December 6, 2010

Transgender man wins battle to get name changed on university diploma

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:41 am

Justus Eisfeld won the right to get a new bul, a master’s degree diploma, Parool reported last Wednesday. Eisfeld had undergone a sex change, which required a name change, but the University of Amsterdam refused to issue a new diploma to reflect this new reality.

Minister for Education, Culture and Science Marja van Bijsterveld (one of only three women in the cabinet) has decreed that the university’s official stance, which stated that it is illegal to issue a new diploma, is incorrect. The University of Amsterdam has responded that it is now “very happy” to issue Justus Eisfeld a new document.

An added complication may be that it is generally difficult in civil law countries (i.e. non-Anglophone countries) to have one’s name changed at all. How does this work for our native English speaking readers? If you change your name from John Smith to Autocar Bumblebee III (as you all do!), does that mean you get to rewrite the paper trail?

(Photo by Hildo Krop, some rights reserved)

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December 5, 2010

Sinterklaas Flash game “Zwarte Piet”

Filed under: Gaming,General by Branko Collin @ 11:57 am

Tonight’s pakjesavond, when Saint Nick visits the homes of many a European child to deliver presents.

I realise many of you won’t be sharing in the fun because you have fallen for the trickery of the Arctic imposter. Fret not, though. With Wiering Software’s video game Zwarte Piet you can experience the gift delivery process as if you were here in person.

Guide Black Peter across rooftops, collect the delicious pepernoten (lit. ‘pepper nuts’) and shove them together with gifts down chimneys. Mike Wiering has been producing new versions of this game every year, so if you don’t like this particular version, try another. Tip: “Klaar! Zoek de uitgang” means “Claire! Find the exit”.

UPDATE: We are very aware that many Dutch folks now consider Zwarte Piet a racist stereotype.

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December 4, 2010

Beyblade spinning tops are all the rage again

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 1:36 pm

Shopkeepers in the Netherlands claim they were caught completely by surprise by the sudden increase in demand for Beyblades. It has been 10 years since the spinning tops from Hasbro last were playground hits, the print edition of daily Parool reported on Wednesday.

Beyblades are used in ‘battles’, where tops are launched from a platform (see photo) into an arena. The top that stays up the longest wins.

A possible explanation of the revival may be that Disney channel has started to broadcast the accompanying (and eponymous) manga series again, though at ungodly early hours. Disney’s Vincent Berends thinks that ‘schoolyard talk’ may explain the success.

Earlier this year Jeugdjournaal reported that Beyblades had become the rage again in Japan. There the hype was carefully manufactured.

(Photo by Cielo de la Paz, some rights reserved)

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November 26, 2010

Stop snoring by learning the didgeridoo

Filed under: General,Music,Science by Orangemaster @ 11:46 am

Boffins over at the sleep research centre of the Canisius-Wilhelmina hospital in Nijmegen have concluded that learning how to play the Australian musical instrument didgeridoo helps reduce snoring. The specific training of the mouth and throat muscles to play this instrument apparently help reduce sleep apnea, which causing snoring.

Some 50 people were given a didgeridoo training for four months, which was not easy as one third quit, claiming they were not able to sustain the necessary circular breathing, never mind the time committment. No definite conclusions were drawn with such a small bit of research, but the boffins could be on to something. The Dutch were inspired by the Swiss who did something similar and obtained similar results.

To wipe away the associations some of us have of digireedoo players being Caucasian dreadlock-wearing backpackers who play on the street as they need cash while on vacation in major cities during the summer, have a look at the cool, modern sounding didgeridoo player jamming with South African rapper Jack Parow live at De Nieuwe Nor in Heerlen a few weeks back.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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November 24, 2010

Parliament pushes for prenuptial agreements

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:42 am

According to NRC newspaper, the Netherlands is one of the few countries in the world where marriage takes place in a standard way under community property (joint ownership) rather than separate property. Drawing up a prenuptial agreement (the Dutch have surely heard that in American television series) costs money and sharing all your stuff is still considered the right thing to do here, someone please tell me why. A prenuptial agreement not only provides in case of divorce, but also protects property during the marriage in case of a bankruptcy or the likes. Don’t give me that it’s all about trust argument because most of the time in heterosexual marriages women get more than they brought in stuff-wise, a reason some women marry in the first place.

Putting aside gay marriage for a moment, women were traditionally dependent on men, and so community property made sense. The politicians who submitted this proposal to parliament to have the rules changes feel married people should have more say in their own marriages like the rest of the Western world, and parliament agrees.

(Link: nrc.nl, Photo of Wedding cake by philipyk, some rights reserved)

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November 23, 2010

Bra helps control cleavage wrinkles

Filed under: Design,Fashion,General by Orangemaster @ 8:31 am

Dutch inventor Rachel De Boer had wrinkels in her cleavage at an age when women don’t usually have them, and decided to come up with a way to get rid of them.

Her bra, called La Decollette (in Dutch, ‘cleavage’ is ‘decolleté’, from the French ‘décolleté’), is now being sold in about 100 lingerie shops in the Netherlands. It’s not a bra you wear during the day, it’s something you wear at night to keep your breasts apart, tightening the skin in between. It’s not sexy to go to bed with, granted, but if we can believe the results and the news item on telly, it makes a real difference.

I had heard of breast pillows that do the same thing, but this product obviously looks different and more confortable.

Necessity remains the mother of invention. I tend to just stay out of the sun like an 18th century European aristocrat.

(Links: telegraph.co.uk, Photo: decollette.nl)

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November 17, 2010

Copyright collection agency to charge for embedding after all

Filed under: Film,General,Music,Online by Orangemaster @ 7:57 pm
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In December 2009, after a wave of criticism from the media and beyond, Dutch copyright collection agency Buma/Stemra (B/S) decided to back off on its plans to make people pay for embedded music streams. However, today they announced that they will go ahead with their plans after all. According to B/S logic, embedding music is another form of ‘rebroadcasting’, which require licences. Buma/Stemra will start charging for music streams and video streams like YouTube, all of which will be confirmed soon. According to Tweakers, last year the projected rates for embedding videos with music were lower than embedding music streams — why, nobody knows.

They also say they won’t bug private persons, just companies. We’ll see.

In other copright news, a court in The Hague has ruled that downloading copyrighted material without permission of the rights holder is permitted as long as it’s a copy for home use. There was some doubt as to how copyright law should be interpreted on this issue, but not anymore. Read more about it in Dutch from our friendly neighbourhood Internet legal expert, Arnoud Engelfriet.

(Link: tweakers)

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November 16, 2010

Dutch comedian declares war on customer service desks

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:08 am

(“My fingers are itching… death to all customer service departments and impenetrable multinationals. Time for a fun revolution… I’m up for it.”)

Customer service here is so bad that Dutch comedian and columnist Youp van ‘t Hek decided to dedicate his column in NRC newspaper (Dutch) to exposing bad customer service after his own son battled a mobile phone provider for months to no avail. His own experience seems to be that these corporations only respond to public humiliation by celebreties and the fear of being exposed rather than actually provide ‘customer service’.

In late October Van ‘t Hek twittered about his son’s broken mobile phone woes and went on a talk show the same day to tell his tale. After appearing on TV and naming and shaming the mobile phone provider logo and all, the problem was taken care of faster than the speed of light. In other words, if you’re famous and bitch on Twitter to your 45,000 followers and then on TV, you’ll get ‘service’, a word that is used in English in Dutch as there is no equivalent.

Any customer service that involves ringing up a call centre usually costs you money per minute (it should be free!), takes a long time and makes people angry because they get promised things which don’t happen (like receiving a modem for your cable Internet) and having to call back and repeat your story again to someone else who’ll tell you you’ve already received it. Many a foreigner nicknames this type of situation ‘it’s not possible’, (‘dat kan niet’) or in proper English, ‘we can’t do that for you’.

Another example of service gone mad in Van ‘t Hek’s column involved a man getting fined repeatedly for paying his cable Internet bill late while not being a customer of the company in question. He keeps calling to explain he’s not a customer and never was, they keep saying they’ll stop the bills and the bills keep coming — it’s been months. Basically, he’s not in the system, but obviously he is because he keeps getting letters. The call centre employees keep asking for his customer number to be able to track the situation, but he doesn’t have one.

If you read Dutch, read the original newspaper column of Van ‘t Hek and his son’s problem.

(Links: weblogs.nrc.nl, nrcnext.nl, christophevanbael.com)

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November 14, 2010

Saint Nicholas parade Amsterdam 2010

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:05 pm

Today I went to the arrival parade for Saint Nicholas in Amsterdam. Yesterday the Saint entered the country at Harderwijk, and today he visited various towns. Black Petes handed out tons of candy to the children lining the streets.

Here is a short video of the event.

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Record number 40th wedding anniversaries

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 1:16 pm

About 73,000 Dutch married couples will have celebrated their 40th wedding anniversaries at the end of this year, Blik op Nieuws reports.

The online news service quotes Statistics Netherlands who point out that this record simply follows from the fact that so many people married in 1970 (124,000 couples). Since 1970 was a peak year, it is not expected that the record will be broken soon.

Another contributing factor is the increased life expectancy, especially that of men. In the Netherlands, men typically marry younger women and die at a younger age than their wives.

(Photo by Anthony Kelly, some rights reserved)

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