All for the sake of animal welfare, or so it seems to be nowadays.
For every subspecies that mother nature has gifted our world with, we Dutchies have an action group that strive for the common welfare of the animal in question.

Ducks, chicken, sheep, cows, rabbits; all have certain groups favoring the quality of life of the animals, and on top of that we have several environmentalist groups striving to diminish animal-suffering and consumption of meat.
We know GroenFront!, Partij van de Dieren, and the one I’m discussing here: NVB. The Dutch Society for Vegetarians.

I know, they’re not particularly an animal-rights group judging by their name, but recent plans to make a vegetarian day obligatory in the lunch-halls of governmental organizations suggests otherwise.
Yes, you read it well: the NVB suggests all canteens of governmental institutions (including schools and such) should not serve meat on one day in the week, preferably on Friday.
The reasoning: "We’ll save 40.000 animals’ lives, and it’s good for the environment!".

The thing is: already, about 90% of all concerned canteens are serving vegetarian meals, about half of those do that all days of the week, all year round. About 5 to 10 percent of all meals served is vegetarian; which would forcefully be increased to about 20% when this plan is executed.
Why do organizations think making something obligatory solves the issue, when the relationship between the effect and measure is not unmistakingly proven? Meat is not neccessarily bad for our environment: overconsumption of meat is. Like anyting that is not used sensibly. Apparently, the NVB thinks they can save the lives of about 40.000 animals by merely changing the destination for their meat.
A large quantity of the Dutch meat is exported because of it’s excellent quality, and thus any meat that is designated for the Dutch market, yet remains unconsumed is just sold to someone else.
It could wind up as food for other animals, or even be processed in other, miscellaneous, food-products.

NVB: start thinking please.
I happen to know reddish meat contains a lot of proteïnes which are good for your blood and thus for the brain…

After the recent publication of the news that German students have successfully cracked the first layer of protection of the OV-chipcards which can be used with a subscription to travel with public transportation in the Rotterdam area, more news surrounding this system has surfaced yesterday.

A couple of Dutch students from the university of Nijmegen has successfully copied the throw-away version of the ov-chipcard, enabling them to travel for free as a new copy can be made without too much added effort.
This news has ‘shocked’ our Tweede Kamer, and a ‘spoeddebat’ (urgent debate) is planned for the upcoming week (which by the way has been asked for last week after the first news).

About 1 million of the subscription-capable cards are currently used, whilst about 10.000 throw-away cards (dagkaarten) are in use. Impact is thus limited, as only these latter cards are vulnerable (still).
Again: the company responsible for the cards (TLS) is to blame for this, yet more info on the copying-method has to be provided fot both us and them to see how the system (and the security-features) will cope with this setback.

Edit1: Apparently, the security of the daycard is really weak as details and information are shared in plaintext between the card and the terminal; while the subscription-cards do this encrypted.
Also, more information on the ‘hack’ is available: the student has created a device called Ghost which copies all info on the card and can be used itself to open the metro-gates and travel on the credit of the original card. So far, it is unclear whether the Ghost can still be used when the mama-card has no credit left. Some indications point to this, yet reasoning from the technique it should not as the Ghost simply copies the identification of the card and can be used to travel off off the same credit as the mama-card.

Edit 2 (2008-01-16): The CPNB only ruled the Amsterdam-trial of the OV-chipcard to be illegal due to the fact the travel-data will be stored for the enormously lengthy time of 7 years! In addition to this, the Amsterdam public transportation company (GVB) planned to deliver personalized ads based on the travel-routine. Yet more info has to surface to say more about the technical implementation of the security-system, I’m still waiting for that to happen (and post about it )

I’ll be posting updates whenever more news surfaces!