May 25, 2018

Dutch Donald Duck weekly now available in Braille

Filed under: Dutch first,Literature by Orangemaster @ 3:13 pm

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The Dutch often say that everybody in the country grew up reading the Donald Duck weekly magazine, but then that didn’t include the visually impaired.

Yesterday, Dedicon from Grave, Gelderland, a company that has been specialising in books for the visually impaired for 60 years, published a Braille edition of the classic, with accompanying audio. The Braille weekly is 10 cm thick.

Dedicon does not know yet if it can produce more versions, as it first needs to see if the target group likes the product.

Fun fact: In Dutch, Daisy Duck is called Katrien and the nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie and Kwik, Kwek and Kwak, the latter being the sound a duck makes in Dutch.

Read more about Donald Duck in the Netherlands:

Donald Duck Junior mag for children that don’t read

Donald Duck a big hit in the Frisian language

Donald Duck magazine takes kids’ money for copyright lesson

(Link and photo: omroepbrabant.nl)

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May 24, 2018

Dutch app helps you sort your recycling

Filed under: Sustainability,Technology by Orangemaster @ 6:34 pm

On 23 May, Dutch company Sitio IT launched the free phone app EcoScan for Android and iOS that helps you figure out in what recycling bin you need to sort things you’re throwing out.

In the Netherlands, there are bins for paper, plastic, glass and a few more that makes life complicated, and every municipality seems to have different bins as well. And you don’t want to be that person who puts an old lamp bulb in with the glass and forces someone somewhere to ‘disinfect’ your mistake. Sitio IT claim that there are 10 to 15 different bins for things, and this prompted developer Rick Buiten to comp up with an app for doing the right thing easier.

By using a photo scan, EcoScan can even tell you that you’d better bring certain things to the thrift shop, as they are not meant for any bins. Although I very much like the idea, I’m going to assume it’s still being beta tested or I’m really bad at scanning, as I’ve just tried it plastic, paper and glass, and it didn’t recognised any of them. And it’s only available in Dutch, but it’s point and click.

(Link: bright.nl)

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May 22, 2018

Amsterdam exhibition has robots interacting with animals

Filed under: Animals,Technology by Orangemaster @ 8:22 pm

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Machine Wilderness, an exhibition with Ian Ingram, Driessens & Verstappen, Rihards Vitols and Jip van Leeuwenstein in Amsterdam until 8 July explores together with artists, designers, ecologists, engineers and scientists, the role of technology in nature, which is now ‘a permanent and integral part of our landscapes’.

Machine Wilderness presents work of four artists who develop robotics. They explore how technology engages the surrounding and chaotic living nature. It is a work in progress in which the artists develop new robotic projects for specific ecosystems in Amsterdam’s Amstelpark, and experiment with the interaction between technology and the living creatures in the park.

Visitors will be able to see the artists at work in the park at various stages of the development of the work. Newly developed work and documentation will be added over the course of the exhibition, making it worthwhile to visit the exhibition several times.

Watch the video of a robot that warns squirrels of predators using a ‘tail-flick alarm system’ like squirrels use.

Ian Ingram || Danger, Squirrel Nutkin! (2009) from Ian Ingram on Vimeo.

(Links: naturetoday.com, Photo of Jip van Leeuwenstein’s robot that imitates the oak processionary caterpillar by zone2source.net)

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May 21, 2018

Dutch radio aboard Chinese space mission

Filed under: Dutch first,Technology by Orangemaster @ 9:40 pm

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Today, the Chinese space agency launched a relay satellite to an orbit behind the Moon with a Dutch radio antenna on board, the first Dutch-made scientific instrument to be sent on a Chinese space mission, opening up a new chapter in radio astronomy.

The Netherlands Chinese Low-Frequency Explorer (NCLE) is a radio antenna developed and built by engineers from ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy in Dwingeloo, the Radboud Radio Lab of Radboud University in Nijmegen, and the Delft-based company ISIS. The instrument will measure radio waves originating from the period right after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies were formed.

“We cannot detect radio waves below 30 MHz, however, as these are blocked by our atmosphere. It is these frequencies in particular that contain information about the early universe, which is why we want to measure them,” explains Heino Falck, Professor of Astrophysics from Radboud University and ASTRON.

(Link: phys.org)

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May 19, 2018

All Chinese Indonesian restaurants in one book

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink,Literature by Orangemaster @ 9:59 pm

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Last summer, friend of 24 oranges HQ, journalist turned photographer Mark van Wonderen (pictured below) decided to write a book about Chinese Indonesian restaurants in the Netherlands, and visited all 1097 of them. The book is entitled ‘Chin. Ind. Spec. Rest., a disappearing Dutch phenomenon’. Chinese Indonesian restaurants are big family restaurants the Dutch would go to on special occasions, as well as being classic take away places, complete with separate entrances and waiting rooms.

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The ethnic Chinese born in the Dutch East Indies eventually came to the Netherlands as of the 1960s, and as a result opened a ton of restaurants, which are different than the usual Hunan and Szechuan Chinese fare you’ll find in other Western countries. The book captures the fading kitsch factor of these culinary institutions. The book launch was held at Wong Koen in Amsterdam Oost.

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In front of Mark enjoying his book singing, there are a bunch of newspaper-like papers with prints of the inside of the book, which were used to wrap up the books people bought and had signed, the same type of paper used to wrap up Chinese Indonesian take away food.

More about how this book came to be: Dutchman pens book about Chinese Indonesian restaurants.

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May 18, 2018

Dirty jokes found in Anne Frank’s diary

Filed under: History,Literature by Orangemaster @ 2:21 pm

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Using digital technology, Dutch researchers have deciphered the writing on two pages of Anne Frank’s diary, which have ‘naughty jokes, candid explanation of sex, contraception and prostitution’. The pages were pasted over with brown masking paper and remained a mystery for decades.

Experts claim that these new bits reveal more about Anne’s development as a writer than it does about her interest in sex. Other known passages about her coming of age and her body were censored by her father Otto before the diary was first published in 1947, but were eventually included in subsequent publications.

On prostitution, Anne wrote: “All men, if they are normal, go with women, women like that accost them on the street and then they go together. In Paris they have big houses for that. Papa has been there.”

(Link: phys.org)

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May 17, 2018

PostNL tells man to move to avoid van fumes

Filed under: General,Health,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 12:57 pm

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An Amsterdam resident asked on Twitter why PostNL’s delivery personnel leave their van on his street with the motor running, which is bad for the environment. PostNL’s Twitter team decided to mention their environmentally friendly plans to replace the diesel vans with zero-emission ones, but that it takes time. To drive their point home, PostNL told the man to shop for a new house in the country if he was worried about his one-year-boy inhaling diesel fumes. That’s corporate Dutch speak for “fuck you”.

A classic comment you’ll hear often in Amsterdam is ‘if you don’t like the noise or nuisance or whatever big city problem you’re whinging about, move to the country’. Many people, some with children some without, enjoy the big city vibe Amsterdam offers, but deep down inside would like their street or neighbourhood to be some sort of mini-village where the big city problems only affect the people living in the city centre, where most of the merriment and the tourists are. However unrealistic that is, the van has no good reason to leave its motor running and PostNL was not very customer friendly with their answer.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl)

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May 15, 2018

Netherlands no longer in Top 10 LGBTI countries

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:01 pm

The Netherlands is no longer in the Top 10 of countries that have well regulated LGBTI rights, now sitting in eleventh place, according to the Rainbow Europe Index 2018.

One of the sticking points is not having any explicit inclusion in the law that says discriminating against transgender and intersex people is illegal. As well, Belgium is doing a better job, something that often provides a ‘wake-up call’ to the Dutch.

Malta is at the top of list, followed by Belgian in second place and Norway in third place.

(Link: parool.nl, Photo of Gay flag by sigmaration, some rights reserved)

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May 12, 2018

Dutch stumble upon possible toddler planet

Filed under: Science by Orangemaster @ 10:32 am

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During a look up in the sky, an international group of astronomers headed by Dutch researchers from Leiden University may have found a ‘growing’ planet.

The astronomers were examining the dust disc around the young double star CS Cha when they saw a small dot on the edge of their images, which turned out to be a small planet of only ‘a few million years young that moves along with the double star. CS Cha and its special companion are located some 600 light years away from earth in a star formation area in the southern constellation Chameleon.

In the future, the researchers want to examine the star and the companion in more detail using the international ALMA telescope on the Chajnantor plateau in the North Chilean Andes.

(Link: universiteitleiden.nl)

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May 11, 2018

HEMA pulls bad protractors before finals

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 5:18 pm

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Lonneke van Krimpen was studying for her final exam in geometry at the secondary school level and noticed something was off. She did a practice question from a 2014 exam and noticed that her protractor was wrong. A friend of hers apparently had the same issue and so they told HEMA that their protractors were badly made.

HEMA was happy to be told this especially before the entire country takes their final exams. They said they have pulled their protractors from the shelves, flagged their inventory, and even blocked any sales of them at the cash register. As well, anyone with a bad instrument can trade it in for a good one.

The specific problem is that between the 50 and 60 there are 11 spaces, and between 60 and 70 there are 10, when in both cases there should be nine.

(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo of Protractor by Richard Wheeler (Zephyris), some rights reserved)

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