June 15, 2014

Silly dilemmas on Tuesdays

Filed under: Comics,Weird by Branko Collin @ 12:16 pm

dilemma-op-dinsdag-marloes-toonen

There is this Facebook poll that proposes a silly dilemma each week for you to choose from. It’s called Dilemma op Dinsdag (Dilemma on Tuesday) and it seems to be a minor hit in that I see their dilemmas shared regularly.

The dilemma shown here: you either must read a Harlequin romance novel each week or change all your user names and e-mail addresses to wienerboy69 for the rest of your life. (The cartoon shows a business card for a government spokesperson called Jasper Jansen).

Some of the dilemmas of past Tuesdays were:

  • Nobody ever laughs about your jokes or you have to laugh every time somebody cries.
  • You have 100 almost identical keys on your key chain or you always give the third kiss on the mouth when greeting someone.
  • You never eat warm meals or everything you read, you read out loud.
  • Your clothes disappear once a month or you always have the hiccups when you wake up.

Dilemma op Dinsdag is made, it appears, by “some individuals from Utrecht and Amsterdam”, but the cartoons are drawn by Marloes Toonen.

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June 9, 2014

Amsterdam’s rich district Zuid throws money in the trash

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 11:08 am

coins-sarah-joyLast January garbage collectors found 46,000 guilders in old office furniture that most likely came from the offices of Amsterdam’s district Zuid (‘South’).

The money was found by an HVC employee in Hoorn who was busy compressing a container full of wood when money boxes started popping out, revealing the banknotes they had inside. The district told Parool that they never missed the money. The district ordered the money to be returned. The paper doesn’t say what legal grounds they have to do so.

Amsterdam Zuid is home to the richest residents of Amsterdam, so it’s quite ironic that they could lose tens of thousands of guilders without noticing it. Residents of some Amsterdam Zuid neighbourhoods are so wealthy that when they get fined for double parking, they prefer to call their expensive lawyers rather than paying a small fine.

The Netherlands replaced the guilder by the euro as its legal tender in 2002.

(Photo by Sarah Joy, some rights reserved)

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June 8, 2014

Dutch nicknames for cars

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 9:59 pm

citroen-ds-klugschnacker

Here is a short list of car nicknames the Dutch and Flemish use.

  • Kever (beetle): Volkswagen (1938)
  • Kattenrug (cat’s back): Volvo PV444/PV544 (1944)
  • Eend and Lelijke Eend (duck and ugly duckling, the Netherlands): Citroën 2CV (1948)
  • Geit (goat, Belgium): Citroën 2CV
  • Snoek (pike) and Strijkijzer (clothes iron): Citroën DS (1955)
  • Rugzakje (backpack, the Netherlands): Fiat 500 (1957)
  • Bolleke (ball, Belgium): Fiat 500

Note that the car later officially branded as Volkswagen Beetle used to start out as simply Volkswagen.

I’ve ordered the nicknames by the year the car was introduced. As you can see, there appears to have been a sort of golden age of nicknames in the two decades following the Second World War.

I’ve tried Googling for more nicknames with the inevitable result of ending up on car blogs where the bloggers asked their readers if they knew more than the usual suspects. The readers would then comment that “the X is also called Y” while curiously omitting the phrase “in my family”. German and English lists can be found on the web.

(Photo by Klugschnacker, some rights reserved)

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June 7, 2014

The Hague court wants less female judges

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 5:30 pm

In 2009 for the first time ever women made up the majority of judges in the Netherlands. This year even 64% of the judges of the court of Utrecht are female.

In response, according to Algemeen Dagblad, the court of The Hague (56% female judges) wants to give preferential treatment to male candidates. The court fears having too many women could influence the way the public views the courts’ impartiality.

The court’s plan received support from celebrity lawyer Theo Hiddema in Trouw who warned that you wouldn’t want to create a situation where a male rapist would have face three female judges and a female prosecutor. “Imagine,” Hiddema told Trouw, “that the suspects come from a different culture. Imagine the shame and humiliation when an all-female court tells them their behaviour is not of this time!”

Institutional mansplaining, who would have thought? Only job market news site Werf& appears to have noticed that what the court of The Hague wants is very much against the law. The site points out that affirmative action is only legal when used to help disadvantaged groups.

Although women form the majority of judges in lower courts, as late as 2006 they were still in the minority in appeals courts where a majority of two-thirds of the judges were men, as Trouw wrote back then. Judges that were ‘foreigners’ (allochtonen, Dutch code for people of colour) were in an extreme minority, the paper reported.

According to a Metro article of 2011, sociologist Bregje Dijksterhuis explains the preference of women for judicial robes because an appointment as judge is for life and because it is a job that combines well with having a family. Men on the other hand prefer higher paying jobs as lawyers.

The Dutch Council of Women quotes De Groene from 1947 after the appointment of Johanna Hudig as the first female judge in the Netherlands: “Courts have the reputation of being bastions of conservatism. The greater is our satisfaction at seeing how the court of Rotterdam has stood as one man behind the candidacy of this woman, giving a shining example of a broad and modern vision towards the judicial office.”

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June 2, 2014

Eric Slot’s murder atlas of Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:18 am

oudezijds-achterburgwal-taver

The idyllic scene you see above is part of what was the most murder-stricken street of Amsterdam in the 20th century according to Eric Slot, author of the book Moordatlas van Amsterdam, which was published in early May.

The street is called is Oudezijds Achterburgwal, located in Amsterdam’s red light district. It is the location of many a sex worker’s place of business which is why, when AT5 interviewed Slot about his book two weeks ago, the interview took place on the second most murderous street, Zeedijk—prostitutes are said to have an aversion to cameras.

The book is the culmination of two decades of studying murder in Amsterdam. It describes a thousand murders of the 1,800 or so that took place in Amsterdam since the year 1900.

According to the publisher the book “notes trends, characterises neighbourhoods, shows you which professions are dangerous and explains the popularity of the knife in Amsterdam Noord”, and more.

The Netherlands is one of the safest countries in the world when it comes to murder with ‘only’ one murder per 100,000 inhabitants a year, but Amsterdam is one of the most ‘dangerous’ capitals of Europe with 3.7 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

The interview of AT5 with Slot is full of interesting titbits, including the fact that the inhabitants of Amsterdam themselves aren’t very violent—the problem usually stems from outsiders coming to the city. If you understand Dutch and have 30 minutes to spare, I suggest you watch it.

(Photo by Flickr user Taver, some rights reserved)

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June 1, 2014

Roy Donders banned by Barneveld bible bashers

Filed under: Fashion,Religion,Sports by Branko Collin @ 11:32 am

juichpak-jumboThe king of tracksuits, media phenomenon and self-proclaimed stylist Roy Donders, has gotten himself in a spot of bother over his last name.

Donders is involved in a loyalty scheme for the Jumbo supermarket chain that lets football fans save up for a garish orange tracksuit (dubbed cheering suit) as part of the commercial frenzy leading up to this year’s World Cup and has lent his name to the slogan “We geven ze op hun donders” (‘let’s give ’em hell’, except that ‘donder’ means ‘thunder’).

This, according to Telegraaf, angered shoppers in the bible belt for an as yet unexplained reason. Citizens of Barneveld asked the local supermarket to remove all advertising for the scheme. The store manager gave into their demands.

Ma Donders was furious, Omroep Brabant wrote: “I don’t know what kind of faith these people have, but Donders is our last name. You cannot change that.” Meanwhile the issue has become moot because of a run on the hideous tracksuits—Jumbo claim to have run out. A spokesperson told Omroep Brabant that sales felt like “Christmas in May”.

See also: Tracksuit king Roy Donders quits his house parties

(Photo of Donders holding his track suit’s jacket: Jumbo.)

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May 26, 2014

Man fined 237 euro for scratching his ear

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 1:11 pm

mobile-phone-when-driving-alx-chiefRobert Bloem, aged 65, from Sint Pancras near Alkmaar was fined 237 euro for making a mobile phone call while driving.

Mr Bloem was stopped by the police late in the evening on 23 April (Noordhollands Dagblad adds, “in other words, it was dark”) who fined him on the spot. The driver explained that he hadn’t been making his phone call, but was scratching his ear instead (where have I heard this before?). When he offered his phone to the police so that they might check the call data they declined on the grounds that he “might have erased them”.

The police report says that Mr Bloem was holding “an object similar to a phone”. Mr Bloem has hired a lawyer who told the newspaper the object was “therefore not a phone”.

Sint Pancras is the sort of place where people drive around with 60,000 euro in cash on top of their car (or so they claim), so I am not surprised Mr Bloem can afford the court case.

(Photo by Alx_chief, some rights reserved)

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May 25, 2014

Photographer Céline Manz takes on Terry Richardson

Filed under: Fashion,Photography by Branko Collin @ 5:58 pm

hungry-for-love-celine-manz

Céline Manz is a Zürich-born, Amsterdam-based photographer who graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2013. Earlier this year she published Hungry for Love, a book in which she cuts up titillating images to highlight their innate ridiculous nature. Sexy becomes silly really fast.

At least, that’s what I thought. New Dawn is not as sure about Manz’s intentions: “The reader has no choice but to remain unsatisfied. The result looks like Terry Richardson’s visual language (he gets a ‘thank you’ note in the book), but no clear stock can be made from this fleshy stew. Satisfying or lust inducing?”

Judge for yourself (note: decidedly NSFW). You can buy a print copy or download a PDF version of the book at Manz’s website.

Terry Richardson is an American photographer known for his amateur aesthetic, mature subject matter and controversial shoots. In 2001 he worked on an advertising campaign for Sisley also called Hungry for Love that Manz appears to have used as the basis for her book.

Manz is not the first Swiss-born, Amsterdam-based photographer we’re looking at this month.

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May 24, 2014

Your phone has an auction room for spies

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:39 pm

bijenkorf-app-play_google_comReporter Dimitri Tokmetzis decided to find out what happens to your privacy if you install an app on your smartphone.

The manufacturers of operating systems for smartphones let you jump through a number of hoops whenever an app wants some private data from you, but are these hoops indicative of real privacy protection or do they only exist to give you the idea of privacy, while at the same time pushing you to give up your privacy by making protection a bit of a drag?

I tested 85 popular apps and followed thousands of data trails. I saw how my smart phone is part of a complex international web of commercial data streams, flinging my data all across the globe […]. It’s a process you can barely control. In the end you have little to no say over your own data.

Tokmetzis installed an app for Bijenkorf, and upmarket-ish Dutch department store. He used a web developer’s tool called Charles which intercepts network traffic. When he ran the app, a number of the usual suspects started following him around: Google Analytics, Google Doubleclick, Intershop and Bijenkorf themselves.

As I am looking at a black leather laptop bag (priced over 500 euro) my smart phone gets jumped by at least 18 different on-line advertising companies who send all kinds of data from and to their servers. It is a blitz. Within a single second contact is being made with servers in the US, Sweden, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands; servers owned by such companies as Improve Digital, Admeta, Adtech, Metrigo, Burst Media, Yieldlab, Switch Concepts, AppNexus, Sociamantic, Adscale, Rubicon Project, OpenX, Smart Adserver and Casale Media.

What all these trackers are doing in this app is a mystery to me. AppNexus turns out to be a platform for real-time bidding, a flash auction in which advertisers bid against each other in milliseconds in order to supply me with ads. […] But the Bijenkorf app doesn’t display ads from external parties.

It turned out that the app loads the mobile Bijenkorf website which includes all the trackers.

Tokmetzis finds it extremely worrying that modern phones are more difficult to secure than PCs. He points to the fact that phones are often used for much more intimate purposes than PCs.

(Illustration: Google Play)

May 23, 2014

Shock blog Geenstijl crowd sources Dutch EP vote count

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:50 pm

geenpeil-geenstijl_nlThis week elections are being held for the European Parliament, a body that has become a serious democratic institution since the previous elections as a result of the Treaty of Lisbon. Yesterday it was the Dutch and English’s turn to vote. The voting will last until Sunday in the rest of the union and because of that the Dutch government has forbidden municipalities to publish their tallies until then.

Shock blog Geenstijl decided to crowd source its own exit polls based on actual vote counts.

The blog called its readers to go to the polling stations and stick around for the count. Geenstijl claims that 1,378 volunteers went to the stations to witness the public vote counting. The volunteers managed to collect tallies representing 15% of all the Dutch votes.

The results are largely similar to that of the exit poll held by Ipsos for state broadcaster NOS and in line with predictions from February. Centrist party D66 (Lib-dem) is cautiously predicted to be a winner whereas extreme right-wing PVV did not deliver on its land-slide victory promise and may even have to give up one of its four seats. My personal favourite, the Pirate Party, appears to have fared better than in the recent national elections, but the 1% or 2% of the votes they seem to have received probably won’t be enough for a seat in the EP.

The European Commission threatened the Netherlands with legal action if the country were to show a love of democracy and transparency by publishing the results before Sunday and had asked Minister Plasterk what he thought of Geenstijl’s intended stunt. Plasterk uncharacteristically told the EC he saw nothing wrong with citizens using their democratic right to be at the polling stations to witness the count.

See also: Voting booth ‘stemfie’ to be contested in court

(Illustration: screenshot of Geenstijl.nl)

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