Seven Sons

I know I shouldn’t wear it like a badge of honor, but today when I heard his name on the radio, I realized with some smugness that I must have been one of the few people in the entire nation who thought it was pronounced like “caine” instead of like “con-yay”.

Most of us have had to deal with the “last day of school.” How much are you going to learn when you’re brain has already checked out for the summer? This has to be the best way ever to blow off the last day of school.

If you’ve made the host break down laughing, I think you’ve won already.

I recently learned on the NPR show “A Way With Words” that there is a term for someone whose name matches their profession: Aprtonym or Aptonym. So I was prepared to be impressed by an interview this morning with the Director of the California Water Resources Department who was discussing the inevitable rationing that will take place this summer due to the on-going drought. His name? Les Snow. Though to be fair he probably always goes by Lester.

Update: The decision has been made. The unit will be called Tranquility and the exercise treadmill within shall be called the C.O.L.B.E.R.T.

NASA held an online naming contest for the last piece of the International Space Station that will be delivered by shuttle in the near future. They obviously wanted “Serenity,” which segues nicely from “Unity” and “Harmony,” the other USA-built nodes that are already in place. But, to the eggheads in Houstons’ mild regret I’m sure, they allowed write-ins on the voting page. Xenu, the top secret galactic overlord of Scientology, was winning the voting contest until Stephen Colbert anounced on his show that his surname would make a better node moniker (and, for that matter, a better galactic overlord). Since then, NASA has closed the voting and “Colbert” was the overwelming favorite. I’ll go on record as hoping NASA sticks with the will of the people on this one, but I’ll list the factors for consideration.

• It is admittedly risky to name a space station node after a living celebrity. While Colbert’s upstanding faith-centered family-man status is well known, he’s not afraid of dropping the occasional 4-letter word on prime-time television and you never really know who is going to be the next rifle-wielding water tower climber.
• NASA still has image stereotypes to battle, and naming a station node after a comedian would be a very positive step towards encouraging a hip new aura around publicly funded space exploration.
• The ISS won’t be there forever. And if Colbert really embarasses himself before its shelf life expires, they can always either re-christen the node or in a brave and aggressive public statement against the unspecified future moral infraction that the comedian commits NASA can push the eject button and let the node tumble into the atmosphere. Or they can deliver Colbert to his namesake node for good.
• There is no such thing as bad publicity.
• Flaunting the voters’ choice will take a lot of meaning out of any future polls. NASA will lose that marketing avenue if they go with Serenity at this point.