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 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 9, 2018

Dutch orchestra gets first female conductor

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 3:43 pm

The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, which ranks third in the hierarchy behind the Concertgebouw and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, has just appointed its first ever female conductor, the American Karina Canellakis, 36, who will succeed German conductor Markus Stenz in September 2019.

Canellakis, the first woman music director of a major Dutch orchestra, made her debut at the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Utrecht and Amsterdam, with works from Britten, Shostakovich and Beethoven. In 2016 she won the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award. Canellakis was also assistant to Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden in Dallas and is being introduced to Dutch media as his protegée. She credits her first conducting opportunity to a stint at the Berlin Philharmonic Academy, when Sir Simon Rattle offered her the baton.

(Links: nu.nl, slippedisc.com, Photo of Carlo Antonio Testore violin, Milan, 1738 by Jason Hollinger, some rights reserved)

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May 2, 2018

Dutch fund sells plasters for different skin tones

Filed under: Dutch first,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 5:09 pm
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The Nederlands Albert Schweitzer Fund (NASF) that aims to support initiatives for Africans has produced adhesive plasters in different skin tones that are being sold in Dutch drugstores, an actual Dutch first.

Together with being told to use ‘the skin colour pencil’ that was always a peach-like beige, ‘nude’ panty hose and ‘nude’ bras, so many products are created with only Caucasian people in mind.

The first bunch of plasters made by the NASF will come in six skin tones and cost 3,99 euro per pack of 24. For every pack sold, one euro will be donated through NASF to an African cause. As the NASF says themselves, “everyone is equal, but not everyone is the same”.

And this not a world first. American company Tru-Colour Bandages has been selling plasters of many different skin tones for a while, although only available in The Netherlands through Amazon. Founder Toby Meisenheimer, a father of six children in Chicago thought the standard beige-like bandages looked ‘totally stupid’ on the head of one of his sons.

(Link: parool.nl)

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April 19, 2018

First Dutch Netflix Original in the works

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 2:29 pm

Although last year we announced the first Belgian-Dutch series to hit Netflix, called ‘Undercover’, now there’s a Dutch Netflix Original in the works, with no name as of yet. Since Belgian television is developing and will broadcast ‘Undercover’ first, it isn’t considered a Netflix Original, while the unnamed Dutch project will be.

Produced by Pieter Kuijpers and Sander van Meurs of the Pupkin company, the eight-part series of 30 minutes will feature the combination of two elements, namely coming of age and horror, set in Amsterdam. A group of students enjoying the vices of the Dutch capital discover a link to a demonic world from the Golden Age upon which this country has built its entire fortune. This Dutch outing will be penned by writers’ collective Winchester McFly (Bankier van het Verzet, Smeris), while the showrunner will be Michael Leendertse (Van God Los, Smeris).

(Link: bright.nl, Photo of the VOC HQ (East India Company) by Josh, distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)

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April 13, 2018

Country’s first 5G venue to be in Amsterdam

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports,Technology by Orangemaster @ 3:09 pm

At the start of the new 2018-2019 football season this summer, the Amsterdam ArenA will officially be renamed the Johan Cruijff Arena (no big A) and become the first stadium in the Netherlands to offer 5G technology for devices. Together with the Allianz Arena in Munich, which held the World Cup in 2006, they will be the first 5G stadiums in the world.

Many countries will start using 5G for general use in 2020, but not the Netherlands. For now, the only Dutch folks using 5G is the Ministry of Defence to chase down terrorists and cybercriminals. The Netherlands will be a bit late to the party, making 5G available for everyone as of 2023 and possibly even 2026. However, football fans will be able to enjoy the new tech this summer.

(Link: parool.nl, Photo of flag by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

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March 13, 2018

Dutch firm produces chicken protein sans chicken

Filed under: Dutch first,Science by Orangemaster @ 11:27 am
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BioscienZ, an applied microbiology startup Biotech company from Breda, Noord-Brabant, has been successful in producing chicken egg protein without chickens using fungi.

Egg protein is used in a multitude of foods and replacing it with a plant-based option seems like a much sought-after solution. The process involves having a genetically engineered fungus call ‘GRAS’ produce ovalbumin, the main component of chicken egg protein. And the reason it’s such a big deal is because GRAS has been producing twenty times more ovalbumin than the current world record.

BioscienZ expects to be able to produce the protein commercially within 4-6 years from now using sugar beet, sugar cane or grain-based sugars.

(Links: bioscienz.nl)

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March 12, 2018

Dutch university reveals world’s first circular car

Filed under: Automobiles,Dutch first,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 3:22 pm

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Last month, students from the Eindhoven University of Technology revealed ‘Noah’, the world’s first circular car. Noah is made of entirely recyclable material that is easy to disassemble. The two-seater weighs 350 kilogrammes and is powered by six modular batteries. In July the students will demonstrate that Noah is also a practical road legal car.

The plan is also to prove that circularity (true sustainability) is already possible for complicated products like cars. The design team will use renewable resources to further develop bio based materials, drive fully electric and design Noah to be recycled, making Noah the most sustainable car in the world.

Noah’s motors have a power of 15kW, to reach a speed of about 100 km/h and a total range of 240 kilometres. At the end of the lifecycle, the car will be fully recyclable, lowering the need for raw materials and giving the used materials a new life.

(Link and image: electriccarsreport.com)

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March 4, 2018

Amsterdam boasts world’s first plastic-free supermarket

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 9:08 pm

A few days ago, a branch of organic food supermarket chain Ekoplaza in Amsterdam West not far from 24oranges HQ, opened a plastic-free pop-up supermarket, selling close to 700 plastic-free products. Although the initiative comes from international action group A Plastic Planet from London, Amsterdam’s Plastic Soup Foundation was able to convince the Londoners to launch the world premiere in the Dutch capital.

The packaging resembles the look, feel and strength of real plastic, but is made using natural, 100% biodegradable materials. Ekoplaza has 74 supermarkets throughout the Netherlands and hopes to rollout this concept to other branches by the end of 2018.

“Dutch designers Eric Klarenbeek and Maartje Dros developed a bioplastic made from algae, which they believe could completely replace synthetic plastics over time, while Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Shahar Livne created a clay-like material using discarded plastic.”

And if they can do, so can everybody else at some point, starting with the insane amount of uselessly, individually wrapped vegetables at regular supermarkets.

(Links: dezeen.com, plasticsoupfoundation.org)

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