Computational Complexity

Monday, April 20, 2009

 
NASA's Poll a Sham!!

Posted by GASARCH

Recall that NASA held a poll to determine the name of the third node of the international space station. I blogged about the fact that Stephen Colbert campaigned to win and did! The name Serenity came in second place.

NASA had three choices

1. Name it Colbert. Show the world democracy in action! (at least on unimportant things).
2. Name it Serenity. Reiterate that the poll was more to take the pulse of the public, but they really do want something more in line with the first two nodes: Harmony and Unity.
3. Use the 7th place winner Tranquility and offer some half-assed reason for it.

They chose option (3). However, they are going to name the treadmill that goes into the node:

Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill

~

10:28 AM # 2 comments

1.  Anonymous says:  
   
   NASA's Poll would only be a sham if they had lied about the results. Now if they had stated that it was an election and not a poll, then it would have been a sham.
   
   However I think there is another question here. Was Stephen Colbert's involvement planned. Not surprisingly by the end of the interview in which the chosen name was revealed Colbert was demanding that the node be named Tranquility, since he's done this sort of thing before, and has worked with NASA before, what are the chances that when they poll got out of control, that they brought Stephen Colbert in as a ringer, so they could have him defuse the situation?
   

   1:17 PM, April 20, 2009

2.  Anonymous says:  
   
   However, there is another question here. Why are we discussing stupid tv shows on a computational complexity blog?
   

   2:56 AM, April 28, 2009

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