July 1, 2013

Unofficial Android store to open in Arnhem later this year

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 8:30 pm

A manufacturer of customized Android-based devices is planning to open an Android store in November, Retailnews.nl writes.

GOCAL, the company behind the initiative, wants the store to become a place where customers can feel and experience Android-based devices from different manufacturers.

The company sees its O-Droid Store, which has not been endorsed by Google, as a mixture between an Apple Store and a Starbucks, meaning coffee will also be served. GOCAL also hopes to be able to offer products through its store that are not yet available in the Netherlands.

Androidics.nl adds that there are currently two official Android stores in Indonesia with another one planned in New Delhi. According to the site there are no indications that Google is planning Android stores outside of Asia.

(Illustration: Google Android logo)

Tags: , ,

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)

Tags: , ,

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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)

Tags: , , ,

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)

Tags: , , ,

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.)

Tags: , ,

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)

Tags: , , ,

June 17, 2013

Bitcoin income shall be taxed, Dijsselbloem says

Filed under: Dutch first,Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:19 pm

Dutch people who accept payments in the new Internet currency Bitcoin will have to pay income tax on the funds they receive. Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem confirmed this two weeks ago after parliament had asked questions about Bitcoin, Nu.nl reports.

According to the minister, the “alternative virtual currency” cannot be seen as “electronic money” because it fails the definition set by the Dutch law. Dijsselbloem also reported that approximately 2% of all Bitcoin users in the world are Dutch, and that these Dutch owners possess about 20 million euro worth of Bitcoin. At the time of writing 1 Bitcoin represents about 75 euro.

Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet helpfully explains that the Wet financieel toezicht (the law on financial control) defines electronic money as a monetary value that

  • Is stored electronically.
  • Represents a claim on the person or organisation who issues it.
  • Is issued in exchange for money to make payments with.
  • Can be used to pay both the issuer and others.

Since Bitcoins do not represent a claim on the issuer and they aren’t necessarily issued in exchange for money, they aren’t electronic money. The reason you still have to pay income tax is simply because the law on income tax doesn’t mention money. Any form of income, whether that income consists of money, goods or Bitcoins, is susceptible to being taxed. The problems start when you have to pay these taxes though, because the Dutch tax office only accepts money. Your revenue will somehow have to be valued in euro before you can calculate how much you have to pay.

I can well imagine that the belastingdienst (tax office) isn’t going to chase down small time Bitcoin users just yet. I remember the first time I became self-employed and asked the belastingdienst for a VAT number. The man on the other end of the line laughed at me and said they could not be bothered to issue me my number for the couple of hundred guilders I expected to make that year.

Another complicating matter according to Engelfriet is that Bitcoins aren’t financial products either. That would mean you will have to pay VAT (‘btw’) over the Bitcoins you receive, which would make trading in Bitcoins less attractive for the Dutch.

Tags: , , , ,

June 16, 2013

Dutch working mothers are paid less than working fathers

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:34 pm

OK, this is somewhat old news (in fact, Dutch Daily News covered it two months ago), but I still want to write about it because this follows up on earlier stories. Basically what I am trying to find out is how we, the Dutch, define Enlightenment ideals such as freedom, equality and happiness. It is clear that they are important to us, but we have been pursuing aspects of these ideals hundreds of years before other Western nations did and as a result, when looking through a global lens, we seem to do everything exactly different.

As they say, Dutch women don’t get depressed.

Here is the deal. In many ways the Dutch are some of the least gender equal people in the world. Our ratio of men and women in management roles is similar to that of the United Arab Emirates—and the Arabs at least are working to improve theirs. Furthermore, 60% of all Dutch women do not make enough money to pay their way through life—but they like it that way! In fact, men want some of that part-time action too!

So now a new study has come out that adds another piece to the puzzle. It appears that gender inequality is especially strong among working parents in the Netherlands. On the other hand the income of single men and women without children who work full-time jobs are exactly the same. I thought that was interesting. You’d expect at least some old-fashioned sexism to depress even those incomes by a couple of points. Perhaps that in the parts of our population where sexism is still rife (the Bible belt, anyone?) single, childless women with full-time jobs are rare.

If everybody is happy about this arrangement, then who I am to disagree? There is a difference between women being forced into inequality and women choosing inequality. Where things get weird is in relationships. The default Dutch marriage setting is that of community property (for now). The state sees a marriage as a contract between the state and two people. When the partners dissolve the wedding, the state typically demands that the high earner keeps supporting the low earner through alimony. What kind of incentives does an arrangement like that produce?

See also:

(Link: Statistics Netherlands. Photo by ValentinaST, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , , , , ,

June 15, 2013

De Skaggerz sing of youthful independence

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 7:46 pm

Here’s a party song called Scuba by a band called De Skaggerz.

A son goes to his father / Dad, I did something wrong / I quit school / Have been staring out the window instead / I cleaned out my bank account / Paid for everything myself / Who do you think you are? / Let me go!

De Skaggerz are, according to their own description, an “up-tempo party reggae band from Rotterdam and beyond. Up-tempo ska-reggae is our genre and because of our frequent excursions to hip hop we are impossible to pigeonhole.”

‘Skaggers’ is Irish slang for pasta, but skagging also means to come off methadone. This is according to the ever so reliable Internet so take those definitions with a grain of salt.

I heard this song last week on De Tweeminutenshow (‘the two minute show’), a program on Dutch pop radio station Pinguin Radio where bands can submit their own tracks. Each song gets two minutes on the show and the song that gets voted on the most gets played in full during next week’s show. At the time of writing you can still vote for Scuba.

(Video: YouTube / De Skaggerz. Image: crop from the video)

Tags: , ,