacturer has run out of parts for popular disability vehicle

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 5:21 pm

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The iconic Canta mobility vehicle is no longer being produced, Volkskrant reports.

Last week the last Canta ever rolled off the conveyor belt at the Waaijenberg factory in Veenendaal. The manufacturer told the newspaper they are having troubles sourcing parts. Especially the moulds are worn out. Waaijenberg will use the few parts they still have for repairs.

Cantas have been coming under fire recently, with the city of Amsterdam wanting to ban them from the pavement. In a bizarre twist and for reasons unknown, the city even tried to take away Cantas from their users, for whom the microcar often means the difference between being able to live a full life and being condemned to wasting away at home.

Cantas are allowed to drive on the pavement, the bike path and the main road. They are made to measure for their drivers. A few are privately owned (and end up on the market), but most are property of the government. They often come in Ferrari racing red, although other colours are possible. In total 4,645 were produced in the past 22 years.

Waaijenberg expect to present a successor later this year.

See also: Canta, the little can-do car

Photo of a Canta on a bike path by Tjerk Zweers, some rights reserved.

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August 9, 2017

Interactive shawls feature Tourette’s swearing

Filed under: Design,Fashion by Orangemaster @ 12:47 pm

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For her graduation project at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, Corlieske Visser has made shawls with interactive prints featuring audio patterns of her father’s bouts of swearing caused by his Tourette’s.

To create the shawls, Visser sat down with her father in a recording studio for two and a half hours. The sound waves of the recordings were transformed into images and eventually abstract prints (Dutch), which were then linked to the Dutch augmented reality app Layar. You can scan the prints using Layar and hear what Visser’s father had to say. The shawls are for sale, and 15% of the profits go to the Dutch Gilles de la Tourette Foundation.

Names after French physician Gilles de la Tourette who coined the syndrome, Tourette’s is often made fun of and not taken seriously. Part of Visser’s goal with her shawls is to draw attention to some of the positive aspects of Tourette’s. Visser explains that swearing puts people off and because of this, people with Tourette’s like her father are seen as crazy or anti-social. However, Visser’s father is also very good at imitating sounds, which shows a positive side of the syndrome.

(Link: creators.vice.com, Image: corlieske.nl)

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August 7, 2017

Dutch women’s football team European champions

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 9:57 pm

After an exciting win 4-2 for the ‘Orange Lionesses’ against Denmark yesterday in Enschede, the Dutch women’s football team have won the UEFA Women’s European Championship for the first time.

And while their Amsterdam counterparts had to celebrate their national victory with a small party in their locker room, the Lionesses had some 22,000 people show up in Utrecht to welcome and applaud them. It’s about time this country took notice of how much work goes into women’s sport. Since the Dutch enjoy putting a price tag on everything, the argument of being able to win with much lesser means and ‘less ego’ is appealing even to the sceptics.

Besides having watched this game, I went to my first ever football game recently as well to watch Russia vs. Germany (Germany won 2-0, Russia made too many mistakes). I had a great time and didn’t feel at any moment that I was watching a lesser sport or that I couldn’t cheer for Russia because German fans were there, too. Everybody was having a great time despite the lousy weather. It was exactly what live football should be: fun for everyone.

Here’s a glimpse of the canal boat with Lionesses on board:

(Photo of flag by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

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August 6, 2017

American teens react to Dutch Trump video

Filed under: Animals,History by Orangemaster @ 5:05 pm

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I’m sure you all remember the video that went viral explaining the Netherlands to Trump, presented on the Dutch television show ‘Zondag met Lubach’ and the narration voiced by the talented Dutch-American Gregory Shapiro.

Here below you can watch American teens reacting to this video, and you should. One of them said “Whoever is speaking in this is doing a great job” and I agree with her. When I first posted the video, I wasn’t sure it was Shapiro doing it, but after it went viral, he did a tour of the Dutch talk shows and confirmed it.

While the teens express mostly praise, they felt the video took jabs at the US and the word ‘disrespectful’ came up as well, but overall, according to the presenter, the video was liked by people on both sides of the aisles (Democrats and Republicans). One of the teens who plans on joining the military has some poignant remarks to make about Trump and going to war.

The video mentions pony park Slagharen, which recently announced they would be
getting rid of their ponies, mainly because “they do not fit in with the park’s future plans”.

This video was published on 31 January, when Trump has only been in office for a few days. And what if they asked the teens now or in a year from now what they think of Trump or about their answers at the time? That would be interesting to watch as well.

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August 4, 2017

Bees also like paintings of flowers

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 11:16 pm

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A while back, we wrote about cats liking boxes drawn on the floor, but this time it’s about bees liking paintings of sunflowers, like the world famous one from Vincent van Gogh.

“Flower colours have evolved over 100 million years to address the colour vision of their bee pollinators.” With this in mind, investigators Professor Lars Chittka and Julian Walker of Queen Mary College, University of London, decided to investigate whether bees might also be attracted to paintings of flowers, for example (a copy of) Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’.

The whole study can be found here. According to the study, Van Gogh scored the best with the bees, apparently stimulating the bees’ green receptors most strongly, the receptors that spot flowers from afar.

(Link and photo www.improbable.com)

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