August 2, 2011

iPhone app for dog pooh and bike carcasses

Filed under: Animals,Bicycles,General,IT by Orangemaster @ 12:03 pm

The iPhone app ‘Opgeruimd’ (‘Cleaned up’) being tested in Amsterdam West, where my personal experience says many users still don’t have smart phones as the population is kinda poor, lets people tell the district where annoying dog pooh and old bike carcasses can be found. Instead of calling or commenting on a website to complain, now the rich can use their iPhones, while anybody else can’t. You see where I am going with this.

You can even send in pics and the exact location of the annoyance until 1 November 2011. If all goes well, the rest of iPhone using Amsterdam can vent their grievances, while all us non smart phone, HTC, or other users will continue to be ignored by the city.

(Link: www.dutchnews.nl, via www.west.amsterdam.nl)

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July 14, 2011

Mice running amok in Amsterdam hospital

Filed under: Animals,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 4:34 pm
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No, not the lab rats, but actually little grey mice that are not a symbol of hygiene in Dutch folklore. The VU medical centre is being overrun by mice. They’ve always had some mice, but now there are a lot more. The hospital blames the nearby construction, which sounds plausible. “They are digging, and the mice flee and find somewhere else to hide.”

Other gripes include the hospital’s pneumatic tube system that carries patient files get stuck, and when that happens, patients waiting for an operation are at risk. A doctor even said that, ”sometimes, the system works so poorly that a blood sample gets broken and blood pours out when we retreive the post.”

All of Amsterdam, those cute houses on the canals, and apparently hospitals, have mice.

(Link: spitsnieuws.nl)

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April 22, 2011

Elephant parade in Heerlen for a good cause

Filed under: Animals,Art,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 12:25 pm

Until 25 May these elephants will be adorning the city of Heerlen, Limburg, which can proudly be listed as a host of these works of art alongside big cities such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and London. The Elephant Parade can be admired in and around the city centre — have fun finding all 30 elephants, I found about 10. The elephants were designed by local, regional and Thai artists, as the goal is to eventually raise money with an auction for the Asian Elephant Foundation to help protect the Asian elephant. Convincing the foundation to set up the Elephant Parade in a small, lesser-known Dutch city was done by a group of local women who come up with ways to let their ‘problematic’ old mining city smile again. It worked for me.

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April 19, 2011

Stork shorts North Eastern grid, survives with burns

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 8:55 pm

Radio Netherlands reports:

A stork building its nest in an electricity substation caused a power failure in the south of the province of Drenthe and the north of the province of Overijssel on Sunday. […] About 60,000 homes were left without power for a brief period. The stork reportedly fell on one of the transformers in the substation, causing it to short-circuit. The nest caught fire. The stork sustained burns but survived the accident.

According to De Telegraaf, Dutch Rail has ‘adopted’ the stork. The company will donate 1000 euros to ‘stork station’ De Lokkerij, where the animal is recovering currently. The paper calls the stork Fikkie, which is a pet name for dogs, but also means ‘fire’.

(Photo by Hidde de Vries, some rights reserved)

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April 12, 2011

Looking through the Lookout Rabbit in Nijmegen

Filed under: Animals,Art by Orangemaster @ 10:12 am

The Lookout Rabbit was made of concrete, sand, grass, metal, wood, paint and cement coating by Rotterdam artist Florentijn Hofman who has this thing for cute animals.

The Lookout Rabbit is a temporary 12-meter high sculpture. It’s a rabbit with a red dot which you can enter and have a look out over the Waal river. The arwork is located at the Valkhofpark in Nijmegen and will stay put for at least six months.

There’s even a making of the Lookout Rabbit.

(Link and photo: florentijnhofman.nl)

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April 9, 2011

Store your books and cats in the same place: CatCase

Filed under: Animals,Design by Branko Collin @ 12:38 pm

This mixed bookcase and moggy palace called CatCase is sold by UrbanCatDesign (CamelCase) for 1250 euro. For that price you get Dutch design, MDF, and a choice of carpet colours.

(Link: Bright. Photo: UrbanCatDesign.)

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April 8, 2011

Urk looking into getting drug sniffing dogs

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink,Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:01 am

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Every country in the world has that one town that people make fun of and in the Netherlands, that town is Urk, Flevoland.

The former island (that could explain some weirdness) seems to attract attention by making decisions based on its strong religious beliefs that are akin to fighting windmills because nothing they do seems to work, it just seems to get worse.

After banning strippers, attempting beer confiscation and littering the rest of the country with creationist folders, it’s now time to score some drug sniffing dogs to enforce the town-wide marijuana ban, which ironically is illegal. Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten warned Urk’s city council that it cannot declare the entire village a drug-free zone because that’s illegal. But hey, when you do things based on your religious beliefs the law goes out the window pretty fast and you can get away with murder.

The word on the Internet is that the kids in Urk are some of the most messed up youth in the area not because of some sort of preponderance of drugs and booze, but because of the very religious city council constantly making them the object of their problems. We’ll save the hard drug use and unwanted pregnancies stories for later.

Slightly unrelated, but I had to.

Lard – I want to be a drug sniffing dog

(Link: dutchnews.nl)

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March 18, 2011

Starlings above Utrecht, three takes

Filed under: Animals,Nature by Orangemaster @ 1:56 pm

Ah yes, spring is coming and the starlings know this.

This video is nice and homemade:

This video felt the need to use music and is from afar:

This video has music and shows the starlings in smaller groups:

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March 15, 2011

‘Organic farming can be deceiving’

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 4:11 pm

When it comes to environmentally friendly products, we tend to collectively think that they’re automatically better than conventional products without even checking. The media and marketing play on these warm and fuzzy feelings all the time, which tends to be echoed by people whose need to believe always seems to outweigh checking the facts. Yes, these are nasty generalizations and yes, I too want to believe, but I don’t — yet.

After an aquaintance had posted an ‘I’m better than you because I eat less meat’ blurb on a mailing list, I promptly responded with our posting on producing meat is actually less damaging to the environment than producing cotton T-shirts. I’ll bet you she still buys cotton T-shirts.

However, I do agree that the video linked below seems to gloss over the issue of pesticides and other interesting comments the farmers were trying to make, but the deception is real: organic products have their own issues and according to everything I have read from several countries as an ordinary consumer, they are very often the same or only slightly better than conventional products.

And yes, killing animals is still killing animals, I got that part.

Watch the short video report: ‘Organic meat not better for the environment’.

(Link: Radio Netherlands)

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March 14, 2011

Eight nest cams in the Netherlands

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 10:53 am

Vogelbescherming Nederland (the Dutch bird protection society) has set up web cams in and near 8 different bird nests. This spring you can watch two types of owl, a pair of storks, barn swallows, kingfishers, nuthatches, a pair of herons and a couple of peregrine falcons in the privacy of their homes while they try and raise their kids.

Each nest sports several cameras. You can also watch the favourite clips of the site’s moderators. Four of the bird types are on the red list, which means the birds are endangered.

Link: Holly Moors.

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