Oh Those Crazy Cloggies

Your Happening World (12)

Internet, Linky Linky, Media, Natural World, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
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A quick look at the more interesting stories found today.

  • Inconcievable! The Press Complaints Commission has actually ruled in favour of a complaint — and against Rod Liddle’s goat curry rant.
  • The rant in question: “The overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community. Of course, in return, we have rap music, goat curry and a far more vibrant and diverse understanding of cultures which were once alien to us. For which, many thanks.” Fucker.
  • More on ACTA. Scariest part: the whole treaty will be in force once five member states ratify it!
  • The Randstad as positive example for other dense conurbations. The Randstad (Edge City) is the Dutch name for the western part of the Netherlands, roughly between Rotterdam and Den Haag in the South and Amsterdam and Utrecht in the North. This is the most densely populated part of the Netherlands and the unique thing about it is that the most dense parts are at the edge of this region, surrounding what’s called the Green Heart (het Groene Hart. Instead of huge single core megacity therefore we got several bigish centres growing towards each other, with smaller satellite cities and towns surrounding them. There’s a continuing and decades old struggle between this drive and the desire to protect the agricultural heart of this area.
  • Obcomix: Paul Gravett: In search of the Atom Style part 1 and part 2.
  • Something worthwhile at the Daily Mail? Yep! Wonderful pictures of unearthly beauties.
  • Also at the Daily Mail: Newspaper astounded to discover that area woman has tits.

Actually, the Netherlands is not so bad after all

Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
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Making Light has discovered Dutch politics again. Since its audience is largely Anglo-American, it’s been interesting to see its response to the quite weird Dutch way of doing things (weird, that is, if you’re not used to it). It’s always interesting to see your own country described through strange eyes, especially when it’s portrayed as positive as Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s vision:

I think I first started thinking along these lines while you, Teresa, and I drove across Flevoland when we visited you last Spring. An entire province made of new land raised from the Zuyder Zee in our lifetimes. Watching the geometrically-regular roadside tree-plantings fly past the car windows, I began to feel I had some idea of what the inside of a terraformed generation starship would feel like.

The Netherlands aren’t just an intensely built environment–I live in one of those myself. They’re an intensely built environment in which one can discern, in social attitudes, political assumptions, ongoing social arrangements, and current events, constant signs of a common-sensical attitude that hey, we’re all living here together in this gigantic machine that we’ve built over the last thousand years, and however much we disagree about other stuff, we’d better cooperate enough to keep the machine working or we’ll all drown.

No, I’m not idealizing modern Dutch society; yes, I know they have plenty of problems; nobody needs to jump in with a post setting me straight on this point. But yes–there are ways in which the modern Netherlands feels, to an American like me, like the setting of a very interesting and well-worked out SF novel. And nothing about this fact is uncomplimentary to the modern Netherlands.

Patrick is right about the problems facing the country: the economic crisis, supposedly over but which left us with a budgetary hole of some 29 billion euros. Then there’s Wilders and the larger problem of racism and islamophobia here, not to mention the current law ‘n order/back to the fifties fashion amongst certain politicians. But when you look at the big picture, the Netherlands still is an incredibly rich, prosperous country with problems that many would envy us. Every now and again we need to understand how lucky we are to have been born into it.

First Dutch airbike flown

Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, Video
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A second year student at the Technical University Delft has managed to design, build and fly his very own airbike, an ultralight airplane powered by muscle power. It may have only flown for two metres and as many seconds, but it’s something to be proud of nonetheless:



Ironically, “luchtfietsen” (to airbike) has a negative connotation here in the Netherlands, similar to “pie in the sky” in English, meaning to make wild, impractical, impossible plans… Not so much for Jesse van Kuijk!

Cricket, Gezellig Cricket

Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, Sport
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netherlands-cricket

The Netherlands takes on England today, but not at football for once.

After their defeat of Scotland, the the mostly amateur Dutch cricket team [full team list] have been tipped to be surprise upsetters at this weekend’s inaugural Cricket World 2020 Tournament, where’ll they’ll play against experienced, professional teams like India and the West Indies. It’s as though Barnstaple FC somehow got into the Champions League.

Today they take on England, but they’re not worried. Dutch captain Jeroen “Piglet” Smits:

“We are not intimidated by playing at Lord’s,” he says. “We are Dutch. It’s a historic day for Dutch cricket, and we want to make history that day.”

The cloggies certainly have got some gumption. They deserve to do well for that alone. I wonder what the Barmy Army will make of Cloggie fans?

hollandfans2

Hup Holland!