The Difference between Holland & the Netherlands

Script

Welcome to the Great nation of Holland: where the tulips grow, the windmills turn, the breakfast is chocolatey, the people industrious, and the sea tries to drown it all.

Except, this country isn't Holland. It's time for:

The Difference Between Holland, the Netherlands (and a whole lot more)

The correct name for this tulip growing, windmill building, hagelslag eating, container ship moving, ocean conquering nation is the Netherlands.

But confusion is understandable -- the general region been renamed a lot over a thousand including as:

• The Dutch Republic
• The United States of Belgium and
• The Kingdom of Holland

But it's not just history that makes this country's name confusing because the Netherlands is divided into twelve provinces:

• Groningen
• Drenthe
• Overijssel
• Gelderland
• Limburg
• Brabant
• Zeeland (Which, by the way, is the Zeeland that makes this Zeeland, new)
• Friesland (With adorable little hearts on its flag)
• Flevoland
• Utrecht, and here's the confusion:
• Noord (North) Holland and
• Zuid (South) Holland

These provinces make calling the Netherlands 'Holland' like calling the United States 'Dakota'. Though unlike the Dakotas, which are mostly empty, save for the occasional Jackalope, the two Hollands are the most populated provinces and have some of the biggest attractions like, Amsterdam and Keukenhof.

Chances are if it's Dutch, and you've heard of it, it's in one of the Hollands.

Even the government's travel website for the country is Holland.com -- officially because it sounds friendlier, but unofficially it's probably what people are actually searching for.

Confusion continues because: People who live in the Hollands are called Hollanders, but all citizens of the Netherlands are called Dutch as is their language. But in Dutch they say: Nederlands sprekende Nederlanders in Nederland which sounds like they'd rather we call them Netherlanders speaking Netherlandish. Meanwhile, next door in Germany, they're Deutsche sprechen Deutsch in Deutschland. Which sounds like they'd rather be called Dutch.

This linguistic confusion is why Americans call the Pennsylvania Dutch Dutch even though they're Germans.

To review: this country is the Netherlands, its people are Dutch, they speak Dutch. There is no country called Holland, but there are provinces of North and South Holland.

Got it? Great, because it's about to get more complicated.

The Netherlands is part of a Kingdom with the same name: The Kingdom of the Netherlands -- which is headed by the Dutch Royal Family.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands contains three more countries and to find them we must sail from the icy North Sea to the Caribbean and Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten.

These are no territories, but self-governing countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and as such they have their own governments, and their own currencies.

Geography geek side note here:

While Aruba and Curaçao are islands, Sint Maarten is just the Southern Half of a tiny island also named Saint Martin the other half of which is occupied by France and also named Saint Martin. So despite being separated by Belgium on the European map, The Kingdom of the Netherlands and the French Republic share a border on the other side of the world on an island so nice they named it thrice.

But why does the Kingdom of the Netherlands reach to the Caribbean anyway? Because, Empire.

In the 1600s the Dutch, always looking to expand business, laid their hands on every valuable port they could. For a time, America's East Coast was 'New Netherland' with its capital city of New Amsterdam. There was New Zealand, as mentioned previously, and nearby, the king of the islands, New Holland. Though the empire is gone, these three Caribbean nations remain.

And while four countries in one kingdom, isn't unheard of, it doesn't stop there, because the country of the Netherlands, also extends its borders to the Caribbean and three more islands: Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.

These are not countries in a Kingdom, but are cities of the Country of the Netherlands and they look the part. Residents of these far-flung cities vote in elections for the Dutch government just as any Hollander would. Though, weirdly, they don't belong to any province and they don't use the Dutch currency of Euros, they use Dollars instead. It's kind of like if Hawaii wasn't a state, but technically part of the District of Columbia, all the while using the Yen.

These cities of the Country of the Netherlands and these countries in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, are together are known as the Dutch Caribbean. And their citizens are Dutch citizens. Which, because the Kingdom of the Netherlands is a member of the European Union, means these Dutch Caribbeans are also Europeans.

So in the end, there are 6 Caribbean islands, four countries, twelve provinces, two Hollands, two Netherlands and one kingdom, all Dutch.

Notes & Corrections

• The ç in Curaçao should be pronounced with an 's' sound.
• Frieslanders will often claim that the little hearts on their flag are actually waterlillies, but that's only because they are embarassed by the little hearts on their flag.

Can Texas Secede from The Union?

I decided to make this video after the fuss about the latest petition let Texas secede from The Union. While these stories do pop up every few years the WhiteHouse.gov petition is interesting because it asks people when they sign for their state of residence.

I asked on Twitter if anyone could scrape the data and one of my followers, Ben Buchwald, came through. After shoving the raw data into a spreadsheet, here are the results:

View fullsize

The giant blue wedge is people from Texas, the big green wedge is people who didn't want to give their location, and the 2% to 1% wedges are the rest of the states, Puerto Rico and, interestingly, a few American military personnel overseas.

However, a graph like this isn't really very informative. The interesting question is which states most want Texas to go. Sorting by number of signatures isn't helpful because then you just end up with a graph of population. So I've divided the number of signatures by population to yield a graph of per-capita support for Texas secession in the other 49 states:

View fullsize

This graph was the exact opposite of my expected results: I guessed that Democratic states, such as New York and California would top the list and Republican States would be at the bottom, but the graph shows the exact opposite.

It looks like support for Texas leaving the Union is highest among those who a Texas exit would hurt the most politically.

Links

• Nate Silver, the mathematical predicting guru behind 538 has an interesting proposal on exactly where the borders of the five new Texas states should be drawn
• List of states by tax dollars received and spent and a related article in the Economist

Script

Can Texas Secede from the Union?

America's second most populated and second largest state is always first to remind you that it was once an independent nation: The Republic of Texas.

Unlike California's three-week, almost accidental flirt with independence (and a hideous flag) the Republic of Texas was a real country with its own presidents, and laws and currency for a decade from 1836 until 1846 when it joined the Union to become the 28th state, thankfully evening out the number of stars.

This happy marriage led pretty much immediately to the Mexican-American war over the question of over how big Texas was. America, as the victor, got to decide the answer: very big.

While Texas gave up its complete independence to join The Union, it didn't give up its independent streak -- and filed for divorce, along with several other states, a scant 15 years later. This domestic dispute was settled not with flowers but with force, something that many are still grumbly about today.

But History aside in modern times could Texas still be a real country? In other words: could Texas succeed if it secedes?

In terms of population, an independent Texas would be the world's 46th largest country with 26 million citizens. And, those citizens would make Texas the 13th largest economy. So the New Texas Republic would be comparable to Australia, except in the size department.

But what about the Federal money that goes to Texas? Those interstate highways don't build themselves, you know. For a majority of states, independence would be a financial problem. Mississippi, for example get two dollars from Washington for every one it sends in taxes so an independent Magnolia Republic would be bankrupt almost instantly.

But not Texas, which gives more money to the federal government in taxes than it gets back. There's no reason why independent Texas couldn't keep those highways paved and give its citizens a small happy-Texapendency-day Tax cut.

So from a financial perspective: The New Texas Republic gets a check.

Now the question is can Texas legally secede? And the answer is... no... not at all.

Despite popular belief, even by politicians who should know better, the Texas constitution does not include a get-out-of-The-Union-free clause no matter how much Texans, or citizens of other states, wish that it did.

However, the Texas Constitution does have a weird clause that allows it to divide itself into five states without the approval of congress. So Texas could, any moment, explode into the states perhaps named North Texas, South Texas, East Texas, West Texas and Austin -- which would quintuple its power in the Senate -- but not necessarily help it gain independence because there is no legal process for a state to exit The Union.

Though the constitution is mute on the issue, secession has come before the supreme court and, shockingly, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that States can't leave the United States.

But the legal question is, weirdly sort of moot. After all, the First Texas Republic didn't pop into existence out of nowhere -- Texas was originally a State of Mexico, which didn't allow Texas to leave, but leave Texas did anyway, though under less than harmonious circumstances.

While it's hard to imagine war between the New Texas Republic and the United States it isn't hard to imagine who would win that fight. Texas does have its own military, but seriously, nobody beats America in the war business.

So the only way Texas is leaving is if it can convince the United States to change its laws to let it leave. Which only as a chance of being discussed seriously if a majority of Texans want independence, which isn't remotely the case.

So while a New Texas Republic is interesting to think about -- particularly for some non-Texans, as of now it's a long way from becoming a reality.

Credits:

Images by rutlo and photoshop help from Larom Lancaster.

Digital Aristotle: Thoughts on the Future of Education

Blog

Ever since I started working as a teacher seven years ago, the future of education has been on my mind. I'm not sure that my most recent vlog has well articulated my thoughts on the matter, but it's a start.

I'm the first to admit that I do a bit of handwaving at the end of the video about Digital Aristotle -- near-artificial-intelligent software doesn't just pop into existence. But I'm comfortable with the handwaving for two reasons:

1. Technology evolves much faster than people expect.
2. Real AI isn't necessary for my vision of Digital Aristotle anyway.

There is a lot to be done with just simple testing across massive groups of students and this is something that the people at The Khan Academy, among others, are working on.

One last point that I'd like to be clear on: almost by definition a computer program can't teach social skills. There will always be a place where working adults send their kids to be socialized. Because of that I don't think that schools are going anywhere in the long term, I just don't think that the formalized education part of those schools will be anything like what we do now.

Recommended Reading

If you want to see the most sci-fi vision of the future of education, I suggest reading The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson. The main plot is about 'The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer' a computerized book. Coincidentally, The Diamond Age was the first book I read on a kindle, which made it a doubly enjoyable experience.

Links

• The Khan Academy, particularly this article about some of the behind-the-scenes work they're doing.
• I didn't have a chance to mention it in the video, but the people at TED-ed are also doing some interesting work in this field.
• An article about how easily children are able to teach themselves about computers
• There is also an interesting article at the Smithsonian magazine about some past predictions for the future of education that didn't work out.
• The book that the child version of me is holding in the video is The Way Things Work by David MacAulay. If there is a kid with even the slightest inclination toward engineering in your life, you should get them a copy.

Credits

Special thanks to YouTube EDU in general and Angela in particular for arranging the event.

YouTube EDU Artwork by Jessica Fan.

Music by Broke For Free

Images by jbird, johanl, gsfc, mike52ad, gsfc, mwichary, lobsterstew, wwworks, x1brett, lxn271, moyermk, frtz, alancleaver, dubsar, jasonff, epugachev, urosvelickovic, 56155476@N08, fakeeyes