Let’s have a show of hands. How many of you out there think that “Spirit” and “Opportunity” are incredibly stupid names for the rovers now photographing and crawling around Mars? The first one sounds like a glee club from high school and the second sounds like some vague and visionary investment commercial.
Robots shouldn’t be given names like this. Voyager, Explorer, Zond, Lunakhod, Cassini, Mitner–these are names that make sense. Name them after scientists, name them with nouns that suggest science and exploration, name them after their specific function or just name them with abbreviations and numbers.
Changing the subject, a friend of mine pointed to me to an ASCII art version of Star Wars: A New Hope.
Argh. I probably should be in bed by now.