Let’s stick with some random news today.
I saw an interesting article on NOS.nl in Dutch: Gratis af te halen: veilige finishstraat voor wielerkoersen or “Free to pick up: Safe finish barriers for cycling courses”. I found a similar article in English from cyclingtips.com. A Belgian company made safety barriers for the last 400 meters of cycling competitions and are offering them for free. (In exchange the pieces are branded with their name so that they get exposure.)
The most interesting things about the barrier are:
- they are sloped 70 degrees from the ground back to the spectator, making it much more difficult to take a selfie or hang over the edge.
- the edges are outfitted with black arrows, giving the cyclists a small optical illusion that the course is narrowing and that they should steer inwards, staying away from the edges (…hopefully that works as the company hopes)
- they can be filled with water to make them heavier in windy environments
The Netherlands has also temporarily stopped using the AstraZeneca vaccine for two weeks while the European Medical Agency reviews the vaccine’s safety: Netherlands suspends use of AstraZeneca Covid vaccine amid blood clot investigation from nltimes.nl. 200,000 appointments in the next few weeks have been cancelled. Hopefully they will be rescheduled once use of the vaccine is cleared.
Haagse ‘Verkiezingskrant’ met stemlocaties en kandidaten niet overal bezorgd from omroepwest.nl (The Hague’s ‘Election Newspaper’ with polling places and a candidate list not delivered everywhere). This year The Hague’s government decided to include the information in a special newspaper rather than with the voting pass you receive in the mail. However some neighborhoods didn’t get one. Marco and I didn’t. Luckily the information is also available online for those who are digitally savvy, so it’s more a pain for those who are not.
And one final, very random article: Wurst case: Burglar caught over bite from German’s sausage. Including another worst/wurst pun…
Life in the Hague 