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| Honeybees, 99 Luftballons, and Episode 17 | Jul 05, 2012 7:36 AM PDT | url |
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Added 2 new A* pages:I tried using my old non-waterproof white ink to sort of squidge in the planet's cloud layer here, but I probably won't try doing it quite this way again as it was a pain and came out sort of soupy or omelety. =p Oh well it was a learning experience and I only got a *little* ink on myself!
Wondering where the silly names in today's subtitle came from? Well you could try looking them up yourself...or...just keep reading 'cause I like explaining my silly names. :P Ready? Okay.
"Mellifera" is from Apis mellifera, the scientific name for the "Western" or "European" honey bee--they actually came from Africa, mind you, which still boasts the most honey bee subspecies. And the scientific name was something of a disaster too:
| The genus Apis is Latin for "bee", and mellifera comes from Latin melli- "honey" and ferre "to bear"—hence the scientific name means "honey-bearing bee". The name was coined in 1758 by Carolus Linnaeus who, upon realizing the bees do not bear honey, but nectar, tried later to correct it to Apis mellifica ("honey-making bee") in a subsequent publication. However, according to the rules of synonymy in zoological nomenclature, the older name has precedence. |
Smooth move, Linnaeus! Oh well; "bearing" makes more sense than "making" for the "bee" connection that will be coming along later in this episode.
"Nena," the name of the planet in this episode, comes from the name of an ancient supercontinent of Earth:
| Nena was an ancient minor supercontinent that consisted of the cratons of Arctica, Baltica, and East Antarctica. Forming about 1.8 billion years ago, the continent was part of the global supercontinent, Columbia. Nena is an acronym that derives from Northern Europe and North America. |
(The supercontinent Nena contained pieces of what are now Northern Europe and North America, you see.)
Being a short word, there are of course a lot of other "Nenas" that have sprung up, according to Google; for instance, there's Nena the German pop singer, best known for her 1984 hit, 99 Luftballons ("99 Balloons").
| Having achieved widespread success in Germanic Europe and Japan, plans were made for the band to take the song international with an English version by Kevin McAlea, titled "99 Red Balloons". The English version is not a direct translation of the German and contains a somewhat different set of lyrics. The later-released English translation, "99 Red Balloons," was the version that became popular outside of Germany, with it topping the charts in Canada, the UK, Australia and Ireland. Interestingly, it was the original German version that American audiences preferred, becoming the highest Billboard charting German song in US History, when it peaked at #2 in the US. |
Here's the original German version, which was indeed the one I remembered:
video on Youtube
The 1984 English version is here, and there's a translation of the lyrics (which are still a bit hard to make out) in the uploader's comment on the 2009 German/French version; it's a song about an apocalyptic war that starts when a trigger-happy military mistakes a flock of 99 red balloons released by children as hostile UFOs or something. :o This will actually fit in with this episode in some ways, how about that!
And if that isn't enough coincidence for you, Nena herself has a bit of dark-haired Selenis (yeah she'll still have her hair dark in this episode) about her, as you can see in this photo (source).
Uh... Oh and "Earth's Revival" was first mentioned to Selenis by Solvan Mar, as the source of his information on advanced technology, way back in episode 11.
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