Liet Kynes, Matthew 6:24, etc.

After a recent vacation to the United States, I decided to start seeking Dutch nationality again.

(Willem ten Broek)

This isn't to say that I had any revelations about America while I was there. It just really doesn't feel more like home than Holland does anymore.

I tried to become Dutch once before, and actually was naturalized, but I was later stripped of my Dutch passport after refusing to renounce my U.S. citizenship.

While I was back, I was talking about such matters with a lady who was camping near us in the Sierras. She asked "but isn't the U.S. the greatest country on Earth? Why would you want to live anywhere else?"

Questions like that don't bother me. I think quietly to myself
-I can't rank a country any more than I can rank a friend
and
-Wasn't the central lesson of the 20th century to distrust nationalism?

And then I smile and say "there are things about the Netherlands that I love, just like there are things about the U.S. that I love."

And I leave it at that. It's not like me to be so diplomatic. Must be old age.

But then, there are also things about both countries that depress me ...



Back in March, the City of Amsterdam summoned me up for citizenship (inburgering) classes. This bothered me a bit, since I was already forced to take citizenship classes here once before. Yes, I passed the first time around.

Anti-immigrant sentiment remains strong in the Netherlands, despite Geert Wilders having fallen off the foreign media map for the time being.

So I decided to try to give the bureaucrat in front of me a hard time.



It was much harder to speak Dutch, hold the camera and be cool and collected at the same time than I expected!

After a formal appeal, I was allowed to skip a second round of inburgering and language classes.

Hopefully I'll get that Dutch passport and then I won't have to jump through these hoops, ever again.

There is one final hurdle, though, if they agree.

In order to be granted citizenship, I must attend a 'citizenship ceremony,' which is a kind of party attended by a local politician (some party) where I will be required to swear an oath (in Dutch):

"Ik zweer dat ik de grondwettelijk orde van het Koninkrijgk der Nederlanden, haar vrijheden en rechten respecteer en zweer de plichten die het staatsburgerschap met zich meebrengt getrouw te vervullen."

"I swear that I respect the constitutional order of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, her liberties and rights, and swear to faithfully fulfill the obligations that citizenship brings with it."

This oath is new, they didn't have it back in 2006 when I was naturalized the first time around.

Also, only immigrants have to swear it, not natural-born Dutch.

Anyhow, it's not a problem for me.

If I'm naturalized, I'll be a loyal subject to both countries, reminding Holland that immigrants are a desirable asset, and encouraging Americans to look beyond their own borders.



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Amsterdam fiber optics co to offer 1 gigabit/second connection

(nickwheeleroz)
This is not a record.

Glasvezelnet Amsterdam is going to be offering a commercial fiber optic internet service at 1 gigabit per second by 2010, the company said at a demonstration Wednesday.

I would have liked to do a story about this for AP, but it doesn't quite rise to the level of news: there are already similar services available in Sweden and Hong Kong.

Still, that makes my 20 mbps/s connection with VersaTel look like a steamy pile.

Japan has roughly 14 million fiber users (compared with 1.2 million Verizon subs in the U.S.). But they are not getting anything near 1 gig _ in Japan, they're getting 50-100 mbps, not that much better than the best xDSL++

I also got some good data on the current situation in the Netherlands: Glasvezelnet has around 43,000 houses passed, but very few connections. They expect to have 22K or so clients by the end of 2010.

Including KPN and many other builders, there will be 150K-200K subs in the Netherlands by year-end.


My apologies for the abrupt slowdown in posts. Unfortunately, it's not likely to be a temporary thing. The pressures of fatherhood and other life goals are cutting into my blogging time, probably forever.

Het is niet anders...
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Faunafonds - Diplomatic Immunity for Animals

(flickr: marco raaphorst)

I can't decide whether this is lunacy or genius:

There's an agency called `The Faunafonds´ in the Netherlands, whose sole purpose is to compensate people for any damage they say they have been caused by animals on the country's protected species list.

So that makes the animals double-untouchable: it's illegal to kill them, and the government covers the costs of any damages they are responsible for.

There's a fascinatingly specific table of damage caused by each species in each of the past 5 years _ for instance the "Water Vole" (Dutch: woelrat), which caused EUR700,000 in damages last year, but less than EUR20,000 this year.

(photo: wikipedia).

The Dutch press didn't exactly jump on the story, but what they did write was mostly wrong. I don't like to point fingers because _ well, I live in a glass house _ but it looks like a lot of papers picked up this copy from ANP:

"The financial damage done to fruit growers by song birds grew explosively last year ... Especially "Conference" pears, which have been planted in a wider area in recent years, have suffered from birds."

But:

"The damage caused by songbirds remained pretty much the same"

-Faunafonds annual report.

It turns out there was a hanging bill (if you can forgive the pun) of EUR200,000 left over from the year before, hence the increase in costs.

(photo: dimomar)

ANP, correctly, pointed out that the agency paid out EUR6 million in claims, but missed the total taxpayers' bill: EUR10 million (US$16 million).

Now, that's peanuts for most government agencies, and the Faunafonds does provide work for 12 people, according to its annual report (Dutch).

But the main story wasn't songbirds.

It's those wacky GEESE!

Yup. They caused nearly EUR3,600,000 in damage all by themselves _ more than half the agency's payouts. Up EUR600,000 from a year earlier.

One explanation:

"The reason that the damage done by migrating geese and other waterfowl rose is the increase in market prices of cattle feed (grains?), due to worse weather conditions, which led to seedlings being less able to grow, and geese were able to do some damage there."

-Faunafonds

Another explanation comes from the Agrarische Dagblad, which appears to have done some actual reporting:

"Investigator Bart Ebbinge attributes the increase in damages to an increase in the number of geese. In addition, according to him, farmers chose to register damage claims, since that was more profitable than the management subsidy."

Uh huh, so now we learn there's a 'management' subsidy farmers can opt for instead. Why am I not surprised? What a country...

(roel)

Damage from wild swine tripled to EUR49,000. There's going to be a big stink later this year if the government goes ahead with plans to allow hunters a one-time mass cull.

(edwinridderhof)

After the `more´, the key table from the Faunafonds report.




You have to click on it to see individual species. If it's still too fuzzy, it's on page 15 of the annual report.

It looks like the damage from wild hares quadrupled last year, but my personal favorite is the entry on "Hawk": EUR944, a one time claim only, in 2006.

I bet there's a good story there...

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Queens' Day 2008 / Koninginnedag

(Too cool for school)



The rest of the world spun along its merry way today, but in Holland it was Queens' Day.

 

(Tiejgetje)

Queens'Day (or is that Queensday in English? from 'Koninginnedag') is the celebration of the birthdays of Queens Juliana (RIP) and Beatrix.

A combination booze-fest, garage sale and the 4th of July. It's traditional to wear orange.

 

(he eventually got back up)

After the "More" are some photos and a couple of clips I took in Amsterdam.


(The grass is always greener on the other side of a boat)

 

(Amused or Annoyed?)

 

(Frickin heap of junk)

(Culture clash)

(Regal dame)

(Godspell)





(Milkbreath)

(Fox Force Four)

(Queensdog)

(Compliments were a quarter, so I bought two)

(Pinocchio?)



(Orange streaks)

(Dutch cops)

(the bitter end; photo by Mara Miller).





(Sterling and Son)

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A new plan for bike safety in the Netherlands

This is intended as a companion post to the previous one.

The Dutch biker's union (fietsersbond), which is quite a strong lobby here, has noticed that bikes tend to "lose" in bike-vs.-car collisions, and has started agitating for cars to be equipped with EXTERNAL airbags.

(Fietsersbond logo; it says "collision-friendly cars")

Yes, that means, airbags placed on cars so that when they run into a bike, the airbag will inflate to protect the biker. They'd be placed on the front windshield, where the head usually strikes.

Here's a series of photos from a report compiled by the scientific research organization TNO, which carried out a study for the Fietsersbond.

An accident w/o airbags:






As expected, head injuries are the worst source of fatalities; hospitalizations are usually broken legs and arms according to the report (in English).

The new plan:




The Fietsersbond estimates this would save 60 lives per year.



Drivers of course have screamed bloody murder (in Dutch) about the idea because it would increase costs on the already highly-taxed automotive experience in Holland. They suspect the hand of a corporation is somewhere in all this.

Even as a somewhat pro-bike biased observer, I wonder whether the money wouldn't be better spent elsewhere. For instance strengthening dikes.

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Bike Injuries and Deaths in the Netherlands

Spotted today along the banks of the river Amstel. The caption on the sign reads: "(Park) only in the spaces."

Well, my previous posting on bike accidents and murders in Amsterdam proved one of the most popular I've ever done. So I'm updating it.

With all the bikes in Holland _ and hardly anybody wearing helmets _ how many people get hurt or killed here while biking?

Before I hit you with the numbers, the summary: the odds of being killed while biking are extremely low. Here are some illustrative fun facts:
-After a recent decline in the murder rate, you are now fractionally more likely to die while biking than to be murdered in the Netherlands!
-In Amsterdam, you're still more likely to be murdered, though.
-You're also more likely to die by murder in the U.S. as a whole than by biking in the Netherlands.
-You are also more likely to drown here than either die biking or be murdered, especially if you are a child.


In 2007, 189 people died in bike accidents in the Netherlands, about half of them hit by cars. Another 7,240 were injured badly enough to merit a trip to a hospital. Those numbers are from traffic ministry data released in April 2008.

That's out of a population of 16.3 million. The Dutch own 18 million bikes, a little more than 1 bike per man, woman and child in the country. Around half the population rides a bike once a day. The average distance traveled by bike PER PERSON PER DAY was 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) in 2006, according to the Central Bureau for Statistics.



Car travel comes out to 16 kilometers (10 miles) per person per day.

Bikes injuries were a substantial amount of the total traffic deaths and serious injuries:
In all there were 791 traffic deaths (including cars, pedestrians, scooters and bikes), and total hospitalizations were 16,750.

That means 25 percent of traffic accident deaths were bike traffic deaths, and 43 percent (!) of traffic accident hospitalizations were bikers.

After the MORE: some perspective.



One could conclude from all this that traveling by car is safer than traveling by bike in the Netherlands. That's true on a per-kilometer basis. Of course, bikers are making lots of short trips; if they were to switch to cars, car injury and death figures would rise.

Despite the increasing distances covered by the Dutch, the bicycle has retained its popularity. The bicycle is used for almost a quarter of all journeys. In fact for distances up to 7.5 km, the bicycle is the most popular means of transport. In 2005, 35% of all trips up to 7.5 km were made by bicycle.

-Transport Ministry

Bikes are used in almost a quarter of all journeys; and they account for around a quarter of all deaths. Bikers are more exposed (yes, head injuries are the worst threat), but cars are usually going faster when they crash.

Some international figures here:

Overall traffic safety in the Netherlands continues to be the best in Europe, with 45 deaths per million inhabitants per year. That compares with 90 per million traffic deaths per million average in Europe. The 'worst' country in Europe, Greece, has 145 deaths per million, which compares with 147 deaths per million average in the United States. Canada is at about the European average, 91, while Japan is only slightly worse than the Netherlands, at 57 deaths per million.


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Lunatic in the Netherlands takes whole "pitfall" idea a little too far

(photo: traugott/ De Telegraaf)
Some lunatic has been digging pits in a Dutch forest and lining them with spikes.

International Herald Tribune story.

A passer-by alerted police after finding a pit 1.5 meters (5 feet) deep and 80 centimeters (2 1/2 feet) wide in Helden's Forest near the southern city of Venlo on Sunday.

It had been camouflaged with leaves and at the bottom were 25 steel spikes ranging from 15-30 centimeters (6-12 inches) in length, fixed in a concrete block, police spokeswoman Nicole Theun said.

"We've never seen anything like this before — I don't think anybody in the Netherlands has," Theun said. "It's out of a horror movie."

-Associated Press



According to De Telegraaf (Dutch), a month ago a man was injured by a similar trap.

The paper quotes an expert as saying "this must be the work of a psychopath."

"This is not a joke any more _ children could fall into this," said Cees Meijer of Consumers and Safety.

Put yourself in the mind of the person(s) that did this for a minute: if he were targeting someone in particular, he had a very small chance of actually getting him or her in this way, so that can't be the aim.

If he was targeting a class of people: why? In any case it couldn't be bikers or motorcyclists, as some Dutch media have suggested, because if they rode into the pit, they'd just be thrown over the handlebars.

If it's just a joke, it has obviously gone too far.

In every scenario, it's an insane amount of work and planning to fix the spikes in concrete, lug it out there, dig a pit that deep, and then cover it up.

The chance of getting caught would be much less if he would just go shoot random people in the woods...



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Corpus

Before I forget: I recently visited a new museum.



Okay, it's gimmicky. However, I have never seen what they can do with high-definition 3-D TV these days before. It's pretty wild.

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And Now For Something Completely Different

(unfortunately, all photos on this post are not mine, so plain-jane copyrighted for the time being).

Somebody else's vacation.

I promised myself long ago I would never apologize for not updating this blog frequently enough. Now I feel guilty anyhow. Basically I've got a lot of things going on right now. And in that spirit, I bring you this.

A good friend of mine _ I'll call him "Jan" _ recently went to Australia "to find out about a girl," as they say. I'll call her "Sheila."

Jan:

Sheila:
(note the red hair: he never had a chance...)

I feel somewhat responsible for all of this because I was dressed up as Steve Irwin with a sting ray barb through my chest for Halloween in Amsterdam. That prompted her to introduce herself _ and proved the icebreaker that ultimately led to their (stormy) relationship.

Basically, he's a great guy and she's a cool chick, but you know, it's got to work.
I'm not the type to show you the photos of wallabies and kangaroos. Instead, here are a few glimpses from the road.

(couldn't this be california in 1977?)

(watch out for these!)

(Apparently on the other side was "the Male brain," divided between just sex, beer and football.)

(a pub in Melbourne. Nice mix of people).

(nightfall. Anybody else love the mood of this time of day?)

(Sheila at a car show)

(Australia Day).

(The erstwhile couple).

The upshot of the vacation was, she's there and he's back here. They want to be together, but neither has a work visa for the other's country. To be continued...
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