Apple design chief Jonathan Ive awarded knighthood
appleinsider.com
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That's fascinating to me. As an American who has never paid much attention to British knighthood, I am not knowledgeable about the process for selecting whom becomes a British knight. Could someone with the requisite knowledge perhaps elucidate on whether or not ostensibly petty politics get in the way of these things with regularity?
It seems absolutely absurd that someone who is being considered for knighthood could be denied of that because of something as minuscule as declining to speak at a party conference.
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State"
An American cannot accept knighthood.
The Victoria Cross and George cross however, are earnt on merit alone.
You still can.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/new-year-hono...
I'd prefer this to be earned by deserving people - ones who have shown courage, bravery, etc and/or bring pride to the nation.
Not ones who pay/have friends/are just well known. Nowadays, knighthood doesn't represent anything of importance.
See the following clip from the sitcom-cum-documentary Yes Minister for a more complete elucidation of the issues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXzGI0XP7M
If you want to understand british politics, watch all of Yes Minister. Then watch all of its spiritual successor, The Thick Of It.
Sorry, could not resist, just kidding. WW is an idealised form of government.
The next ruler will probably find himself, from the very beginning, more popular than powerful. The temptation to wrestle back some power from an unpopular political class will be strong, and there are very little safeguards. This wouldn't necessary be a bad thing: the UK system values pragmatism over principles, maybe restoring some royal privileges could be useful to get us out of the current ideological rut.
I suspect that's because, for better or worse, a lot of people in the UK do as well. Personally, I'm always torn on the House of Lords. In principle, as an institution, the Lords is an anachronistic affront to democracy that obviously has no mandate and no place in legitimate government for the 21st century. Pragmatically, I can't help noticing that the elected representatives in the House of Commons often seem incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery or showing any empathy whatsoever for their constituents, while the Lords actually has a fairly respectable track record for getting in the way of bad legislation. I would much prefer a second chamber (or entirely new system) where everyone with any kind of power to act on behalf of the people also had a democratic mandate, but until such a system comes along, I suspect as a practical measure we're actually better off with the Lords than without.
Given the state of politics in the west, perhaps leaders in society should be appointed in a similar way to jury service.
On the other hand, I think getting into such office in the first place should be about more than buttering up the current PM. Rather like the US Supreme Court, if all you have to do to reach such high office is receive the assent of someone who may themselves be on the way out politically by the time they appoint you, there is a very real danger that too many bad apples get in and then can't readily be removed.
I've often mused idly over the jury service for politicians idea. For a while, I wondered what would happen if we ran a staged process where randomly selected citizens were invited to join the second chamber for one term of office, lasting quite a while (say 6 years), with a new intake every other year so you never have a chamber full of people who haven't figured out how things work yet. The difficulty I always run into is that like jury service, it probably has to be compulsory rather than an invitation if you're going to get a reasonably representative group, but unlike jury service it is clearly not reasonable to require people to give up several years of their lives for public service. And you can't really do it on shorter terms of say one year, because then the administration of the day can just wait out a hostile second chamber and hope for better luck next time before steamrollering through all the bad legislation it really wants in one favourable year.
Quite a lot of people have mentioned (not particularly seriously) that they would prefer if he just abdicated for William (who is very popular).
Given the Windsor family medical history, Elizabeth II could well make it past her centenary. In which Charles will not get to place his bum on the throne until he's in his late seventies or eighties.
The UK doesn't really have a constitution in the sense that the US, France, Germany, etc. have a constitution. Power changes all the time, and has gradually gotten more democratic over the last 200 years.
In theory, all power is from the Queen/King, which they give out to Parliament. In theory
In practice Parliament has the power, and if the Queen/King over steps their bounds it's either sorted out by war (Parliament vs. the Monarch (English Civil War in 1640s)), or Parliament kicks out the Monarch and gets someone else in (Glorious Revolution of 1688 when they got rid of the Catholic King and invited the Prodestant Willian of Orange in).
Here is a description of how the British honours selection process works:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/UKgo...
This basically sums up the process.
In "Objectified", Dieter Rams (of iconic Braun fame) is asked if there is any company that really gets design today. He answers after a moment's pause: "Apple".[2]
[1] Ira Glass on the importance of having good taste before you can produce to the expectations of that taste
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY (EDIT: Fixed link)
[2] "Objectified: Dieter Rams commentary"
Really happy to see him get mainstream recognition, because he truly should be up there with all the other well-known genius Brit's like Branson and Dyson.
This is an excellent example to others including my own students some of whom are on design courses here in the UK.
Has everyone on HN lost their friggin' sense of humor?!
[EDIT: let me clarify by saying that my karma has gone up and down on the top comment. So some folks get it.]
No joke.
"Sir," especially in an instance such as this, is an earned title with which its owner is entitled to be addressed.
Spent a good ten minutes Googling this one. It would seem no separate word exists ('damed' is not a word), though one site suggested the use of 'daymed' (it's a pun. not very funny :)
I believe technically both men and women are knighted. One becomes a Sir, and the other a Dame. If you think it sounds funny, I supposed "made a dame" might be another way of phrasing it.
I don't know whether the same phraseology would ever have made sense for a knight, though, and I may well be a bit off on the details.
Well, we could put this another way and say that his name has not changed, in the same way as you might address me as Mr. John Doe OR John Doe OR Mr. Doe. Mr, Mrs, Miss, are all (classically) forms of minor titles.
Terry Pratchett's knighthood was announced in the 2008 New Years' list, but it was a couple of months before it was made official at Buckingham Palace.
Am I the only one who sees this as a pitiful attempt by a government to rub elbows with someone who truly has merit, and by doing so to create the notion that there is some form of equality between the two?
I think any self-respecting person would decline knighthood. Though I can see in this case how his corporate responsibilities would lead him to accept it in order not to offend British subjects, since doing so might hurt sales.
(1) You are a computer programmer.
(2) You are not British.
Am I right about either of them? I hope so. I upvoted you in sympathy. :)
"Sir" is no more a title of nobility (today) than any of those.
Here in the UK it is nowadays largely recognised as part of a larger (including OBE and MBE etc.) merit system recognising achievement. A national honour roll.
Now if we were talking about hereditary lordships...
Yes, it is a title, nothing more, nothing huge, almost completely meaningless.
The knighthoods discussed here are earned and given for different public goods -- charity, business, entertainment, etc. Current Knights include Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney, and Sir Richard Branson. It's not heritable or noble, although of course the origins of the word itself are.
(Interestingly, 'Senator' has undergone the same historical shift -- it refers originally to the hereditary nobles who ran the Roman Empire. It's just managed to get away from the aristocratic origins. As have terms like 'Drugs Czar')
It is the case that it's the Queen who awards these titles, but in the UK almost everything does, officially -- she's a symbolic figurehead -- the powerless root node of the tree of government, if you like.
Does the US have any kind of equivalent system of recognition? France has the Légion d'Honneur, for instance, which is a non-aristocratic, republican order of merit.
We're all just in the habit of glorifying those who have power over us (or who once did) and treating nonsense like this as if it was a real honor. If you want to honor Ives, buy an Apple product.
Yet you say we should find government no more credible than Scientology?
What you're describing is a proper non-sequitur, why would a government's utility inform its credibility as an arbiter of respectability?
Ironically, whenever anyone tries to defend government the first thing they mention is the roads, which are less than 1% of the budget and an even smaller percentage of personnel, and toward which the actual work is done by locally contracted private firms.
Sure, there are a lot of coordination problems that government tries (with varying degrees of success) to solve, but this doesn't put it beyond reproach. And it's certainly the case that even the US government has a fairly high degree of corruption, much of which diverts resources away from those in need toward those with political connections.
So in my view, governments derive legitimacy from their ability to solve coordination problems, adapt to changing circumstances, and stave off policies that incentivize corruption or put human rights at risk.
In the case of figurehead monarchies and the hereditary titles they grant, I think the best that could be said is that they offer nostalgia for a past era when such things mattered. In reality, vane humans strive to show status by meeting with royalty, since in spite of the monarchy's utter backwardness and absurdity, is still not something everyone gets to do, so the scarcity of the opportunity creates social value.
The reality of knighthoods past is that they were titles awarded to warlords in exchange for tributes (aka voluntary taxes) paid to a more powerful warlord (aka king) who granted privileges, land, etc., in exchange for those tributes.
This still happens today only w/o the pageantry: Imagine a US military truck with crates full of cash paying Afghan warlords for intel and mercenary troops. This is ugly business and there is no honor whatsoever in it.
Nope, doesn't qualify
A statement that, when taken in context, may actually mean something different from, or the opposite of what is written literally
Don't see how this works either.
I'll skip over Socratic irony and Dramatic irony- hopefully it is obvious this is neither.
I could be wrong, of course. The colloquial & popular use is so different from the actual meaning of the word, I am never quite sure I have the right of it.
There's no irony there, no juxtaposition, no opposite. He's trying to get across the gist of "why the hell is it always roads!?", but it's frustration, not irony.
It would be like if I claimed male authors were better than female authors, then cited George Eliot as my first example of a great male author. That would be ironic.
Roads-by-government are "a small part of the whole" - they're not contradictory in any way to the idea that services are supplied by government. They're not a counterexample. It would only be ironic (and would also fit your example) if the roads in question were actually provided by private enterprise.
What would not be ironic would be something like 'ironically, the defenders of government always mention the military as their first example - I mean come on people, have some imagination at least!' That would just be frustration.
Put simply, if there's a range of possible examples people can pick to support a given stance, and they always seem to pick one of the weakest/least-appropriate ones, then yeah, that's ironic. It's a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects.
As an aside to that, your last phrase a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects highlights a significant difference between British and American irony. In the US, you can choose to wear an ironic t-shirt. With British irony, you can't - irony is something that is unintentional (it can be known, just not intended). As soon as you intend to do it in any way, it's deliberate or expected and so becomes unironic.
In my experience the irony police are usually unwilling to consider the full subtext of someone's statement when they describe it as ironic. For instance people often say things like 'ironic, isn't it - beautiful weather all week and then when we finally decide to throw a barbecue, it rains. ' This is of course just bad luck, but people like to jokingly invoke some sense of fate conspiring against them. Or, someone might consciously wear an 'ironic t-shirt', and people consciously recognise the intent, but the unspoken subtext that maintains the irony is that there is some other observer or potential wearer who would be unaware of the incongruity.
Whilst we're on the subject, gaining legitimacy through association has always been human social trait rather than one limited to governments, its a lot more prevalent than i fear anyone likes to admit.
Legitimacy through association, honor from titles, etc., is part of a desperate, dark-ages mentality that is completely opposite to creativity, novelty, and the democratization of technology.
Apple did not succeed b/c it made devices fit for kings, but because it made devices loved by normal people who use them to do actual work, not simply to inhabit a position enjoyed via birthright, etc.
The amazing design of Apple products is based on smart supply chain provisioning, clever design, and judicious use of materials. Contrast this to the stolen gold wasted to make medallions, crowns, etc. The two just couldn't be further apart, and so yes it tremendously disappoints me that Ives didn't scoff at the supposed honor.
'merit' as a concept doesnt have to be in opposition to any of the qualities mentioned, i dont believe democracy is about abolishing hierarchy, as much as it is offering equal opportunity into it.
Ironically im more worried by Apple, which can manipulate customers left, right and center to make an extra buck: - Overpriced hardware - inconsistent pricing of products internationally - making deals with telecoms companies locking iphone users to certain providers - non-open platforms such as OSX and iOS - taking the free out of freebsd
They are walking a close line themselves in promoting the anti-democratization of technology