Serenity Lost Voting Contest

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tharedhead

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hVxsBGs7scxZSkcCE1cL2B4BlECAD974D8800

NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won.

The name "Colbert" beat out NASA's four suggested options in the space agency's effort to have the public help name the addition. The new room will be launched later this year.

NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report," to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.


the right to choose an appropriate name. Agency spokesman John Yembrick said NASA will decide in April, but will give top vote-getters "the most consideration."

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Voting contests are always awful, this is absolute proof! :cry:
 
Boy I guess that says a lot doesn't it. All comes down to who you know and if you're the popular kid on the block. I don't do voting contests but it's nothing personal to anyone.
 
Saw that one coming! So far, Stephen Colbert has a bridge in Hungary, a bald eagle, a giant seal, a minor league hockey team, and now possibly a room at the space station all named after him. I think he'd draw the line at a disease, but you never know.
 
Stephen Colbert is pretty funny but it just goes to show how people can be blindly led by something or someone. If you're the popular thing going on right now you will have a following no matter how silly it is.

Oh and he has ice cream named after him also.
 
Would have made more sense to stick with the same theme! I liked Serenity. And I really hate these voting contests :cussing:
 
Before this contest I'd never heard of the guy :scratch: I had to look him up when gosweepwin mentioned him.
I checked out on that type of humor around The Smothers Brothers and Soopey Sales....
 
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second...tephen-colbert-may-be-honored-with-2009-03-24

I didnt think this story could get any funnier... I was wrong. :laughing:


Need to use the john? Why not use the Colbert instead? Future astronauts may have that option, as NASA is reportedly considering naming a toilet on the International Space Station (ISS) after the comedian.

A NASA poll to suggest a name for a new ISS node was flooded with write-in votes for "Colbert" after the Colbert Report host urged his viewers to stuff the virtual ballot box. ("We have a great relationship," he told Colbert Nation, "you love naming things after me, and I love telling you to do it.") When voting ended Friday, Colbert had beaten "Serenity," the leader among non-write-ins, by more than 40,000 votes, according to space.com. (Colbert launched a similar crusade this past winter called "Operation Humble Kanye," seeking to catapult his own A Colbert Christmas album over West's number-one-ranked 808s & Heartbreak on the iTunes Music Store charts.)

Colbert had gone so far as to submit an on-air challenge to William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, to uphold the results of the poll if he prevails in his campaign. "Well, we're going to have to go think about that," Gerstenmaier parried.

SPACE.com now reports that "NASA insiders" say the agency might be more amenable to naming a small but vital part of the station after Colbert—the toilet. Agency spokesperson John Yembrick demurred on the subject but couldn't resist cracking a joke himself. "As for the toilet rumor," he told SPACE.com, "we don't want to flush away any goodwill by announcing something before we are ready."
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I find this rather sad that so many can be swayed by one man. There's the problem again with voting contests. People just tend to vote for something that's usually not the best choice.
 
http://community.colbertnation.com/namesake_challenge

Shouldn't more things be named
after Stephen Colbert? Indubitably. And if you could name anything after him,
what would it be? Well, fire up your
photo editor program and show us visually! Enter Stephen's Fantasy Namesake Challenge:

* Enter as many times as you like.
* Submit your entry (or entries) by April 1st.
* We'll choose 15 of our favorites to receive
a very special Apples In Stereo / Stephen Stephen picture disc record.
* Maximum one prize per person.
* All submissions must abide by the
Terms and Conditions, Copyright Compliance
and the Content Submission Agreement
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This is my favorite.. http://community.colbertnation.com/Photo/The-Colbertstitution/0C7E3FFFF01AC7970000700B38F1A :laughing:
 
Like all voting contests, there was a problem....If NASA had bothered to tell the Firefly fans that the suggestion area was going to be counted as actual votes then everybody would not have stopped or slacked off voting when Serenity seemed so far ahead. Everybody was like, OK, we won great and quit voting. :cry:
It is still rather impressive that a TV show that has been off the air for so long managed to get as many votes as it did! :sunny:
 
http://tv.yahoo.com/show/38498/news/urn:newsml:tv.reuters.com:20090415:us_space_colbert__ER:20553

Colbert lost in space when NASA names station node
Tue Apr 14, 10:39 PM PDT

NASA on Tuesday named its new living quarters on the International Space Station "Tranquillity," denying television comedian Stephen Colbert his attempt to get the new Node 3 named after himself.

Astronaut Sunita L. Williams, appearing on "The Colbert Report" on cable TV network Comedy Central, said NASA will name the new module Tranquility, instead of Colbert as he and his fans demanded after winning an online poll conducted by NASA.

But the U.S. space agency did make one concession. It said it will make a new Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT) -- a fancy way of saying "exercise treadmill" -- a key fixture in the space station.

"Your name will be in space in a very important place," Williams assured Colbert on his TV show. "Everyday somebody will have to jump on the COLBERT," she said.

Initially, the comedian seemed upset, but then he hit on an idea. "By running on the treadmill, that is what powers the Space Station?" asked a hopeful Colbert.

"Well, not really," said Williams, who in the past served as a flight engineer aboard the space station.

The comedic situation stemmed from NASA's recent public outreach to drum up interest in the $100 billion International Space Station by holding an online contest to name the new Node 3, which will house life support equipment.

Colbert, who parodies a conservative political commentator on his TV show, waged a campaign encouraging fans to vote for him and he eventually won, earning 230,539 write-in votes to 40,000 for NASA's top suggestion, "Serenity."

Contest rules stipulated that NASA retained the right to name Node 3, but in March U.S. Representative Chaka Fattah, a Pennsylvania Democrat, called on NASA to do the democratic thing and use the name that drew the most votes -- Colbert.

In the end, Colbert took Tuesday's news with a friendly handshake, and he thanked Williams and NASA for playing along with him and his fans.

It wasn't Colbert's first attempt to brand a piece of public property with his name. In 2006, he topped another public vote to name a bridge in Budapest, Hungary. But again he lost because Hungarian law required that the bridge's namesake be fluent in Hungarian and deceased.

(Additional reporting by Sheri Linden; editing by Todd Eastham)
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3mnkids1 said:
It wasn't Colbert's first attempt to brand a piece of public property with his name. In 2006, he topped another public vote to name a bridge in Budapest, Hungary. But again he lost because Hungarian law required that the bridge's namesake be fluent in Hungarian and deceased.
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That is simple, teach him Hungarian and then kill him :)
So NASA's solution is to ignore the voting entirely and name it something completely different? :cussing: Thereby upsetting both Colbert and Firefly fans...
 
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