'Boaty McBoatface' Polar Ship Named After Attenborough Despite Less Votes (bbc.com)

The UK's 200 Million Euro polar research ship won't be called Boaty McBoatface. Instead, the new ship will be called RRS (Royal Research Ship) Sir David Attenborough. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) had originally planned to name the new ship via an online poll. In all fairness, RRS Sir David Attenborough did pick up a few votes, though in terms of popularity nothing came close to Boaty McBoatface (it earned over 124,000 votes). "We want a name that lasts longer than a social-media news cycle and reflects the serious nature of the science it will be doing," said Jo Johnson, the U.K. Science minister. BBC reports: While the polar ship itself will not be named Boaty McBoatface, one of its remotely operated sub-sea vehicles will be named Boaty in recognition of the vote. James Hand, who first suggested the flippant moniker, said he was pleased the name would "live on."

Comments

Re:Strange irony

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Actually I was thinking this is kind of like what happens when you ask a bunch of toddlers to vote on "What do you want for lunch?" The choice will almost always be 'candy' or 'cookies'. No, you don't ask toddlers open questions like this and give them free reign to choose whatever they want; [...]

Considering our rulers do exactly the same in real life (ask the public to choose and then do something else altogether), do I deduce from your comment that they consider their constituents to be immature toddlers?

You prove my point: don't you see how incredibly patronizing that is?

Shippy McShipface

[Caesar Tjalbo]

Shippy McShipface would have been more appropriate.