March 14, 2019

New traffic sign warns cyclists for tram rails

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 2:46 pm

The Netherlands is a country with a sign for a ‘singing bike path’, a silly walks pedestrian crossing and this riddle about horses, but now it’s time for a sign that warns cyclists about tram rails.

Only Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague are used to dealing with trams, and sadly, cyclists are also used to cycling over trails and sometimes getting a wheel stuck in them. Today, a sign was unveiled in The Hague, and the idea behind it is to avoid injuries, which apparently happens more than we all think. To be sure everybody gets it, under the new sign it says in Dutch ‘Watch out, tram rails’.

Back in 2017 start-up SafeRails found a solution to this problem (see video), using a profile from recycled plastic that can be inserted into existing tram rails, but that never materialised. Ironically, they wanted to start with The Hague.

Moral of the story: scoring election points (we have elections on 20 March) is better than actually implementing a solution.

(Link: nos.nl)

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March 13, 2019

Religious political party wants UFO-inspired roundabout art gone

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 9:15 pm

The town of Houten, Utrecht features two roundabouts meant as landing pads (‘air strips’) for alien ships, installed some 15 years ago. One of the roundabouts is a kind of traffic tower for the UFOs, similar to what you would see at an airport, while the other is the actual landing pad, a bit like a helipad, but once again for a flying saucer.

A local politician of the SGP, the same religious sad sacks that regularly complain about metal music, paid parking on Sundays and more recently clutched their pearls over a poster of women kissing, forgetting that the law is not the Bible in the Netherlands, said “a landing pad for UFOs has little to do with reality”, at which point I laughed out loud for a few minutes, wondering if the guy realised what he was saying.

The politician said the art has little to do with what Houten has to offer and should be replaced by references to cycling, fruit or forts. The artist, Martin Riebeek is not from Houten, but lives in Breda, Noord-Brabant and is originally from Haarlem, North Holland, and why is this used as an argument is beyond me.

The ‘U’ on the landing pad in the picture does not stand for UFO, but for ‘you’ in the polite form in Dutch (‘U’) according to Riebeek.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl, Photo of UFO air strip by Jeroen Komen, some rights reserved)

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March 12, 2019

Dutch doctors’ assistants victims of daily violence

Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 10:51 am

According to the Dutch association for doctors’ assistants NVDA, some 62% of doctors’ assistants were faced with violence over the past two years, based on a survey among nearly a thousand members. Incidents included spitting, hitting, kicking, vandalism, being threatened with an ax, knife or firearm. and a host of verbal threats, such as ‘I’ll wait until you finish your shift’ over the phone. The NVDA says threats of all kinds are a daily occurrence from patients that are clearly frustrated about not being served as they expected to be served.

Only 11% of the doctors’ assistants involve the police in the threats. The reasons are the assistants don’t quite know if that’s something other assistants do or even how to react. Some measures being taken include making sure the support staff is behind a glass wall rather than at a reception counter. As well, it might help for patients to know what a doctors’ assistant actually does, possibly reducing the number of complaints as well since people often want to be treated fast enough as they have taken time work often and don’t want to wait.

I very much like my doctor’s office and my doctor. My only complaint is that the assistant (in my case often a receptionist with no medical training) asks me what the problem is, but then also starts giving me their opinion or asking me what I’ve done to alleviate the problem upon which I tell them that’s why I want to see a doctor. If I wanted to talk to someone unqualified I could also keep talking to myself or use Google, but of course, I don’t tell them that. As well, it’s well known that in the Netherlands, the receptionist and/or assistant are trying to dissuade people from seeing the doctor to keep waiting times down, but often this only helps create more frustration.

Any Dutch doctors, nurses, etc. in the house? Feel free to weigh in!

(Links: nltimes.nl, rtlnieuws.nl)

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March 8, 2019

Dutch Eurovision entry is a modern power ballad

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 8:26 pm

Relatively unknown artist Duncan Laurence will represent The Netherlands at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv, Israel with the song ‘Arcade’.

The first Semi-Final will be held May 14, the second Semi-Final on May 16 and the Grand Final on Saturday, May 18. At this point, we don’t know what day Duncan will be performing in the semi-finals. However, a quick look at the Internet says Duncan has a good chance of scoring, as long as he sings with a lot of emotion, which he is prone to doing.

According to Wikipedia, Duncan Laurence (aka Duncan de Moor) started his musical career at the Rock Academy in Tilburg, Noord-Brabant playing in a number of school bands. He graduated from the school in 2017 and participated in the fifth season of The Voice of Holland, under the coaching of Ilse DeLange.

You may know DeLange as one half of The Common Linnets (Waylon was the other singer) who in sang ‘Calm After the Storm’ in 2014 and picked up second place. A downside to this song is that there’s no ‘boom’ or anything at the end, it ends quietly after a mild build up and that usual makes the room quiet.

Listen to the song here yourself and we’ll see how that goes in May.

(Link: eurovision.tv, Photo of Guitars by tarale, some rights reserved)

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March 7, 2019

Frisians work with Microsoft for spellchecker

Filed under: General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:48 am

The province of Friesland is working together with tech giant Microsoft to finally get a Frisian spellchecker. Yes, other suites such as Open Office have Frisian spellcheckers, and there’s even plug-ins that the province has been involved in, but having a proper spellchecker in Microsoft Office is the goal.

A spokesperson for the project that will probably cost about 40,000 euro wants users to “no longer be afraid to use Frisian in a professional setting”. The spellchecker should be ready for testing this summer, but nobody knows exactly when it will be available in Microsoft Office.

The province will also be talking to tech giant Apple to see what can also be done to add more Frisian to their products.

(Link: nu.nl, Photo by Rupert Ganzer, some rights reserved)

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March 5, 2019

Dutch radio temporarily bans Michael Jackson

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 5:14 pm

After finding out about the documentary Leaving Neverland released a few days ago, a film that focuses on two men who claim they were sexually abused by singer Michael Jackson as children, NH radio from Amsterdam has decided to temporarily stop playing music by the American pop singer.

The radio is worried that the demand for Jackson’s music will increase because a documentary about him will be aired on Dutch television on 8 March. “We won’t be able to listen to his music in a neutral way and we want people to listen to his music with an open-mind,” the station explained.

In any case, the ban will last a few weeks. I have no clue if that will change anything or what purpose it will serve in the long run. And I wonder if other radio stations will do anything similar.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

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March 3, 2019

Crime is down, but a lot of it is in Limburg

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:29 pm

While I was in a tram this morning riding along a crime scene today in East Amsterdam, I started thinking about crime. Apparently, the top 10 cities with the most crime in the Netherlands includes four municipalities from the province of Limburg: Heerlen (4th place), Maastricht (5th place), Sittard-Geleen (7th place) and Roermond (9th place).

Amsterdam remains the city with the most crime, followed by Eindhoven and Rotterdam. A city next to Amsterdam, Diemen, has gone from 26th place to number 8, as some gang was quite busy with break-ins, but finally got rolled up.

Rounding off the top 10, there’s The Hague in 6th place and Schiedam in 10th place, both together with Rotterdam representing the province of South Holland. Amsterdam and Diemen are in North Holland, with Eindhoven in Noord-Brabant.

All in all crime is down, including pickpocketing, a classic in cities with a lot of tourists.

(Links: binnenlandsbestuur.nl, ad.nl, Photo: Dutch police officers politie.nl)

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March 1, 2019

Religious party object to ‘satanic’ metal festival

Filed under: Music,Religion by Orangemaster @ 12:12 pm

Religious political party SGP (Protestant reformists) are collectively clutching their pearls in disgust, knowing that black metal festival ‘Helvete Festival’ is coming to their town this weekend and would like the event to be cancelled. Held at music venue Estrado and organised by heavy metal fan volunteers, the Helvete Festival is the town of Harderwijk’s first black metal festival and I would image they are pretty excited about it.

The SGP is taking aim at local band Sator Malus ‘with their satanic and misanthropic lyrics’, but not the other four bands, which is odd, making me wonder how much of it they listened to and where before they decided to be outraged.

The complaints about ‘the youth should not be exposed to this’ are first of all, way too late, as the promotion was doing the rounds on social media for months, but apparently the SGP missed it. Secondly, do you really think kids won’t find anything they want on social media? You’re the ones who apparently act like social media doesn’t exist – again, where did you hear the band?

The city council is wondering what they can do against the festival and if they even want to because they have no legal leg to stand on. Usually music venues are subsidised for many festivals, but not this one, which means hurting them in the wallet is also not an option.

As opposed to the luddites, the organisers say it’s not about the lyrics, but more about the music. They even explain that the artists are also people with houses, families, pets and normal obligations, not satan worshippers. It’s all an act.

The SGP are the people who recently brought us the very hateful Nashville Statement and got called out by most of the country.

The SGP have clutched their pearls over ‘swearing’ at a previous metal concert in 2007 even though it has fuck all to do with them.

The SGP complained about paid parking on Sunday, but had no issues letting others pay for it. Again, go visit on another day than Sunday.

The SGP tried and failed to hinder the start of the Tour de France in 2009 on a Sunday.

(Link: ed.nl, Photo: treehugger.com)

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February 27, 2019

More fraudulent research from Tilburg University

Filed under: General,Religion,Science by Orangemaster @ 2:09 pm

Back in 2011, we told you about Professor Diederik Stapel who was disgraced from the Tilburg University for making up a whopping pile of research, and eventually went corporate in 2013.

The Tilburg University is back in the news with another PhD student making up research. Mohammad Nazar Soroush obtained his PhD with research into the lives of young Salafists in the Netherlands. However, he was caught faking conversations as well as visits to mosques that never happened, but may keep his PhD title. Professor Ruben Gowricham who helped Soroush can no longer be involved with granting PhDs and Soroush’s doctoral advisor has been reprimanded as well.

Gowricham has a business that makes money from doctoral candidates such as Soroush to the tune of thousands of euro a year. As well, Gowricham would receive 35,000 euro from Tilburg University per successful doctoral candidate. Two Islamist associations complained about the PhD, saying things in it were fabricated. Soroush used a supposed Salafist logo that is in fact not used by Salafists, and more of these kinds of details raised many red flags.

Although Soroush may keep his title, he has been asked not to distribute his thesis. He has also been asked to publish the fact that his thesis is based on insufficient evidence. People are surprised that he can still keep his title at this point, but the university claims that revoking it goes a bit too far. His credibility is definitely questionable, which will follow him around for a long time.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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February 25, 2019

Donald Duck magazine to include homosexuals

Filed under: Comics,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 12:04 pm

The Dutch have youth news on television, and recently 10-year-old called Fenna was interviewed for telling the editors of Donald Duck weekly magazine that there was never any homosexual couples in their magazine, after going through all of the one she had.

Fenna has two mothers and two fathers, and would like to see her favourite magazine represent her reality a bit more, saying that it is important. The editor-in-chief responded that he had never really thought about it, and that they plan to add homosexual couples in the background of stories soon based on her suggestion.

Donald Duck magazine has made steps to become more inclusive before, including an edition dealing with dyslexia and one character in a wheelchair. They are clearly not huge steps, but sometimes it takes a fan who sees things a bit differently to point others in the right direction.

Donald Duck magazine has been offered in Braille, in Frisian, and in an easier-to-read version for children that don’t read.

(Link: ed.nl)

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