August 20, 2018

Sprinter train finally being fitted with toilets

Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 7:35 pm

Back in 2011 we told you about the Sprinter trains, short distance train that stop at ‘every big tree’ as the Dutch say, that didn’t have any toilets, but claimed to have ‘pee bags’ for anybody needing them. Of course, nobody knows anybody who has ever used them.

We also told you we’d update you if that changed, and it finally did.

Two weeks ago – seven years down the tracks – existing Sprinters are finally being fitted with bathrooms. Dutch railways also admits it was stupid not to have toilets on these trains. There will also be a large wheelchair-accessible toilet, a place for two bikes and a slide-out platform at the door.

It’s not over yet though: the first two trains are on the rails now and all 131 trains should be fitted with proper facilities by 2021.

(Link: nos.nl)

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July 21, 2018

Van Gogh house can stay for autistic son

Filed under: Art,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 1:40 pm

A couple in Florida has painted the outside of their entire house as a huge mural of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’ for their autistic son, and has just just won an almost year-long battle with the city to keep it that way.

The commissioned painting works as a beacon for their adult son who has problems communicating and occasionally wanders away from home. By making their house a landmark, which their son refers to as T’he Starry Night house’, he can tell people which house he’s talking about when he gets lost and people will know where it is.

When the mural was started, the city told them it was considered graffiti if the wall didn’t match the house, so they went the whole hog and painted the entire outside of the house. Then, they got fined 10,000 USD (about 8,528 euro) for doing so. While the city said the house was a distraction and improper, the coupled expressed their constitutional right to free expression and won.

Parents are ready to fight for their children under normal circumstances, but if your kid also has a developmental disorder like autism, you’re probably going to fight anybody who tries to make your life more difficult. The city gave the family $15,000 USD (about 12,793 euro) and an apology, which was a big deal for this family who grew up in socialist Poland.

(Link and photo: cbc.ca)

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July 1, 2018

Dutch men adversely affected by cycling, study says

Filed under: Bicycles,Health by Orangemaster @ 11:44 pm

In an American study entitled ‘Effect of Oscillation on Perineal Pressure in Cyclists: Implications for Micro-Trauma’, the all-male authors report that “genital numbness and erectile dysfunction in [male] cyclists may result from repeated perineal impacts on the bicycle saddle (micro-trauma) that occur during routine cycling. And if there’s a country we know that has men who into routine cycling, it’s definitely the Netherlands. Slots two and three are taken up by Denmark and Germany, with Sweden, Norway, Finland, Japan, Switzerland, Belgium and China rounding out the Top 10.

The study’s authors concluded that there was a strong linear relationship between oscillation magnitude and perineal pressure during cycling and that using shock absorption in bicycle design may reduce this perineal micro-trauma while possibly improving cycling-associated perineal numbness and erectile dysfunction.

(Link: improbable.com)

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June 19, 2018

Shortbread cookies as cancer patients taste them

Filed under: Food & Drink,Health by Orangemaster @ 4:15 pm

Imagine eating good old fashioned shortbread biscuits, but with an extra ingredient, spilanthol to give you the impression of how it is to taste biscuits the way a cancer patient tastes them.

The Internet tells us that spilanthol is a plant whose medicinal uses includes treating tooth pain and infections of the throat and gums. In other words, when you eat these cookies, they are tasty, but the spilanthol slowly takes over and makes the whole inside of your mouth tingle in an unpleasant fashion. And drinking water doesn’t help, which makes the whole experience ‘disgusting’, according to the Dutch who tried the biscuits.

That is the taste sensation of the ‘Awareness Through Experience’ (ATE) biscuit, developed by Robert Greene, chairman of the Hunger and Thirst foundation. The biscuits were made by chef Christian Boomker.

Before Greene himself was diagnosed with colon cancer, he was a nurse in an oncology department. Knowing that half of patients are underfed due to the terrible taste they experience when eating, he wanted to find a way to share this impression with others and draw attention to the issue.

(Link: nos.nl, photo by Maëka Alexis, some rights reserved)

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May 17, 2018

PostNL tells man to move to avoid van fumes

Filed under: General,Health,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 12:57 pm

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An Amsterdam resident asked on Twitter why PostNL’s delivery personnel leave their van on his street with the motor running, which is bad for the environment. PostNL’s Twitter team decided to mention their environmentally friendly plans to replace the diesel vans with zero-emission ones, but that it takes time. To drive their point home, PostNL told the man to shop for a new house in the country if he was worried about his one-year-boy inhaling diesel fumes. That’s corporate Dutch speak for “fuck you”.

A classic comment you’ll hear often in Amsterdam is ‘if you don’t like the noise or nuisance or whatever big city problem you’re whinging about, move to the country’. Many people, some with children some without, enjoy the big city vibe Amsterdam offers, but deep down inside would like their street or neighbourhood to be some sort of mini-village where the big city problems only affect the people living in the city centre, where most of the merriment and the tourists are. However unrealistic that is, the van has no good reason to leave its motor running and PostNL was not very customer friendly with their answer.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl)

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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
first aid

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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January 25, 2018

Dutch florist to donate kidney to competitor

Filed under: Health,Science by Orangemaster @ 1:13 pm
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A florist in the town of Oostvoorne, South Holland has agreed to donate one of his kidneys to his competitor.

Jan, 62 and a florist, has a genetic kidney disease, inherited from his father who died at age 69. Jan’s problems are not yet critical, but he’ll need a kidney soon. Dick, 55 and a competing florist, is a match and is willing to donate his kidney to Jan. Sadly, Jan’s two sons also have the same genetic disease, but at least they’ll have a father for a much longer time if all goes well, and hopefully more resources to solve their predicament.

Everybody who knows Jan and Dick in Oostvoorne are impressed with the gesture. “I barely take aspirin. I can do without one of my kidneys”, says Dick. Jan was speechless when he found out that Dick was willing to donate one of his kidneys. “You’re not going bankrupt are you?” said Jan to Dick when Dick came over to tell him the good news. “No, I came to tell you I’m going to give you a kidney”.

Dick found out that Jan needed a kidney through two social workers. And although he did talk about donating with this wife, he says he went behind her back to the hospital first to see if he was a match.

You can bet the media will be covering this when it happens.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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January 20, 2018

Former Dutch Prime Minister has his first joint

Filed under: Dutch first,Health,History by Orangemaster @ 12:33 pm

Dries van Agt, 86, served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from late 1977 until late 1982. Of all his achievements, the one that stands out for many is the introduction of ‘turning a blind eye’ (in Dutch, ‘gedoogbeleid’) to the use of marijuana and hash 42 years ago as of January 17, 2017, which was a world’s first.

Van Agt was Justice Minister before he was PM, and together with Irene Vorrink the Minister of Health at the time, they are the reason why the world assumes pot is legal in the Netherlands when it fact, it is absolutely not. They are also the reason why the Dutch have been making a distinction between soft drugs and hard drugs since 1976.

In November 2009 Van Agt received the Cannabis Culture Award of the Hash, Marihuana & Hemp Museum in Amsterdam, but this week he was awarded the Koos Zwart Award in Tilburg, an annual award given to people who have been instrumental in moving towards legalisation and normalisation of cannabis in the Netherlands. The award is named after hash activist Koos Zwart who died in 2014 and who happens to be Irene Vorrink’s son. The former premier held a speech in 2016 at the Cannabis Liberation Day in Amsterdam to plead for the legalisation of marijuana.

And on January 17, Van Agt smoked his first ever joint (pic).

(Link: www.vice.com)

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November 27, 2017

Woman gets unwanted hysterectomy due to bad communication

Filed under: Health,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:34 am

A 35-year-old Polish woman was given a hysterectomy back in 2013 due to a grave error by a gynaecologist at a hospital in Limburg caused by a lack of proper communication between patient and gynaecologist. The woman’s partner acted as an interpreter and had agreed to an operation to fix a low hanging uterus, but somehow that turned into a hysterectomy.

The gynaecologist claimed in court that he did not understand at the time why the woman had agreed to a hysterectomy, but then he had not asked the woman what kind of operation she had agreed to in the first place. As well, the gynaecologist had not made it explicitly clear that she would no longer be able to have children after the operation. To make matters worse, the woman already had two children from a previous partner and this might have been seen as ‘but she already has children’. In fact, she wanted children with her new partner. The gynaecologist also didn’t ask if she was taking any kind of birth control.

This grave error will see the woman being given 33,700 euro in damages, get psychological help, while the gynaecologist has been given a warning for his subpar communication skills.

(Link: limburger.nl)

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November 14, 2017

Kids’ gym class in Utrecht is the coolest

Filed under: General,Health,Sports by Orangemaster @ 7:07 pm

Children in the Netherlands

A physical education teacher in Utrecht has made gym class cool again by using games to keep all the kids busy instead of activities like dodgeball where kids have to sit out when they are hit while stronger kids play, and it’s going viral.

It’s going viral because he films the kids classes and puts them online.

On the Facebook page De Spelles (the ‘play lesson’) as well as on the website despelles.nl, you can see Dutch kids play relay races, dominos, Twister, and a whole bunch of games that keeps them busy, involved and happy.

Teacher Matthijs Jansen has been teaching PE since 2011 and strongly believes all the kids should participate and get exercise. One of the girls says she think Mr Jansen is the best meester (male teacher) of the school, but then he’s the only one (the only male teacher), she says, laughing.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl, photo of random children: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

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