US comic Colbert placed in space (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090415/en_afp/spacenasaissoffbeat2ndlead;_ylt=AlOqo.WrLFHJrVyZbG3Eq69xFb8C)
Okay, so a while back, NASA has this vote to name the new space station module, and political comic Stephen Colbert mobilizes his fan base to vote to name it "Colbert".
He has lots of fans, but NASA did retain the right to decide on final name.
This article is the solution they came up with.
NASA is lame. :thumbdown:
Why have the vote if they're just going to ignore it and pick a generic stupid name?
We voted for Colbert because we wanted the Space Probe to be named after an American Hero, it wasn't a big joke or anything. And the treadmill seems more like an insult. I want all their funding cut.
I agree - it was a monumentally dumb idea to leave something like this up to a popularity contest. A few years back, the most popular name might have ended up being Britney Spears or Jerry Springer or some pro-wrestler. These days, anyone with a large forum who can encourage fans to go to the web site has the edge in this. If a radio talk show host with a lot of listeners (like Limbaugh or Stern) had cared about this, they would have gotten the most "votes". If NASA wasn't prepared for this kind of result, it should never have implied that the number of people on the Internet voicing support for one suggestion or another would affect the choice. They should have just said, "Email us your suggestions. We aren't going to count them or anything, but we may pick one of them."
I think it's hilarious, myself.
I was sure they wouldn't actually pick Colbert, but they didn't even use the second place name either, one of their own suggestions, Serenity (I assume because they realized Firefly fans had co-opted it). What was the point of the vote at all? This was dumb on NASA's part.