Archive for June, 2010

The idea that Jesus died on a cross is probably a wrong interpretation of Biblical texts. That’s what a Swedish scientist concludes after studying historic texts. Theologian Gunnar Samuelsson of the Göteborg University claims that Jesus never got crucified but instead was hanged unto a pole.

The scientist claims there is no literature that explicitly mentions the crucifiction. In the Bible they write only about the ‘staurus’ Jesus had to carry up the Golgotha mountain, a word which a lot of historians have translated as ‘cross’ but which should be much accurately translated as ‘pole’, the Swedish scientist suggests.

Roman, Greek and Hebrewe literature suggests that executions where people were nailed unto a cross have not been existant in the ancient days of the roman empire at all, says Samuelsson. Hanging prisoners unto a pole, however, was quite common in those days.

Samuelsson thinks the image of Jesus on a cross exists because of the imagination of ancient artists that were made long, long after his death.

‘There are simply no description of Jesus or anyone else in that time being crucified’ Samuelsson says, ‘the whole thing is based upon imagination and myth’.

Samuelsson vermoedt dat het beeld van Jezus aan het kruis is ontstaan door artistieke afbeeldingen die veel later zijn gemaakt.

Will Mel Gibsson remake his rather kitschy torture episode ‘Passion of the Christ’ now? Maybe a bit less dramatic, with a pole instead of a cross? Beyong doubt lack of nails and blood wouldnt fare well with hollywood audiences. And what about all these people wearing crosses around their necks, will they now be replaced with poles? Are we going to hear ‘He poled for your sins’ now when we get lectured?

These are exciting times!

A poll of 1,000 pregnant women for the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists found that many pregnant women often wear high heels or stilleto type shoes nowadays. And since 7 out of 10 pregnant women complain about swollen ankles, swollen feet and arch and heel pain there seems a significant link between both.

The same survey also suggests half of those polled actually feel pressure to keep looking like the celebrities while pregnant.

It’s hard to think of a more silly line of logic. Here we have women who are potentially ruining their entire feet by putting heavy weight on its muscle and bone structure in the vain hope they still look like some celebrity while being pregnant.

What kind of person wants to look like a celebrity anyway? Especially when one is pregnant. This should be called the ‘silly ego syndrome’. In my opinion all current psychological and psychiatrical diseases should be scrapped out of the shrinks handbooks, all pills destroyed, because all these people suffer from one disease only: the silly ego syndrome.

The silly ego syndrome

What is the silly ego syndrome, you ask Dr Benders? Well wanting to risk your childs health (because you could fall and injure yourself and the baby) just because you think someone else might be tricked into thinking you are a celebrity (don’t these people get it – being cool is not about being worried what others think!) certainly classifies as having a very silly ego.

Everyone who has a silly ego has the silly ego syndrome.

Ok, so how do i know if I have the silly ego syndrome?

You probably do, I know very few sane people.

Right so how can we actually cure the silly ego syndrome?

I have seen no one that got cured of this horrible disease yet. In fact it has just been discovered, today, by me through sheer mental observation. I just might compose a special CD people can listen to with music specially devoted to cure the silly ego syndrome, but I’m afraid Phil Collins and Bono already did so abundantly.

So what advice do you have to offer Dr Benders?

Get real.

A primeur on Loewak: we managed to get a preview of the new BP logo.
It happens to be copyright free, so feel free to post it on your own site.
It’s a funny way of protesting one of the most incompetent disasters ever.
The disaster named ‘Tony’.

Tony Hayward and his sailing trip

I have been reading a lot of comments in European media about how the Media in the US is supposed to be biased about the British origine of BP by publically calling them ‘British patrol’ which is nothing less than their real name. Hell, if they ruined one of the most beautiful sites in my country you can bet your ass I would call them by their real name and a lot more. I find it weird that the government by definition seems to think that BP had the experise to solve this problem. Isn’t deep sea drilling a relatively new technique? If so, how can you say that a company has ‘expertise’ when they just started doing so, apparantly without the necissary safety standards?

To make matters far worse, Tony Hayward, amidst all criticism of handling this oil disaster in an absolutely incompetent way, decides to go on a sailing trip. A sailing trip? Yes, this ocean lover goes on a beautiful sailing trip with his son to the Isle of Wright, a very very British island with very very British people on it.

The isle of wight

Are British guys all named Tony? And do they all exhibit this sort of inexcusable level of indifference to public sentiment? If I would be an American I’d be pretty close to the ‘rabies point’, I can tell you that. This guy thinks he can go sailing on unspoiled waters on his yacht in the midst of the greatest oil disaster of all time caused by his company? Is he even sane? Is there a more typical example of the absolute carelessness of our political elites, of the absolute contempt they feel for, well, reality? These people live in a dream world at the expense of mankind. It’s about time we, the public, make companies and their leaders accountable for their actions.

Maybe its also that Europeans are horribly insensitive to propaganda in general. I dont even think it’s possible an American CEO would even consider going on a yacht trip under these conditions.

On the other hand, it raises questions about these ‘guilt trials’ in the American senate that clearly only serve the function of smoothing the public anger. It all seems to be puppet guilt – how can we take such confessions serious under these conditions? The show must go on. I just had the idea to revise the logo of BP. I will post that revision later on.

Interactive is interactive

I dreamt
that I could get a nice new car
or no a weird new car
or no a new unknown car
for free, or better said
500 bucks a month
and just a half year
said the salesman
in my dream.

And what happens
after that half year
with the new unknown car
I asked him. ‘After a half
year you pay normally’
he said and I asked
what happens if you can’t
‘you can sell it and
we simply call it even’
the salesman who had
just a narrative function
in my dream said.

In my dream
I saw advertisements of others
that sold the same new unknown car
for a quite normal price.

And I thought: yes. That’s a good action.
That’s a very good new unknown action.

In the future we will
live our daily life in a world
that is completely free
of advertisements.

Martijn Benders, 20-06-2010

Just updated to WordPress 3.0 – the open source CMS that Loewak runs on – and I must say that this time they got about everything right. Especially the side menu option was (I think) a reason many people still preferred a (in my opinion) much more sluggish and inflexible CMS system as Joomla or Drupal. I work with all CMS systems as a designer and programmer but I highly prefer WordPress since its usability is simply way way better than that of any other CMS system. The intereface designers of WordPress are simply top class and many, many – a software builder could learn a lot from simply looking how the people who build WordPress have set up their user menu’s and usability.

Frankly, I think WordPress should be forcefed to the people at Microsoft and Adobe. Especially the latter have ruined their software with a kind of usability that is, well, maybe useful to some people who like to spend their time figuring out what the hell can be used for what. I find the usability of Adobe products ranking amongst the worst usabilities I have seen – they probably hired some expensive consultants who knew exactly what we all want just in case we couldnt figure it out ourselves.

But no, the new WordPress is wonderful. It became a real adult CMS system now instead of just some weblog software. The new design is minimalism done the right way, and it comes with a nicely designed default theme (about time too!) which will greatly improve the looks of a lot of weblogs (or at least lets hope so!)