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NASA Names Space Station Treadmill After Colbert
willith writes "The SF Chronicle reports on the results of the International Space Station Node 3 naming contest (which we previously discussed). Comedian and fake-pundit Stephen Colbert conducted a bombastic write-in campaign and repeatedly urged his show's fan base (the 'Colbert Nation') to stuff the ballot box with his name, which resulted in 'Colbert' coming in first in the write-in contest with almost a quarter-million votes. Although the Node 3 component will not be named 'Colbert' — NASA has instead chosen to call it 'Tranquility' — one of the Node 3 components will bear the honor: the second ISS treadmill, which will be installed in Node 3, will be named the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. The formal announcement was made on the air yesterday at 22:30 EDT on the Colbert Report by astronaut Sunita Williams."
They do what they want and not what the voters demand!! This is negative for NASA in my opinion.
While I think it's cool that his name is appearing in the space station, I think it's idiotic for them to not name the node Colbert. They had a public vote for the name. They allowed write in suggestions. The write in suggestion won because a TV personality made sure to make it a big deal. Name the node Colbert and, maybe, that TV personality will keep NASA in people's minds. If people are thinking about NASA a lot, it will be easier for NASA to do business (get funding, recruit minds, etc., etc., etc.). It's just stupid for them to not name it what the people voted for. What does it cost them? Oh noes! The name of the node isn't something "proper" like Tranquility! Whatever. Such a stupid decision.
Less than five minutes? Seriously, it's a better use for my tax dollars than at least 60% of government spending.
It's not hard to come up with acronyms.
--ANONYMOUS nagging oxymorognic neogeodesic yuppie-man on universal soapbox COWARD of wayward and radical dichotomies.
Among all the choices that weren't being driven by bots or ballot stuffers.
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This is probably the best thing they could have done. By naming the treadmill after him, they didn't have to name the whole module after him and they still get good publicity from Colbert's show.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
So, fellow browncoats, we were on the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one though ;)
To be fair, they DID say from the beginning that they reserved the right to pick a name themselves regardless of the poll's outcome.
I suspect that Colbert himself played a big role in this decision. He isn't going to drop out of character to say so, but Colbert-the-pundit is a character, and I imagine Colbert-the-person wasn't entirely comfortable saddling an "important" component of the space program (all ISS contempt aside) with the name of a comedy character. Their final decision still gave his character plenty of mileage -- "the treadmill is the really important part, the 'module' is just a box that the treadmill comes in" -- while preserving a bit of what many would perceive as decorum.
Maybe they figured out that everyone immediately jumped to Firefly when they heard Serenity, and they didn't want that association. On the other hand, I question the wisdom of giving it a name that already is hugely significant in the annals of space travel, since it was also the name of the Apollo 11 moon landing site, but what are you gonna do. Every name has some issue with it.
I would have liked them to name the commode after Colbert instead, but this is a pretty clever compromise on its own, and its in keeping with the government's practice of creating cumbersome acronyms for ordinary objects, so I guess it works.
All of ten minutes and it's basically free, massive publicity with almost no effort.
Do you think you would've known about this new ISS module if it weren't for Colbert?
Basically they chose to ignore the poll. The name they chose, "Tranquility", was like in 8th place.
Easy solution: Next time I see a story of NASA putting something to a vote, I'll ignore it. Won't read, won't vote, won't care as it's not real as they'll ignore both the poll and the write-ins. Slashdot editors and everyone else feel free to do the same. I think this whole thing was very unserious and unprofessional and think less of NASA for it. Great anti-PR campaign, and all PR is definately not good PR for them.
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major slap in the face from NASA
I guess - if an online naming poll is really that big a deal - that this qualifies as a major slap in the face. My personal reaction runs more along the lines of "who the hell cares?"
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I think it's great. It shows that NASA can take a joke, even a rigged election, and give it a nod. Which is what they have done. Other than naming the module after him, which would have been great too, they acknowledged Colbert with out making a big deal out of it.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Well for one, I was a bit disappointed, but now that I have had some time to consider it, the practice of ballot stuffing is very uncool. Colbert, through his exaggerated behavior, attempts to show the common stupidity of thought and practice we witness every day. This isn't the first time he sought to illustrate this. The most significant that comes to mind is the way he saved the elephants from extinction by having viewers stuff wikipedia. This is just more of the same.
And if you think that is merely "funny behavior" then look again at the way OOXML was passed as an ISO standard. Look again at the way many unpopular laws are passed as well (though usually, that is through other manipulative and underhanded methods). The point is that it is always bad to subvert or exploit the voting process when it is made available. And such actions should ALWAYS be protested.
I doubt that Joss would have any say in the matter.
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Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Worlds greatest backronym. The Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. Much better than the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
What was wrong with "Node 3"?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
cool fact about democracy: If you don't agree with something, vote against it.
What you are suggesting is throwing away legitimate votes - cast by real people and not bots - because *you* have some arbitrary rules about which votes should count and which should not. And that is not democratic.
1) According to the site, 1190437 people submitted votes or named selections. "Colbert" got 230539 and "Serenity" got about 190k. Even combined, the top two choices only got about 35 percent of the vote. Alone, "Colbert" got about 19% of the vote. Even if the poll results were not biased by ballot stuffing, all they make clear is that no matter what choice NASA made, 80 percent of the voters disagreed with it. In no reasonable sense did "Colbert" win an election -- if a candidate was voted into office with a plurality of only 19% of the vote, there would be calls for his head and the system would probably be reformed.
2)Can we please stop conflating whoever put this survey on with the entirety of NASA? Some small group of people within the organization are responsible for the survey and the name selection. Complain about Bill Gerstenmaier, as it appears that he bears some responsibility for the survey and the naming, or maybe the ISS Project Office.
3)The rules did make it clear that the contest "winner" wouldn't necessarily be picked for the module name. It even gives reasons why: "NASA reserves the right to ultimately select a name in accordance with the best interests of the agency, its needs, and other considerations. Such name may not necessarily be one which is on the list of voted-on candidate names." The ISS is a big international project, and it's possible that the naming of a module might have a diplomatic effect. Relations with the Russians, our major partners on the station, seem somewhat stressed, maybe even on station. So not selecting what may be viewed as the flippant choice for a module name seems the more diplomatically sound choice.
--sabre86
Cool fact about democracy: if you're in the minority your vote doesn't count.
Oh it counts in some wishy-washy you've-made-your-voice-heard kind of way, but as for actually counting, no. Winner takes all.
Cool thing about a Constitutional Republic: if you're in the minority your vote does count.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
This isn't ballot stuffing. It's more like targetted voter registration.
That may be true, but a mindless insult that adds nothing whatsoever to the thread deserves downmodding.
How about a republic with a proportional allocation system like the rest of the civilized world, rather than the insanity we have here in the U.S.? If you're in the minority vote you still get a minority of parliament, and if you have enough minorities they start to outnumber the "majority".
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Yeah, I'm going to say that Colbert tried to rig the election by using his show as a platform. NASA did exactly the right thing. They acknowledged the attempt with a laugh and a nod. I can't think of any other Gobernment agency that wouldn't have bitched and made a big deal out of it. NASA scores some serous points in my book for still having a sense of humor.
But one poster said they should have named the toilet module after him. That would have been a great backlob for NASA.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
He didn't rig the vote, he campaigned in a single episode. He basically said "I want my name on that station, vote for me." This is no different than any political vote or any other vote of any kind really. He won fair and square, and people are bitching about it because he isn't a serious guy? that is stupid.
It is simple: Colbert won doing what people do in every voting situation and won. If NASA wants to use their loophole and do whatever they want then that is well within their rights, but people need to stop bitching about how he did something wrong and realize this is how voting functions.
The point is that it is always bad to subvert or exploit the voting process when it is made available. And such actions should ALWAYS be protested.
I think that Colbert may very well agree with you. As he turns each exploit into a public spectacle, he raises awareness of these problems and brings them into discussion. Raising awareness of these issues is a very good first step to solving them.
Putting this into another light, what do you think about security researchers who publicly release software exploit information? They have found a weakness in some process, exploited it and then released that information to the public - often receiving acclaim and publicity for their work. Do you protest their acts, as well?
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
The enemy of the voting process is not "people of only one side showing up to vote" but "people not showing up to vote".
It's retarded for the losing side to claim subversion, just because the winning side got organized and showed up to vote.
Because we like to maintain our illusion that we vote for the person, not for the party.
Americans believe that the parties are corrupt, but individuals might not be, so we delude ourselves into thinking we're "voting for the [wo/]man not the party." Proportional vote wrecks this because either the party or some other entity gets to choose how to allocate the seats it gets, so it won't get much support for the time being.
The problem is that we also believe that although both parties are pretty evil the other party is a lot more evil and also eats puppies! So "sometimes" it's necessary to "vote against" them by voting for "our" party that's slightly less evil (they only eat kittens, after all).
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Democracy is mob rule. The group gets to make the decision based on whatever information they get, regardless of the facts.
So 1/4 million folks voted for Colbert. It wasn't consistent with the theme, but they shouldn't have asked for a vote if they weren't going to accept the answer.
Democracy says, when the people vote, that's the way it works. So you're in a country of with 307 million people and an average IQ of 98. Just because it's what the people want doesn't mean it's the right thing. I think we've already proven that, unless the masses that have chosen to drive SUV's and eat fast food religiously are proof that it's what we should be doing.
The movie Idiocracy had a point. Well, several rather sad points. The Brawndo references were sad in that they were not only similar to current marketing, but working on current marketing concepts, and people honestly fall for it.
I'd prefer for people smarter than me to be running things. Unfortunately, that's rarely if ever the case. I would accept their answers more openly, knowing that they are based on educated opinions, rather than just whims.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I'm sure the eggheads at NASA started out with the best of intentions where this poll is concerned. Then Steve Colbert came along and hijacked the process (and I'm not pointing fingers, it's Colbert's job to fuck with things and he did an admirable job of it) and the eggheads were left to figure out some other way forward. That's the reality of the situation. The psychologically-healthy way of dealing with that reality is to shrug your shoulders, silently congratulate Steve Colbert on a job well done, and move on. Taking it personally and deciding that NASA has delivered a "slap in the face" is the route to misery.
Also consider - how many times are you actually going to hear the name of that module over the next 10 years? Maybe during the week when they launch and assemble it. After that, will we be reading items about a new crew blasting off to visit the Harmony module, or Serenity, or Colbert? Here's a challenge for you: without looking anything up on the web, name 2 others modules currently comprising the ISS.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I think it's great. It shows that NASA can take a joke
If they could take a joke they would have named the module after him instead of copping out like this. If you are going to have a public poll for the name then you have to be prepared to accept the consequences. If you are not then pick the name yourself.
There's a big difference. You apparently really don't get Colbert. When Rush Limbaugh showed a picture of Chelsea Clinton, when she was just a child, and called her a "dog", if he claimed "satire" as his defence then he certainly wasn't claiming that he wasn't really making fun of her, he would have just been claiming that he was "satirizing" her and so it was OK to be cruel to a child.
However, when Colbert is over-the-top and goes after some target like saying that California's 50th Congressional District is "dead" to him for not supporting his friend Duke Cunningham enough, that is satire because he is not actually mad at the people of that district at all.
His satire is directed at the bombastic partisan space cadets that he emulates, like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and Bill O'Reilly.
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
If the US switched to a proportional system, the odds of a minority government headed by Rush Limbaugh would become greater than zero,
This can happen in the US, if there were enough strong political parties.
and that's a risk I'm happy that the founders avoided.
Except they didn't.
Hitler was elected as head of a minority government.
Lets say in addition to the dems and republicans we had rush, all roughly equally strong. We go to election and Rush 'wins' with 37% of the vote (same as Hitler). This isn't enough to win the electoral college however, so the House must elect a president from the top three. Rush, as the 'winner' is one of those 3. He could win a majority here and become president. But even if he doesn't, and the house deadlocks with no canditate getting a majority, then what happens?
The senate votes on the vice president, again rush's running mate will be in the top three, and may win, and become acting-president indefinitely until the house can resolve its presidential deadlock. (So Rush himself isn't president, but his party running mate is... that's about as bad.) Meanwhile the house has to resolve the deadlock... (ie back room deals...)
If the senate also reaches deadlock on selecting a vice-president, well... I'm not really sure what happens at that point. Does anybody?
Frankly, the entire US system is thrown into really really ugly chaos as soon as you have 3 strong political parties, such that no candidate can ever win the electoral college. The 'founding fathers', in my opinion have left a mess waiting to happen. If the moderate republicans and democrats ever decide that they share more in common with eachother in the 'middle' than they do with the more extreme parts of their own party the US is completely screwed.
With 3 strong parties, the electoral college can't be won, and the house decides every election. Assuming the house itself is good mix of those 3 parties, no candidate will get a majority in that vote either, and we'll have deadlock.
"Backroom deals" between parties and the house members to get a candidate a majority will be how every president will be elected.
How does that even resemble democracy?