The Spanish Spongebobs: ¡Traducir los Bob Esponjas es muy divertido!

Believe it or not, this 'stupid video post' actually does have something to do with what I'm learning in college. I'm almost done with fall quarter, and am about to have the time to share my more serious articles, and even other schoolwork.
` But, for now, I thought, just to update this blog if nothing else, something of a less serious nature.

You see, October 19, 2010 was the best day ever of my life, because I had just gone through a childhood developmental stage attained by most people at 2 1/2 years old, thus acquiring some more efficient brain-processing skills. Unfortunately, my life quickly went downhill for other reasons despite this (i.e. I got the flu, my favorite cat died, etc).
` On the best day ever, however, I remembered having seen on YouTube the title, 'Spongebob Squarepants -- The Best Day Ever', so I found the 'sing-along' version on YouTube, which featured such strange sights as Spongebob with an oversized butt flying through the water, leaving behind a rainbow trail.

'Dare I speculate?' I thought, having never actually seen the show.

However, in the sidebar, I noticed another title, 'Bob Esponja -- El Mejor de Los Dias'! This Bob Esponja sounded eerily similar to Spongebob, but it was in Spanish-Spanish, that is, the kind of Spanish spoken in Spain. (The most noticeable feature is the pronunciation of 'c' and 'z' as a 'th' sound.)
` This one wasn't a sing-along video, it only had still pictures, and also the song was different because it only consisted of the first verse and then had a bunch of dialogue.
` I thought it might be fun to try to translate the dialogue, but it would help if I could see what was going on. It would also help if I had the Spanish lyrics, but when I looked them up online, they did not match the ones I'd heard!

And then, I found out why:

I was going around YouTube, looking for a version that shows the original video and came across a completely different translation of exactly the same song, in a different key, as sung by a much different-sounding Bob Esponja -- this one with a Latin American accent!

I later looked this up on Wikipedia -- sure enough, there are both a Spanish and a Latin American version of Bob Esponja! I don't know why that is, but it is.

The first thing that popped into my head was, 'Great! Now I can listen to both and compare the two and from that, figure out what they're saying!' You know, kind of like the idea behind deciphering the Rosetta stone, but with Bob Esponjas.

Amazingly, I managed, with the power of listening intently, to figure out that he was talking to his pet snail, who I knew was like a cat, about the new generation of Crab-burgers, fishing for jellyfish with Patricio (whom at least I knew must be the sea star, Patrick), having a karate session with 'Arenita', whom I figured must be the squirrel in the diving suit, and then going to the clarinet recital of 'Calamardo' whom I figured must be a squid.

That's seriously all I knew. I felt lost in this pursuit, however, so I decided to go around YouTube, watching videos, and was able to confirm that much of this made sense. As for the show, I didn't know quite what to make of it.
` And then, I saw the chocolate-selling scene with the dried-up old lady! "You just can't wait for me to die, can you?" It was wrong on so many levels...



Hooray for lying! This, of course, convinced me to start viewing the show on Netflix, which we had just subscribed to at the time. Importantly, I decided to use my newfound mental skills to analyze it as TV shows are meant to be analyzed!

I liked the way the characters play off one another, especially the way that Spongebob and Patrick so greatly annoy the sarcastic Squidward (Calamardo) the bald, middle-aged, self-absorbed, curmudgeonly octopus (i.e. not actually a squid) who fancies himself to be an artistic genius trapped in a dead-end job, and who secretly wants to join in their silly games because they're so happy, despite being innocent and lacking in intelligence, while he's not.
` I also quickly figured out that the stupidity seen in the show is not the punchline -- it's the way they make fun of the stupidity. The inappropriate wholesomeness reminded me of the very twisted Strangers With Candy series (about a graying former prostitute back in high school), whereas the parts with fast-paced flashbacks reminded me of Family Guy, and then the weird tangential stuff was reminiscent of Monty Python. Other parts were... well... more special. In a short bus sort of way.

My mental health will never be the same.

Anyway, the show did help me translate what was going on in the songs. And do you want to know what I came up with? Well, I think I did fairly well, considering I'm only in Spanish Level 2 and haven't even formally learned the future tense. Of course, my instructor also helped me, but still, I got most of it by myself, even parts she couldn't understand!

So, I'll present the Spanish-from-Spain translation first, along with the Latin American Spanish version, so you can actually listen, if you dare:



Ya ha salido el sol sólo para mí
The sun has come up just for me
?? Qué día va a ser tengo que salir
What a day it's going to be, I have to go out
Saltar al fin de felicidad
To jump, at last, for joy
Es lo que tu descubrirás
It is what you will discover,
!Todos es especialo! (!Este ya!)
Everything is special (This already!)

¡Ey, Gary!
Hi, Gary!
?Mrao?
Mrao?
Te preguntarás por que es el mejor dia a mi vida?
You would ask why it's the best day of my life?
Porque, Gary, voy a ?? este maravilloso día trayendo al mundo a toda
Because, Gary, I'm going to ?begin this marvelous day bringing to the whole world
una nueva generación de deliciosas ?burgers Cangreburgers!
a new generation of delicious ?burgers Krabby Patties

Seguida ?? una vigorizante sesión de karate con Arenita al mediodía,
It continues ?with an invigorating session of karate with Sandy at noon,
Y una tarde de caza de medusas con Patrício donde estrena mi
And an afternoon of catching? jellyfish with Patrick where he'll first use my
poseción más prefiere y nueva ¡El caze medusa profesionál de lujo!
most preferred and new posession; the profesional deluxe jellyfish hunter!

Y por el gran final, ¡todos mis amigos más intimos
And for the grand finale, all my best friends
nos reuniremos para el recital la clarinete de Calimardo!
(we) will come together for Squidward's clarinet recital!

¡Estoy tan emocionado que creo que voy a explotarrrr!
I'm so excited that I think that I'm going to explode!

¡Todos es especialooo! (¡Este ya!)
Everything is special-o! (This already!)


I don't know what 'especialo' means, but whatever -- if any Spanish-speaker would like to comment on my translations, it'd be great.
` Oh yes, that's right -- translations-plural!: If that wasn't enough for you, here's the Latin American version, which is slower and easier to understand, and thus a huge help in translating the Spanish-Spanish version:



El sol ha salido y me ha sonreído
The sun has come up and has smiled at me
Que sería buen día me ha prometido
What a good day it will be, promised to me!
Salté de la cama con mucha alegría
Jumped out of bed with much happiness
Sintiéndome cómo nunca y
I'm feeling like never before, and
¡El mejor día es! (Best day ever!)
It's the best day! (Best day ever!)

!Hola, Gary!
Hello, Gary!
?Mrao?
Mrao?
?Preguntas por que es mejor dia?
You ask why it's the best day?
Porque Gary, comenzaré este maravilloso día dando vida a
Because, Gary, this marvelous day will begin giving life to
una nueva generación de deliciosas Cangreburgers!
a new generation of delicious Krabby Patties!

Seguida por una vigorosa sessión de karate con Arenita
It continues for a vigorous session of karate with Sandy
Y una tarde pescando medusas con Patricio donde revelaré
And an afternoon jellyfishing with Patrick where I'll reveal
mi más ?presciente preciosada posesión; el atrapa-medusas de lujo profesional
My most ?prescient precious posession; the deluxe professional jellyfish trap!

Y para el gran final, iré con mis mejores amigos
And for the grand finale, I'll go with my best friends
a presenciniar recital de clarineta de Calamardo
to be present at Squidward's clarinet recital!

Estoy tan emocionado yo creo que voy a explotaaar!
I'm so excited I think I'm going to explode!

El mejor dia eeeessss! (Best day ever!)
It's the best day ever!


And right when I was putting my paper together, I happened to go on YouTube (yes, for research purposes!) and I actually found the English version of this song, with the same dialogue -- it's actually just the beginning of an episode.
` Unfortunately, it was taken down the day after, but while it lasted, I wrote down what's in the original video:

Mister Sun came up and he smiled at me!
(The sun actually comes through his window with a -- ARRRGH! -- hideously cute smile!)
Said, It's gonna be a good one, just wait and see!
(Awkward pause where Spongebob and the sun stare at each other, then then Spongebob's bed GOES UP IN FLAMES, and Spongebob escapes the creepy underwater sun's fire just in time, and goes running around on the outside of his pineapple house.)
Jumped out of bed, and I ran outside, feeling so extra-ecstatified!
It's the best day ever! (Best day ever!)

(Spongebob find his pet snail on the roof and says,) "Hey, Gary!"
(Gary says,) "Mrao?"
(We can see what Spongebob is thinking via the magic of thought balloons.) "Why is it the best day ever, you ask? Because, Gary, I get to start this wonderful day bringing life to a whole new generation of delicious Krabby Patties! Followed by a vigorous midday session of karate with Sandy! And an afternoon jellyfishing with Patrick, where I'll unveil my newest, most prized posession, the Deluxe Jellyslayer Composite Pro!" (Spongebob demonstrates its capturing powers on Gary.)
"And, for the grand finale, every one of my closest friends joining together for Squidward's clarinet recital! I am so excited I think I'm going to explode!" (Gary backs away for safety purposes.)

Spongebob explodes and keeps singing, "It's the best day everrr!" while dorking it up along his way to work, and he is in such a good mood that he fails to notice that his workplace is covered in yellow tape that says 'Condemned' and giggles like a moron when he puts his hand on the doorknob.
` The video ends before we see his reaction -- well, I wanna see the rest! Better order some more Spongebob!

While the good-quality English language version of that video is down, I at least found a bad quality Latin American Spanish version of it... at least you can see what I was talking about.



Anyway, translating this all was indeed one of my Spanish projects this quarter. I hope it was... uh... special enough for you.

And if you think this was a horrible idea for a post, just remember that part of the reason I like Spongebob is because I went to Retard School and I have a tendency to love laughing at retards.

In any case, I have my Spanish class to blame!

Yeah, I'm blaming it on my education!

Hey... wait a second!

I just remembered, I left out one of my favorite characters. He's into world domination, like me -- it's Plankton, the one-eyed copepod! He also has an A.I., his computer wife, Karen, and a secret lab at the Chum Bucket, a restaurant nobody goes to because the food is that bad!
` Unfortunately, most of the Spongebob clips on YouTube are really not worth watching, so this was the best I could do:

Here's what happens when Plankton tries to be buddies with Spongebob -- of course, he's actually after Mr. Krabs' secret Krabby Patty recipe... but what they don't know is that Mr. Krabs is watching!

F is for Fire that burns down the whole town,
U is for Uranium bombs,
N is for No survivors...



Spongebob is such a moron, it hurts, and it hurts so much that I have that tingly sensation... no, it shouldn't stop!

Uhhhh....

This reminds me, I'll need to be getting back into gear for world domination soon. Be expecting that.

And, as a reward for making it all the way down to the bottom, I also found a video that reminds me of the Good Ol' (not really) Ghetto Days. Here's three short episodes of what Spongebob Squarepants would be like if all the characters came from the crackhouse I used to live at!

Are you ready, stoners? Ooooohhhhh... (cough! cough!) hold on, 'kay? Oooooohhhh, who lives in a bong in a dormitory?
SpongeBong HempPants
Disgusting and green and sticky is he....



Yes, for real!

I'm so sorry if this post is lame. Which it isn't. But if it were lame, I would apologize.

Ahhhh, I'm feeling more like myself now!

Well, I must be on my way. Finally, I'll have a real post next. But which one? There are so many to choose from by now....

Skeptic Podcast with Shermer and Randi

"I can't understand that at all! Why would you be proud of such an abilitiy to believe in spite of the lack of evidence?" - James Randi

` In this new podcast, Swoopy has a cold (as I do). Michael Shermer (boy, he moves fast!) and magician/skeptic James Randi are discussing wonderful things that are - it's true, I'd say! - a crime to edit.
` The interview is recorded on a skeptic cruise in the Bermuda Triangle. According to Randi, ten years ago he started his anti-trickster organization, James Randi Educational Foundation. He still talks about how rewarding it is for people to come up to him and say 'Thank you! You really turned my way of thinking around!'
` And what kind of thinking are they referring to? I have transcribed some of the more interesting and entertaining chunks from the show, including some funny anecdotes about claimants of amazing abilities - like this one:

Shermer: "In ten years of vetting challenges for the million dollar prize, what are some of the weirder ones you've gotten?"

Randi: "...Some of them are not quite so weird. People think they can do something very directly and straightforward. Those we get rid of easily. Do it. Oh, doesn't work. Do it again. Oop, doesn't work. And after a certain number of tries... they will often say this 'Gee, maybe it doesn't work.'
` "I always sort of sigh at that because I know fifteen minutes later they will come back and say 'Oh, but it's because it was Thursday, and Thursday is a bad day for me, I should never have tried this on a Thursday.' So they always have some sort of excuse."

Shermer: "Oh this guy contacted me a few weeks ago, said he could live on sunshine alone.... So I said; 'To win a million dollars Randi would probably put you in a room somewhere with some people to watch you to so that you don't cheat. He said, 'Well I do have coffee now and then,' and I said, 'Well... Randi would give you a little bit of coffee each day'. He goes 'I also have chocolate once in a while.'...."

Randi: "I don't know whether coffee and chocolate is enough to keep you alive for long.... Breathairians in general are people who - for those who may not know - either they say that they can get along on water alone, or on nothing. And it's the people on nothing I'd really like to test. Because you can't survive very long without water intake. ...The woman Jasmine, she was tested on a TV program....
` "They put her through this test, and they figured that if she went five days without water and food, that she would be showing serious signs, and they had a doctor attending to her. The doctor had the final say as to whether or not she should give it up. Well of course after three and a half days or so, the doctor says 'it's getting critical, now she's gonna die'. And she said 'No, no, no, ha ha *cough-cough* I'm perfectly alright.'
` ...I have denied these people the privelage of being tested by the JREF for the million dollar prize simply because it endangers their lives. I would be happy to let one of these guys go all the way through and die in front of me and say 'Hello? You haven't won! Hello?' I get so impatient with these people, I get very angry at them because they're either total idiots, they're fools, they're not responsible people, in which case maybe they should go away someplace. Or, they are blatant fakes:
` "Now, we found the guy in San Francisco years ago, before the JREF existed, where we watched outside the Holiday Inn in the car and fell asleep, we took turns watching the door, and it wasn't like six or eight hours into the thing, at four o clock in the morning, that we found him going across the street to the local hot dog stand and loading up a bag, and of course he said at that time he was only going to inhale the aroma. Yeah right, get the vibrations from it. But that sort of terminated that experiment and I thought to myself; 'What am I - a reasonably intelligent guy - doing, waiting in a car in a parking lot to see if the guy comes out to get food? This is not my place in life! Doing stupid things like this and going along with stupid people! So, ya have to know when to draw a line here...."

` Lou and I are now laughing at the story about the time that a team of eleven dowsers' abilities 'went wrong', all at the same time! One guy did say that perhaps they were mistaken in their abilities - after all, they had been tested under their own conditions! Wow! They had gotten one out of eleven to admit that perhaps they had duped themselves: They'd never got a score that high before!
` Then, less than twenty minutes after they had left, the formerly-doubting dowser called them from a payphone outside and said that the electromagnetic interference from their walkie-talkies had interfered! Forget that EM radiation strongly floods the air everywhere in the first place!
` Lou also admires Richard Feynman who showed that he knew he could be deceived when he was indeed tricked by Randi. Some PhDs, on the other hand, think that they are an authority because they believe something crazy.
` And the crazy things they believe! Here, Randi talks about faith healers:

"The faith healers I'm sure, many of them - if not all of them - can start out... believing... that they're really doing something because they see people apparently recovering in front of them! Hallelujah! Then, if they actually get to visit these people, or these people get to visit them... they start to find out, they suddenly say, 'Wait a minute! These people aren't healed; they believe they're healed but they're not healed!' and then they go along with it anyway because it's a huge income.

` Interestingly, W.V. Grant's father was a faith healer, and so he knew it was a fake. But, being a sociopath, he decided to go into it knowing it was fake! Now, that's twisted! But not everyone is that way about such abilities. Michael Shermer said that a guy called him and said that he realized that psychic abilities are mostly fake - such as psychic phone scams - but he's still leaving his mind open to certain things.
` Ohhh... Randi has some screwed-up transcripts of Miss Cleo where she goes silent for minutes at a time and then says something very unprofound, such as; 'I'm getting an M'. It's all because she's paid by the minute.
` Besides psychic frauds, Randi is famous for once and for all pulling the cover off of faith healer Peter Popoff:

"...Popoff... is purporting to have visions from heaven and hearing a voice from heaven that told him about the illness of these people. No, he was picking it up on a short wave receiver. Now, that's positive material evidence. But did anyone do anything about it? No. Not one lawgiver, not one authority stepped forward to say 'wait a minute! That's fraud! This man should be behind bars'... He's lying to people, he's cheating, he's stealing their money, he's... it's a racket! It's a scam! But nobody stepped forward.
` "I did a hell of a job... it's the one thing I'm proudest of was what Carson did with me... is to expose Peter Popoff, and what his gimmick was. And it was so blatant, the proof was there. Carson never quite got over that, every time we talked on the phone, even following his retirement, he used to say; "I can't get Popoff out of my head! He's back in business! I can't believe he's back in business! We put him out of business, but he's back in business!' And I kept saying, 'Johnny, that's the way it is, these are unsinkable rubber duckies, because no one in authority will do anything about it, and that really makes me angry!...' [Why?] ...'Oh, does he talk about Jesus?' 'Yes' 'That's okay then, we don't touch religion.'"

` And here is a very disturbing anecdote where an undercover Randi is investigating one of Benny Hinn's faith healing extravaganzas, and is sitting at a table in a restaurant, when he looks over at another table:

"There was a woman in there, sobbing, a very large elderly woman, sobbing, and she had her friend... sitting with her. I could hear her clearly: 'But I've been to eleven of the meetings now, I've followed him all over the United States and now into Canada, and I'm trying to get up on the stage. I need to be healed. I need his help. And they keep me back, they won't let me up there. And I keep giving money... all the time, I've [bought his] CDs...' and her companion leaned across and she says 'But dear, you haven't given everything yet. And Jesus requires that you give your all.'
` "...I was so angry, seething! Michael, I was so angry that... it frightens me that I can get that angry... at these people! Never mind Benny Hinn. He's the only instigator... he's the one who's getting the money. But these people are being so... bloody stupid to go along with this kind of thing, to allow themselves to be taken to this depth!
` "...After I did the exposure of Peter Popoff on the Carson Show, they [believers] wrote me and said 'Oh, God Bless you. I've now changed over to Reverend So-and-So. In other words, they want, they want to give their money, they want to throw their money at these people.... Incredible! They just want to be fleeced! These are lambs alright... 'Here, shear me! ... Take me all the way, I am your lamb!' Yeah sure. The analogy in the Bible about the Shepherd leading the lambs. Yeah, to slaughter, yes!"

` He is fairly good at uncovering scams, and yet look how he is represented by much of the popular media:

"The media, they don't give a damn! Look at what... ABC... Primetime did to me, getting me into New York and taping me for an hour and a half about John of God, and I had all the explanations for the so-called miracles of John of God, I had them right there on videotape and I had them in person, I had the affidavits, all the evidence. They didn't look at any of it! And they used something I did, a total of nineteen seconds of my entire interview.
` "But doctor Mehmet Oz... a heart surgeon, cardiac specialist, and I'm told one of the top people in the field, is a woo-woo who has therapeutic touch people wandering around his operating room, will step back from the person on which he's operating at the moment so they can pass their hands over the wounds and such and then move on. This is strictly woo-woo! This is strictly supersition, mythology, it's nonsense! [Referring to the old trick of shoving foreceps four inches into the nostrils:] ...And he gave his physical explanations for it [that it may stimulate the pituitary gland], and I showed on my website, in detail, that he was wrong, absolutely wrong!
` "He didn't even know enough about the construction of the head to know that what he was purporting to provide as an explanation for what John of God might be doing was absolutely wrong, it doesn't happen. It's an old carnival stunt. But ABC didn't accept any of that, and they made John of God look good.... [All for ratings, of course.] 'Hey the sponsor loves it, people were tuned in, great, I sold a lot of cars.' Whatever the bottom line is, it's the dollar."

` Quite unlike John Stossel on ABC. Although, as for Barbara Walters....

"She just is not perhaps as well-informed... I wish she'd come to me in advance... and I could set her up in such a way that she would have more information available to her. But maybe she makes the assumption that her writers and producers are going to provide her with that information, and they're not, they're going to with information that they want her to put out there."

` He also had much to say about homeopathy - which Lou (who had told me that the government was suppressing homeopathy) thought was interesting:

"I don't have much faith in the State Department, or in the U.S. Government.... I appeared in front of a congressional auditorium full of congressional aides, congressman, and whatnot, oh so many years ago, and I ate something like forty times the lethal dose of sleeping tablets right in front of them... and I told them what homeopathy was all about, and I got a lot of questions... 'Really? Is that what it's about?' But nothing happened, Michael! ... Not one of those... government officials went into action and said 'Wait a minute, we've got to do something about what this man, James Randi told us about.'
` "...And when I went to... Oslo, they were having a meeting there... to discuss whether homeopathy would be made part of the European Union's accepted range of medicine, and they asked me to go into Oslo, and I had Nobel Laureates and all kinds of people sititng in front of me, expressing their astonishment. When I told them what homeopathy actually is, [Shermer is laughing] what the doses are, they're not vanishingly small, they were vanished, long ago! And they knew about Avagadro and such, but they were... saying 'Really? There isn't any content in it?' 'No, there isn't, there's nothing there but vibrations,' and they were looking around like 'what do they mean by vibrations?' 'You ask them, don't ask me!' But the point is, does it work, no it does not work. And nothing was done about that, either!"

` He's also had much experience with researchers for psychic abilities:

"My contacts with scientists, who often, as they did in Russia, they took me in, big embraces and whatnot 'Oh, we're so happy to have you here,' they end up being rather unhappy. ...Like this poor graduate student... young fellow after I did the NOVA program, they took me over there and we did some double-blind tests of a so-called psychic, and they didn't know what double-blind tests were all about! [Um!!]
` "But I imposed double-blind techniques on the testing procedure, and of course the psychic didn't get anywhere. And this graduate student wrote me and he said that he had resigned from the Mind/Brain Institute in Russia, in Moscow... he said because their chief operating officer... told them that obviously, these double-blind techniques don't work, so they were going to discontinue them.
` "...No, they didn't prove what he wanted to prove, they didn't give him the evidence that he preferred! And therefore they're going to discontinue, so far as I know the Brain/Mind institute in Moscow is still continuing on doing these silly things and discovering what they think is information and isn't. ...Good science is just simply good science, but there is no such thing as bad science because at that point it's not science."

` I'd stop right there, but I thought I'd sneak one last part in: This definitely rings a bell with my own former beliefs in paranormal phenomena and how they could fit in with a vague-sounding science called quantum theory:

"They're very busy working out theories and of course they... adore quantum ideas. 'It's quantum, you see, it's very mysterious so we don't really understand it.' Sure. But we do understand quantum theory. The fact that quantum physicists and quantum people in general, use strange terminology, they're using the Enlgish lanugage.... What? A particle has charm? It has a flavor? It has color? These are English words used in a different way. That's what makes it so mystical. But it is not mystical. It's very much down to earth and real, and it has a good basis in rationality and in fact, so it is not mystical."

` Indeed. I had always reasoned that quantum physics had rendered things such psychic abilities into the range of the normal, rather than the paranormal, just as Randi said would happen if they were demonstrated to be genuine.
` But, I was eventually disappointed to learn that such things have not been done. Boy was I angry about being tricked, and boy did I feel stupid!

` Now, what was I talking about? Oh yeah.... if you're so compelled, listen to the whole thing!! And, while you're at it... watch some videos of Randi being Amazing in the post just below!

Skeptic Podcast with the 'Bad Astronomy' guy! (Plus, a fun little surprise!)

` I just now got around to listening to the edition from August 30:

` According to the podcast, a new perpetual motion machine is going to be tested. Well, hooray for them. When the time comes, I'd better pull me up a chair and a bucket o'chocolate-covered crickets. ...Or has that already passed? I wasn't paying close enough attention.
` Finally, it's getting interesting! The astronomer Phil Plait (of Bad Astronomy) is talking about some meteorites he had sent to Derek and Swoopy.

` People want to know; why was Pluto classified as a planet in the first place? Scientists were looking for a planet to explain why Uranus and Neptune weren't doing what was expected unless another planet was present and found something that was, at first, thought to be the size of Earth. It was all a big misunderstanding.
` If, however, Pluto had been discovered more recently, along with all the other Kuiper Belt Objects, we would wind up classifying it as one of those, especially: The very same thing had happened with Ceres - it was thought to be a planet, along with several other objects discovered soon after, until a huge amount of others were discovered and all then of them were classified as Asteroids.
` He discusses planet classification a little bit and mentions one criterion - that the difference between a planet and a moon is its center of gravity. For example, the center of gravity between the earth and the moon is a thousand miles below the center of the earth. Therefore, it is a planet. However, the moon recedes four centimeters each year. In a billion years (and presumably four billion centimeters or so), the center of gravity would be closer to the moon, and so it would be classified as a planet according to this definition. (And, since the center of mass between Pluto and Charon is outside of Pluto, both of them are considered planets.)
` They're all bunches of hydrogen and metals! They do not evolve and split into groups as life forms do - instead, they are separately and largely randomly formed - therefore, classification is impossible.
` As Plait says:

` This is just silly. Who cares what we call a planet? Pluto is what it is and Charon is what it is, and Ceres, by the way, the largest asteroid, meets all these criteria.... The point is, you can't define what a planet is. I've been saying this for years... you can't define a planet.... The problem here, is that we're trying to wrap a scientific definition around... a cultural phenomenon. There is no such thing as a planet.
` It's just a name we hung on some objects, but what does it mean? I mean, look at Jupiter and look at Mercury - these things couldn't be any [more] different: Mercury is dinky and hot, and full of metal, and Jupiter is this enormous, bloated gas giant with lots of moons, and a hugely thick atmosphere. They're as different as plants and animals. And yet we're both calling them planets.
` So that right there should tell you there's something silly about doing this. And in fact, most scientists just don't give a crap about this, except that the public does, the media has whipped up the public into kind of a frenzy.... it's sort of taking away from the science of this.... It just seems that there's no real reason to do this scientifically and to have scientists debating this, is a colossal waste of time.

` Yes! It's all about consistency, and I've thought about this long and hard; will anyone ever find such a thing? I sure as heck never could.
` We could call them rocks and spheres and gas giants, but not planets! In fact, if people want to think that Pluto is a planet, then that's fine because the classification of a planet - being intangible - is technically not a part of science. It's just our tendency to classify things - works with life forms (because they have genuine commonalities) but not random rocks banging around in space.
` In fact, most people don't even know enough about it to know what's going on anyway. I found this particularly scary:

Plait: ...Did you know that half the people in this country don't know that the earth goes around the sun in a year?
Swoopy: Half? A whole half?

` Hmmm. Then again, I think about 85% of people will say that a year is when the earth goes around the sun once. Yet not nearly as many can answer the question when it is phrased; 'How long does it take the earth to go around the sun?'
` The workings of the human mind.... And I think Plait put my own message about skepticism well when he said;

` Pluto is what it is, it doesn't care what we call it, and we still have a probe heading there that's still gonna take nine years to get there and we're gonna get pictures of it, and so, whether we call it a planet or not, it's gonna do whatever it is it does. As far as the public perception, this is a PR... not a disaster, but certainly it's a blow to the head.
` Ya know, people in the United States already are not loving science in many ways. Now, most of the public is actually enthusiastic about science if it's taught correctly, if they get involved with it with someone who knows what they're doing and it's fun, and so they're pro-science that way and they wanna know about this kinda stuff.
` But there's also a sort of a general mistrust of scientists, and you get that a lot, you know, the scientists are constantly changing their minds and all this kinda thing.... What a lot of people don't get, is that science does change its mind and that's its strength, it's not a weakness. And people feel that religion is strong because it's unflexible, and it's like 'well, if you can't bend, you're gonna break!' ...When you literally translate religious text, when nature says 'uh uh!' one of these things has to bend and break, and nature is reality, so... science is strong because it's flexible, because it can say 'oh, we were wrong, let's look at it this way'.
` The problem is, this is such a trivial point, Pluto not being a planet is not science. And so, with the public looking at these scientists, they're gonna say 'oh, these scientists can't make up their mind,' or 'scientists don't even know what a planet is' and everyone knows what a planet is. O' couse, if you start to poke people in the chest and say 'okay smart guy tell me what a planet is', they kinda go, well, ep, deh,uh, because, as I've been saying, you can't define it.
` And so, in that sense, it's kind of a mistake. On the other hand, the third hand, if you have three hands, is the idea that this is a teachable moment in that, if you want to teach students that science is not a compendium of facts, its not an exncyclopedia that you look things up in, it is a growing organism that learns and changes and looks around itself and figures out what's right and what's wrong. That is something that students don't get.
` And it's something that a vast majority of science teachers don't teach. Because, I don't think they're really trained to. They're just sort of thrown into teaching scinece. And so, this is a great moment to teach something like that. You could, as far as I'm concerned, what I'd like to see is having teachers say 'why is this not a scientific problem?'

` Listen to it all here. If you dare.

` ...And for you creatures who crave strange, satirical skeptical matters, Plait has also pointed out (on his blog) the miraculous appearance of Jesus Christ on a dog's ass!

` Oh yes. He went there. Check it out!

Skeptic Podcasts

` A little bonus post. Just for you.

` Skepticality - hear the official podcast of Skeptic Magazine:

` Listen to Derek and Swoopy talk to Skeptic's Michael Shermer, and discuss such subjects as Pluto, Greenland's ice caps, Graphic Novels about scientists, and full frontal chimpanzee nudity! Also, listen to Derek's agony as he is strung up! It's all here!
` I call it 'considerably more interesting than any radio show I've heard.'

MAL, could you take that call for me?

` Ye-ahh! I have great news! And it's not just the fact that I've discovered a new muscle group, either! My clever computer, MAL, has figured out how to talk over the phone line! He can talk to people now!
` I also think that he could make one kickass receptionist - he never forgets an appointment! What do you think?

` Well, I'm going out to hang with Dandruff. Too bad MAL can't come with me. Then again, all that hot sunlight would fry his circuits. Oh well. Tootles!