I have no real idea what this video is about, especially since the last part is in Dutch Danish, but it still made me laugh. Edited to add: about two seconds in the beginning are NSFW; I totally missed that when I posted this. In retrospect I’m not sure how. Anyway, there you go. Thanks for pointing it out, commenters!
Their website doesn’t help much either.
Tip o’ the fnärgen to BABloggee Thomas Siefert.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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May 23rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
LOL, that’s pretty funny. But don’t you think that opening bit is a little racy for the frontpage,without some kind of warning?
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Are you sure it’s Dutch in the end? I guess it’s Danish, don’t you think? (Although I’m not sure
).
Anyway: Indeed, it’s seems like a lot of fun! Maybe a movie coming out
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:50 pm
No - it’s all Danish - or Denglish.
That story is probably one of the high points of Danish cartoon art. Hilarous and out of print for many years (I have a first edition - somewhere …).
Very very irreverent. The artist was sued for libel (I think it was) and blasphemy by the then leader of the Christian Democrats.
Claus Deleuran (the artist) also drew and illustrate History of the Danes (and in the course of that most of the world). Sadly he died much much too young around the year 1200 (IIRC it’s been … more than fifteen years for sure). I got three of the volumes for my sister last year - second and third imprints and still cost me an arm and a leg.
Just goes to show how little I follow Danish news these days, since this is the first I hear of it. The voices look to be fairly wellknown Danish comedians - some I like, some I’ve grown to dislike. I liked Casper Christensen some … twelve years ago, but what little I’ve seen of him lately have been profoundly annoying.
This has been your irrelevant rant of the night. Thank you.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Dutch?! Please don’t call us Dutch when we are clearly Danish! As you might notice in the trailer the scorching starts in Denmark. And did you miss all the (burning) danish flags?
The tag-line of “Rejsen til Saturn” = “The trip to Saturn” is “Det kan kun gå galt” = “It can only go wrong”.
It’s a animated film starring some pretty funny danish comedians. I’m certainly going to watch it. It will be tongue-in-cheek all the way. Very promising..
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Dutch? You mean danish?!
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Man, I am tired of ignorant Americans confusing Danish for Dutch! We are not Dutch damnit! We don’t have dykes, clugs, legal weed and windmills. We have pastries, bacon, LEGO and cartoon controversies!
Also, I think a more appropriate translation would be “The Journey to Saturn”.
Hell, the announcer even say “Denmark” and “Danish”, in addition to the flags, it appears written. Also Denmark is the only country focused on in the beginning.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Oh I do disagree. the Copenhagen Harbor has many beautiful Danish windmills.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Not that I want to pluck your linguistic dingle-berries, I know how much of pain in the neck that is, but Danes speak Danish and the Dutch (people from Holland) speak Dutch.
Also while we’re at it, Häagen-Dazs is not Danish no Dutch, but American.
Sili, “Rejsen Til Saturn” was re-relased a few years back in hardback at a reasonable price. I think I paid more having it shipped to the UK than the book itself.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Maybe so, James. But we are not internationality famous for it, neither is it used in our stereotypes. The only way you can talk to Americans is with stereotypes!
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Glad to see that it snuck the Wilhelm scream in there!
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Sorry Thomas, not all Dutch people are from Holland.
Holland is just one part of the Netherlands…
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Sad to see that the stereotype mercun’ joke “Denmark, isn’t that the capitol of Amsterdam?” is still based on truth.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Not really, Svip… Now I accuse you of stereotpying Americans! Though most of us, roughly 2/3’s are dumb and ignorant.. not all of us are! We just make mistakes *shrug*
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
IMDB describes it as :
A danish crew of misfits travel to Saturn in search for natural resources. However, the planet is colonized by a ruthless army of Aliens that turn their eye on Earth and invade Denmark. Thus, the crew change their mission to liberate Denmark.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Actually, “Dutch” is a fabrication by the old English, from the times the Netherlands was still a collection of provinces and the language spoken was called “Diets” or… “(Nieder)Deutsch”. See, the Germans (also a bit incorrect, not only people from the tribe of Germanen lived in Deutschland) and the Nederlanders, spoke more or less the same language, even though with a great many forms of dialect. The people from the Netherlands thus speak “Nederlands”. (Although, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German and Dutch are very much the same language group (also old English), and there is quite some overlap, the Scandinavian languages being the more authentic of the lot)
And yes, the video is in Danish, as is quite clear from where it is set, in image, word and writing.
Nevermind, we in Europe usually also don’t have a clue which US state is where exactly, you guys just all speak the same language (more or less) so these mistakes are a bit harder to make.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
@James: I know I was stereotyping Americans. It’s called irony.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:23 pm
There is a blog in English relating to the production of the movie here:
http://rejsentilsaturn.blogspot.com/
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:23 pm
hahaha… this whole discussion reminds me of an recent South Park episode… Denmark the Canada of Europe. Witch is obviously not true…:))
Hopefully our dear BA knows the difference between Bucharest and Budapest :))
P.S. I went to Denmark for some time on an exchange program. I liked the cartoons…
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I’m from Holland and Danish doesn’t even sound remotely dutch (or maybe just a little…). That movie is defenitely Danish.
So I’ll just go back to my marihuana and visit some legal prostitutes. But at least we dutch won’t blow up the world with a failing saturn V…
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
By Jove! Something’s truly rotten in the state of Denmark!
As a Dutch US resident I can only take offense of course in being mistaken for a viking raider. Note that viking is deliberately used as an adjective, not a name.
The Dutch and Danish languages are actually quite different - even to the unaided eh.. ear I would have thought. Northern Germanic vs. Western Germanic language groups, that sort of stuff.
We both brew excellent beers though.
BTW: the Pennsylvania Dutch are neither Dutch nor Danish. They’re German. From “Deutsch” - say it out loud.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Sorry guys, us Yanks get that confused a lot. :[
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Uh, yeah, Phil… I think you might have missed the cgi fellatio there…
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:41 pm
The Danish are quite a charming folk by the way, I spent quite some time in Copenhagen, one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever been with was Danish. Actually, if (if) you try a little, coming from the Netherlands, you can actually understand quite a lot. The Germans I was with at the time seemed to think Dutch and Danish sounded very similar as well. We do not both brew excellent beers though (some decent pilseners maybe) that is clearly reserved for the Belgian.
Cheers! or Proost! or Skol!
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
@svip, I’m sorry man, but you are wrong: I’ve actually met a danish dyke, so you do have them.
(sorry… couldn’t resist)
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Woo! It has been fixed in the post! \o/ Another victory to the Danish Empire!
Also, Clan:Rewired, I think you’ll find it is spelt “skål” in Danish.
We have crazy letters. Dutch doesn’t… only ij.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:47 pm
@bswift
Oh, don’t get me started now…. Too late.
Yank, short for Yankee, was in the early days of the colonies a deregoritive term for especially Dutch settelers, though later applied by the Britisch to refer to early Americans.
It’s supposedly a reference to the Duch “Jan Kaas” (John Cheese) or more likely to the common Dutch names “Jan” and “Kees”, or the common Dutch name “Jan-Kees” (double first names are today as popular as ever in the Netherlands).
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Wait a minute. Americans now tell me where my language comes from? I’m confused.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
“Marcel-Jan”
See?
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Yes, I thought someone would spell that out… I don’t have those letters on my keyboard and was too lazy to go on the web and CTRL- CTRL-V.
“ui” is pretty weird as well (the way we pronounce it).
And I still wonder where my sweet Sine is… I seemed to have lost her contact….
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
@Clan:Rewired:
That is a lame excuse. I know how to locate the 32 ‘comarcas’ in my region, which form 3 of the 50 provinces in my country (Spain) and I can also locate all the countries in the World and name their capitals. This I studied when I was 12 (and I am 28 now…) So it would be the same effort for an American to know how to place their states and then also know where all the countries in the World are (and their capitals).
I am sick of the lame excuse: “We Europeans don’t know the States in USA, so it’s ok that Americans don’t know where xxx country is”. Of course we don’t know the states. But you don’t know either the provinces in Canada, the departments in Mexico or Colombia or the 47 ‘ken’ in Japan. But you probably have a general knowledge of World Geography.
Once I said this, I can understand someone can make a mistake. We are humans and The Bad Astronomer can make mistakes. But next time… check world flags at least
PS. For Americans: Spain is in Europe. Yes, south of France and east of Portugal. Dammit, we sold you ‘La Florida’ and now it’s a state. You should have studied that at some point in “American History”
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Maybe a lame excuse, but really, I commend that you can remember all that stuff, I for one can’t, I have a general idea of the countries in Africa, Asia, South America, but if you would ask me exactly where they are in relation to eachother, I think I would have a bit of a problem as well, as is with their languages. It just isn’t on my mind a whole lot, I got other stuff I remember really well.
I’m just being a bit kind here, on other days I may start calling people names when they make mistakes like that. Whatever..
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
@Clan:Rewired & Gololo
Oh, those pesky Spaniards. Not the first time we run into them… Will it be the last?
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:10 pm
?
Spaniard? Moi?
Not me, although maybe soon I’ll be hanging there, in preparation for Middle America…
What about the cartoon though, wasn’t this thread about that? And the Danish? And how cute they are?
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Whoa jeez. Might want to slap an NSFW tag on this one.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:23 pm
@Mosez: incredible! you learn something new every day! :]
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
ADB, NSFW why? Just because this one girl in bikini agrees a lot (judged by the heavy nodding), and some other girls in real tight shirts seem to have some itching that needs lots of rubbing? NIPPLEGAAAAATE! :p
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
For future reference:
.dk = Danish domain
.nl = Dutch domain
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Sheesh, touchy Danish people.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Looks cool! I liked how the Western Hemisphere was spared until the missiles went off.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:43 pm
The fireworks going off when the fire sweeps over china are priceless
(Nicely packed with near racist stereotypes anyway, but cute)
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Does anyone feel like explaining the Pennsylvania Dutch to the Europeans or is that a subject for another time? ;^)
(Hint for the mean time: think of Americans and how we would use the word “Deutsch”.)
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Mena.. I for am on the edge of my seat!
Phil likes to keep the content ‘clean’ though (even though the cartoon clearly isn’t).
Go!
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Not Safe For Work, Dr. Plait, you sicko!!
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Not everyone wants to see 4 animators so successful that they get knobers on thier couch.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Nothing personal against Saturn, but Uranus is a much funnier planet.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Come on guys, I know we have a bad reputation in Denmark for making cartoons that, unfortunately, insult some people, but after all it’s just an animation. And the animators have only made one previous large animation movie (”Terkel i knibe”=”Terkel in trouble”), and while it was succesfull it did certainly not bring in 45 billion danish kroner (=9.6 billion usd). Besides that, I can’t wait till this movie is out! Hopefully it will be translated into english, so you can enjoy it too :-).
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:12 pm
thanks for reminding me. I need to make that YouTube Video about Uranius. My idea is to have a NASA press confrence where NASA scientist openly admit, for the first time, that they have intentionally neglected to fund any research of Uranius solely to avoid all the bad jokes.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Now THAT’S a rocket.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Dibs on the NASA, Uranius YouTube video… now, noone beat me to it… I will get it done shortly.
… by the way, this cartoon about oral… favors .. you know, see the first 25 seconds of this video … plus the selling of the naked calendar of athiest superheros on this website… I have to wonder if the ol’ excitement of bashing the Apollo HB’s has become old hat and we are stooping to new lows to get internet hits.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Je suis heureux de Français sont tenus à l’écart de cette situation. (Sauf les vilains vendeur de cartes postales se incinérés.) Toutefois, ce me rappelle une plaisanterie Français sur les Américains.
Deux étudiants Américains sont à pied sur les Champs-Elysées quand on voit une statue de Voltaire.
Étudiant 1: «Regardez! Rachmaninov! ”
Étudiant 2: “Oui. Dat dat dat daaaah! “(Début de Beethoven 5e Symphonie.)
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Ah, from the land that spawned ‘Reptilicus”! I’m sold!
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
You are correct antaresrichard! But it should be added that “Reptilicus” was directed by Sid Pink, an American who also wrote the screenplays for “Angry Red Planet” and “Journey to the Seventh Planet”.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0684335/
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I’ll get all worried about the whole Dutch/Danish/Holland/Netherlands/Amsterdam thing if you Europeans can tell me the capital of South Dakota.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Sioux Falls or Piere?
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:58 pm
How should I know? I’m from Tennessee.
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër ?
//I know, I know, wrong country. Sorry, couldn´t resist.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:05 pm
@The Mutt,
South Dakota is a state which belongs to a nation that includes 49 other states and a few thingies and colonies and pseudo-colonies scattered around the Caribbean and the Pacific. Oh, yes, and DC. Almost forgot about that evil city.
Denmark is a nation, and the Netherlands is another nation. They are both part of an international somewhat confederative organization which includes 25 other nations. And they are all subdivided into lesser entities.
So let’s put the things at the same level, OK? I’ll tell you the capital of South Dakota if you can tell me the capital of Languedoc. Or that of Piemonte. Or that of Algarve. Or that of Asturies. Or that of Gotland. Or that of Wales.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Gotland?
C’mon, you’re making that up.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
For Wales, I would hazard a guess of Cardiff. And I know the capitol of Bavaria is Munich.
As to whether or not the American states are equivalent to departements or other regional divisions, well, that’s debatable. American states are actually sovereign entities. Sort of. And they wield considerable legislative power. In fact, if you break a law in the US and wind up facing prosecution, you will almost certainly be charged with violating a *state* law, not a federal one, even if a federal statue exists pertaining to your crime. Most of the everyday laws (minimum drinking age, traffic codes, debt collection practices, marriage and divorce laws, age of consent, legality of gambling, etc.) vary widely from state to state. This is not usually true of the smaller divisions within many European nations, which in many ways are more analogous to some kind of super-county. So the state capitols are more important here than they might be in some other countries, because so much of the real work of legislation is done at them and not in Washington.
That said, I would not expect a European to know the capitols of all 50 states. I would even be surprised to find many Americans who know them all. It’s just not information that you need very often, and while the state governments are very important locally, they are almost meaningless internationally. The federal government takes care of our international business, for the most part. So it’s worth knowing about Washington, DC, and perhaps useful to know that it is not actually in any state. But the rest is just trivia. Useful for quiz shows and impressing people in casual conversation, but not usually much else.
Mind you, I’m from Minnesota. In this part of the country, we’re pretty used to people not really knowing much about us. A lot of people think of us as the boring bit in the middle when flying from New York to Los Angeles. So I’m used to people not knowing the capitol. In fact, they usually think our capitol is Minneapolis. It’s not. It’s St Paul, the other (and older) of the two Twin Cities. Oh, the tales of Twin Cities politics, and the sensitivity of that particular error….
And for the person who guessed the capitol of South Dakota was either Pierre or Sioux Falls — good job! It’s Pierre. Most people get that wrong, guessing either Sioux Falls or Rapid City. Sioux Falls is the largest city, and the economic powerhouse of the state, large enough that it’s starting to grow a suburbia. It is still not big by European standards, though, with a metro population of about 187,000 (circa 2000; it’s been growing since then). Pierre, by contrast, has only about 14,000 residents.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Oh, and if you want to impress your friends at parties, a nice trick question is to ask the capital of New York. New York is yet another example of a state where its most populous city is not its capital. The capital is in Albany (a relatively modest city, pop ~94,000), though economically, it is vastly dwarfed by New York City. California is another one frequently confused. The capital isn’t San Fransisco or LA — it’s Sacramento.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Albania… Albania… You border on the Adriatic. Your land is mostly mountainous… And your chief export is chrome.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Neither Philadelphia nor Pittsburgh are the captiptal of PA…
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Here’s another for the USAsians, what’s the capital of Australia?
May 24th, 2008 at 12:08 am
@Dirty Harry
Considering their previous work (and this trailer for sure), I think we can be pretty certain that the makers of Rejsen til Saturn will make a real effort to offend as many people as possible.
I’m actually a little worried that this movie won’t be true to the spirit of the comic - that they’ll bury the original satire in abusive jokes. I have no doubt that it’ll be hysterically funny though, even if it might not be entirely accessible to non-danes…
May 24th, 2008 at 12:29 am
I was just looking at Wikipedia’s page on motion picture rating systems.
It’s interesting that some countries have as few as three ratings while others have at least eight.
Will this film get get a “7″, an “11″ or a “15″?
May 24th, 2008 at 1:43 am
I love the polar bear on the globe at the end with hot feet! Also the burning of the Danish flag as the wall of fire burns everyone is a great gag!
I missed the NSFW bit - I had to watch it a few times to see that!
May 24th, 2008 at 2:54 am
Hey, I’ll see any movie that makes use of the Star Wars yell!
May 24th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Ha ha ha Phil, you really stepped into that one! Funny how the Danes are much touchier about this than the Dutch…
Most of the time US state capitals are not the main cities of the state anyway (Sacramento, Albany, anyone?), and even Americans don’t generally know them (the capitol, on the other hand, everybody knows).
May 24th, 2008 at 3:54 am
Just to confuse things a little more, part of the county of Lincolnshire in England is also called Holland.
–
May 24th, 2008 at 6:19 am
@Calli Arcale,
We know what a federation is. Germany and Russia are federal republics. As are many other countries.
I’d be more impressed if you’d knew the federal subdivisions of Canada and the United Mexican States, and there capitals.
You know, two other countries in America.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:22 am
@Calli Arcale
I’m also a Minnesotan (though transplanted to Boston). I thought everyone’s idea of Minnesota was that it was a frozen, barren wasteland, where the ground is always white and people roam about speaking very long ‘o’s. Guess they don’t realize that our summers are brutal and that only people in more rural areas populated by folks of Norwegian descent have the really strong ‘o’s and ‘r’s.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:23 am
@Calli Arcale
I knew that. As Halcyon said, we know what a federation is, since we have quite a few in Europe. We even have a confederation, which in principle is even more decentralized than a federation: Switzerland. And there are plenty of autonomous territories even in otherwise non-federative countries, like the Portuguese Atlantic archipelagos, for instance.
The US being a federation doesn’t change the fact that its states are 1st order subdivisions with pretty much the same level of international relevance as all the other 1st level subdivisions, from the German Lander to the Maltese municipalities. They are not at all comparable to European nations. They don’t have seats in the UN. That alone should be a pretty strong hint.
And besides, I’ll believe American states are really sovereign entities when I see one of them seceding from the Union without causing a civil war with the other 49.
@The Mutt
Nope, not making it up. Google is your friend. One hint: Sweden.
(And don’t worry: I don’t know what its capital is either. I know where to find that information if I need it, though)
May 24th, 2008 at 8:52 am
So Chip, what was that? Spanish?
[Ducks behind chair]
May 24th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Very smart reference to the cartoons controversy.
Protect freedom of speach!
May 25th, 2008 at 4:09 am
I’ve never put much stock in the myth of the ignorant American, unable to find or name any country other than their own. But if the BA, a man of obvious intelligence and education, misses all the references to Denmark (the satellite photo, the flags, the written “Denmark” on the rockets) and thinks the language is Dutch…
USA: Doomed.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Yes Chip, I’m still suffering from the Cinemagic eye strain Sid gave me in ‘59. Hey, how about the American butchery of “Rymdinvasion i Lappland” (US title: “Invasion of the Animal People”) for getting the Swiss, the Swedes, the Lapps, and a map of Greenland all balled into one!
May 25th, 2008 at 7:24 am
@ BA:
This might be interesting for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYZXARhDgPM
Can you tell us where the bad astronomy is there…?
July 12th, 2008 at 7:59 am
# James Says:
Oh I do disagree. the Copenhagen Harbor has many beautiful Danish windmills.
Sorry James, but that is not correct. There are alot of Windturbines in Copenhagen Habour, not Windmills.. I actaully only think there are about 2 or 3 Windmills in Denmark, but they are very common in The Netherlands.
And to get into the dutch/danish discussion.. Both Denmark & The Netherlands rocks!.
Soo. hmm. For me it wouldn’t matter to be confused as a dutch person (i’m danish).. If they confused me with a Swede, then it’s another story ;). hehe
Chris