I can't believe they allow a warming-pan gap!
In the good old days they had half the Privy Council in the delivery room to avoid warming pan incidents. Standards are slipping.
I hadn't know this.
If she's a girl, the Royal Baby will make British human rights history: As Amy Davidson explains in the New Yorker, the announcement that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were expecting coincided with an important development. After centuries of male-preference primogeniture, in which a girl who'd otherwise be heir to the British royal throne can get leapfrogged by her brothers, the Commonwealth countries have agreed to change their policy, which would put Kate and William's daughter, if they have one, third in line for the British throne, even if she someday has brothers.
I didn't know they hadn't announced the sex. Huh. I wonder if they themselves know.
5. They do, and she almost let it slip a few months ago. See 3 above.
What if the baby is born a Roman Catholic?!?
I swear I read the OP and thought (1) Heebie's in labor again? I didn't even know she was pregnant! (2) Wait, how old is Ace?? (3) Is "royal baby" a common term for the fourth child? I've never heard that before. What's it mean?
It was only on googling to learn more about this mysterious "royal baby" phrase that I realized the OP is probably not about Heebie.
9: No joke, either, apparently.
I realized the OP is probably not about Heebie.
It's the Royal Family's greatest shame that Kate is always sneaking away to impersonate a Texas math teacher on a blog.
I don't know why, but I hadn't realized that the children of the Duke of York were ahead of the Earl of Wessex.
Will they consider having a King Consort then?
I have a genuine question, asked in ignorance: why does it matter who is heir to the British royal throne?
14 - Because that person will be heir to a massive international criminal cartel, controlling billions of dollars in drug trafficking funds previously used to fund the Oklahoma City bombers.
That sounds like a rhetorical question.
When you get right down to it, why does anything matter?
14: The commemorative plate industry's profits for the next generation may turn on it.
Can you short a plate on the Bradford Exchange?
I've been storing plates in my kitchen, periodically moving them from a shelf to the sink, then to the dish drainer.
No, really: does it affect the well-being of anyone whether a good person or a bad person sits on the British royal thone?
Or, forget the well-being of other people: Would it be beneficial to Kate and William's daughter if she ultimately is in line for the throne (vs. if for some reason she were not)? Is that likely to improve her personal well-being?
20: How do you monetize that?
I just think that it was hard enough during keeping my mother updated on progress -- a whole world? Yikes.
The British royal family occupies the same space in my brain as Jon and Kate Gosselin. I couldn't possibly care any less about them, and yet thanks to the ubiquitous coverage on television and grocery store magazine covers, I know more about them than I do about any of my actual neighbors.
I make allowances for UK citizens because, hey, your kingdom and all. But why Americans go so gaga over them remains an utter mystery to me. The stateside freakout after Diana died was just about the weirdest thing ever.
And, it's a boy. I wanted it to be a girl, just for the precedent, but hooray that someone is experiencing a happy, healthy birth.
14 - Because that person will be heir to a massive international criminal cartel, controlling billions of dollars in drug trafficking funds previously used to fund the Oklahoma City bombers.
Don't all the Annunaki lizards have similar social standing? Is there really a kingpin?
Gin and Tacos FB status update from this morning:
Ideal royal baby outcomes:
1. Baby is black or Asian
2. Turns out Kate just had to take a huge poop
3. Baby bites through umbilical cord, slays William, claims throne
21: Can't you feel it, urple? Doesn't the world seem like a happier place?
Knowing the precise line of succession to the throne is important, because it's important to know exactly which 10,000,000 or so people one must kill to claim the crown. I guess it's now 10,000,001.
The kid will be the first royal born to have helicopter parents.
24 I have no idea who Jon and Kate Gosselin are.
Anyhow, the monarchy works out best of all for Americans. We get a little bit of vicarious pomp and circumstance and finery, and no possibility whatsoever that some inbred royal buffoon could do something of consequence.
30: reality show parents of sextuplets.
32 If it's not at least octo- I don't care.
They already had two kids, so technically...
They should have called the show "Jon and Kate Used Their Genitals To Make Eight Children" or something like that.
Please kill me. I already know too much.
You know, that was my thought immediately after posting it. Anyhow, there's a strong case to be made for constitutional monarchy, since pretty much all the good countries and none of the shitty ones seem to have it. Admittedly there's a correlation/causation problem there, but still.
OK, "pretty much all" is an overstatement. But a lot of them do.
The Unfogged Babysplosion continues!
Sort of.
Not really.
41 just don't criticize the monarch.
Seems pretty good to me, as does Malaysia. I hadn't known that Morocco was a constitutional, not an absolute, monarchy until I just looked it up. That might be an exception.
Morocco's good by my yardstick. U.A.E. and Bahrain are more difficult calls.
OK, maybe Cambodia. But constitutional monarchy sure worked out better for them than their other options.
Is it sufficient that a country have a constitution (and a monarch) for it to be considered a constitutional monarchy? Because I think in the case of Morocco that may be stretching things a bit. I've not been keeping up (I lived there for a few years in the 90s) so I'm not that familiar with the reforms of a couple of years ago but I don't think they really curbed the substantial powers of the king.
I guess you need more than a constitution and a monarch -- maybe the rule is just "country where there's basically full democracy and a monarch who is more or less titular head of state." I'm going with that, anyway.
Anyhow, in googling around on this issue I found this awesome website advocating a return to constitutional monarchy for Hawaii. Apparently this guy, who is unfortunately a Republican politician, is the current royal pretender to the Hawaiian throne, despite looking like some dude you'd meet in the mall food court.
And looking it up it appears the reforms of 2011 were more substantial than I'd been led to believe.
50: Actually, the baby does look pretty black in this picture.
||
Two off-topic links: this seems like classic unfogged material (though the sidebar links makes me disinclined to trust anything on that website) :
The findings, published in the Journal of Communication, revealed that the long-distance relationships are of equal or even more trust and satisfaction than their geographically close counterparts.
"Indeed, our culture emphasizes being together physically and frequent face-to-face contact for close relationships, but long-distance relationships clearly stand against all these values," said coauthor Crystal Jiang. "People don't have to be so pessimistic about long-distance romance."
Also this (via Drum) is fascinating.
[G]eography appears to play a major role in making Atlanta one of the metropolitan areas where it is most difficult for lower-income households to rise into the middle class and beyond, according to a new study that other researchers are calling the most detailed portrait yet of income mobility in the United States.
The study -- based on millions of anonymous earnings records and being released this week by a team of top academic economists -- is the first with enough data to compare upward mobility across metropolitan areas. These comparisons provide some of the most powerful evidence so far about the factors that seem to drive people's chances of rising beyond the station of their birth, including education, family structure and the economic layout of metropolitan areas.
Climbing the income ladder occurs less often in the Southeast and industrial Midwest, the data shows, with the odds notably low in Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus. By contrast, some of the highest rates occur in the Northeast, Great Plains and West, including in New York, Boston, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Seattle and large swaths of California and Minnesota.
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I'm sure they'll name the baby Muhammad since that's the most popular boy's name in England (according to my Fox news watching cousin).
CNN, last summer: The government declared that Harry was the most popular boy's name, but if you add up the five most popular different spellings of Mohammed, that name comes top. Mohammed is also the most popular boy's name of the past five years for England and Wales, ahead of Oliver and Jack. It came first or second every year since 2007, the only name to do so.
15: Because that person will be heir to a massive international criminal cartel, controlling billions of dollars in drug trafficking funds previously used to fund the Oklahoma City bombers.
This did lead me to do a quick search to see if there had been anything from LaRouche or his minions. Just some stale stuff* from a few years ago warning Middleton to watch out or Prince Philip would come after her the way he murdered Di. I do await comment, however.
*Don't worry, the Brits are still on his mind:
The decision by the MB President [Morsi - JPS] was in line with the overall British imperial plan for the Southwest Asia region--permanent sectarian war among Islamic factions, and every other religion, which will destroy lives, states, and prevent world peace for decades to come. That has been the overall policy of war and depopulation that has dominated the world increasingly since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and again, with the British-Saudi act of terror on Sept. 11, 2001.
54: the most popular boy's name in England
And the world. Read a fucking book for once.
Possibly having a titular, symbolic, celebrity head of state is good for the polity because it diverts some adulation from elected representatives. This could be bad for the royals themselves, of course. Auden described the rois faineants as political prisoners, I think.
58: I most strongly felt this way during the reign of King Ronnie the Bigoted and Ignorant (assuming he would be the king instead of the pretend prez).
|?
Kotsko on the State ...pretty damn good, although he should have put his Agamben, Zizek, etc to better use here.
I add a comment on the pre-WII Emperor System in Japan.
All I do is to congratulate the Commonwealth on the birth of their visible concrete sovereign.
It is the invisible abstract sovereigns that dis-empower the people. "State" and "individual" are abstractions, like "property" and "money" to obscure the social.
This does not mean I am a monarchist, necessarily, just not a liberal.
God Save the Prince.
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The royal family of Hawaii had several marriages with royalist old white landowning families of Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, hence the whiteness of the prince. Wikipedia has some good family trees, and a fictional version of this is mentioned in The Descendants where they're also all white people descended from a Hawaiian princess.
52.last: I read the above-the-fold bit of that while covering the reception desk this morning. Sounded interesting!
52.first: I'm almost curious enough to read the whole study, but holy shit does it look like that's just one huge selection effect in action. Anyone actually read it, and see how/whether they controlled for the fact that the population of LDRs only contains those relationships considered serious/good enough to warrant maintaining despite the huge and obvious negatives of doing so long-distance?
55 Tables are available here: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datasets-and-tables/index.html?pageSize=50&sortBy=none&sortDirection=none&newquery=Baby+Names%2C+England+and+Wales%2C+2011&content-type=Reference+table&content-type=Dataset
Only three spellings of Muhammad make the top 100 which still leaves Harry on top. Also, if you're going to add up different spellings of Muhammad should you add Charles and Charlie and the like?
I'm not sure what happened there.
From the link in 9:
A Roman Catholic is specifically excluded from succession to the throne; nor may the Sovereign marry a Roman Catholic.
The Sovereign must, in addition, be in communion with the Church of England and must swear to preserve the established Church of England and the established Church of Scotland. The Sovereign must also promise to uphold the Protestant succession.
I don't think I knew the monarch still had to swear allegiance to the church. Unsurprising, but nevertheless kind of creepy.
Seems sort of strange that the sovereign can marry anyone but a Catholic.
69: Would you want your sovereign to be taking orders from Rome? Sure, now that it's dreamy Pope Francis, but it wasn't that long ago that it was Pope Palpatine.
I think taking orders from your spouse isn't indicative of sovereignty.
I think the act which got rid of the gender rules for succession also got rid of the prohibition on marrying a catholic (see wikipedia). England had a problem for a while that the queen consorts were catholic (since almost all other countries were catholic) and then the crown prince would grow up secretly catholic and then convert after becoming king, so they took pretty drastic measures to stop that from happening again.
I actually thought they'd already had their kid until this morning. Friends of mine seem to care. One asked what the baby should be named. All I could think of right then was "King George Michael Maharis."
The only Catholic monarchs currently around, I think, are in Spain, Belgium, Lichtenstein, and Monaco. I guess you could count the Pope, or the Bishop of Urgell for Andorra, but they don't have daughters suitable for marrying off.
Oh, plus the Duke of Luxembourg.
60: The Reagans made it obvious to me because I disliked the fawning they seemed to get. Now I wonder if there would be less insane antipathy to Obama if people were reacting to only his secular, not his symbolic, power. (News from Australia: possibly not.)
The monarchy is one area where my thinking has not evolved at all since I was about seven. I didn't understand why anybody would want such a miserable job, and I couldn't understand why people didn't abdicate at the soonest possible moment.
I still don't. There isn't a conception of "duty" that is meaningful to me in this context.
Videos of head-of-state meetings, the Clintons meeting the Windsors and so forth, always seemed particularly awkward to me - actual leader meeting titular leader.
All Hail King Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadoo!
Yeah, I'm somewhat on the side of clew's sentiment in 58, though in a conflicted way.
I think Kate owes it to all of us to name the little one Joffrey.
It would totally be awesome if they named the baby after me.
I hope that's your way of telling us you're named Joffrey.
If they go with King Martin Luther, future historians will develop theories about why the United States celebrated his birthday every year, six months off from his actual date of birth.
King Fish? King Kong? King Alingadingdong?
I vote for King Tubby.
Plenty of good options among those guys. Big Youth, Mad Lion (three lions!), Thoroughbred...
I will accept either Maximus I or Babar I.
I think Heru-ra-ha I would show a nice respect for tradition.
King-Emperor Robert Halford Ptolemy Maximus Babar Bugokrator Bokassa I is what I have monogrammed on my clothing, but if the young Windsor wants it as well he can take the name.
I have named the boy Caleb, in accordance with your wishes.
Hmm, "King, Messiah and Major among fastest-rising baby names for boys in the U.S."
Plenty of good options among those guys. Big Youth, Mad Lion (three lions!), Thoroughbred...
King Scientist!
"Alexander" and "Louis" look way overvalued. I wish there was a way to bet against a name.
I am quite cheerful about the new prince, because I hate democracy and that stuff. Someone to keep Anderson & Sheppard in business through the end of the century, at least.
52.2 is really interesting, if only because some are going out of their way not to notice that social welfare programs are poorest (leanest) in those states in which social mobility is lowest.
NPR's Marketplace did an interview with the researchers, whose first explanation, at least in that brief interview, had to do with the quality of schools, which is a function of property taxes *as well as* racial and class integration/segregation: those metropolitan areas in which segregation was near-total enjoyed less socioeconomic mobility. Because the poverty-stricken regions of the city have shittier schools.
Fair enough, but I couldn't help but think: what about the generosity or paucity of any number of social welfare programs? Head Start, say? or school lunches, or meals on wheels, or WIC, and so on? A metropolitan region that throws its poorer citizens under the bus (because one wouldn't want to make the poor folk dependent, after all) is going to see the perpetuation of generational poverty. Why not look to sheer policy and funding decisions in order to discover why some areas are low-mobility while others aren't?
Hm. I haven't read much of the commentary out there on the study.
Some wonderful suggestions from Pop Culture Happy Hour's Linda Holmes ("Miss Alli" in the old days of Mighty Big TV/Television Without Pity).
A man, a plan, a king: Gnik Anal Panama
109: Name of the Red Ranger on one of the uncountable versions of the show that is on Netflix.
111 is so obviously the best that I'm surprised we haven't seen an announcement as such already.
King Mountbatten-Windsor, Ontario
You guys are so silly! Obviously the little prince's names should be: George Edward Thomas Michael Oscar Neville Edmund Yves
Surely you meant George Oliver Thomas Michael Oscar Neville Edmund Yves
I appreciate everything because they aren't making more land.
OT: French fries on the salad and the Go-gos on the juke box.
I am reliable informed that it was Blondie. I regret the error but not very much.
121, did they run out of croutons, or is the Primanti sandwich innovation creeping into other foodstuffs?
I think this bar has been open since the end of Prohibition and may have been putting fries on things the whole time.
I think the child should be named Diana in honour of the grandmother he will never know. Also because it would be so fun.
125: You should order fries and see what comes on top of those.
Cheese, if you ask for it. That's it.
They have ketchup and malt vinegar available. Also mustard, but that gets a funny look.
The one time I was in Mobyburg I had one of those sandwiches with the giant heap o' fries. I'm still waiting for the inevitable heart attack to catch up with me.
67 --- you don't swear allegiance to the Church of England, you swear to uphold the Church as established by law*. Intrinsically fucked, but for slightly different reasons.
Yeah, they did get rid of the Catholicism ban, but only for consorts. (Ironically, it was arguably a conflict between the Bill of Rights and the ECHR.)
* As well as (earlier) swearing to protect the C of S.
King Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, was Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David. Known in the family as David. The advantage of having more names than brain cells is that you have a wide choice of regnal names if you ever get around to reigning. Big Ears has suggested that he might be George VII rather than Charles III.
Prince Wayne (probably bearing the courtesy title of Earl of Strathearn) will be neither a good nor a happy person, because although I'm prepared to believe his parents will do what they can to minimise the damage, he will be raised from the cradle to be a circus freak, and that does nobody any good.
24 Sums it up best.
Does Kuwait qualify as a constitutional monarchy? I think part of the definition must be that the monarch can't simply tear up the constitution if he or she finds it inconvenient. In Britain it's settled law that the royal succession is ultimately up to Parliament.
107. Spam king (currently in exile in Bonita Springs, FLA.)
Big Ears has suggested that he might be George VII rather than Charles III.
Probably sensible given what happened with the last two Charlses.
Too soon to start with the royalactin.
They should call him Richard and see which namesake he takes after.
140. Richard, Duke of Gloucester would be my guess. He's a qualified architect, but he doesn't practice because he's too busy cutting ribbons on behalf of his cousin. I think he could be summed up as "mostly harmless".
Tina Brown explains it all: #Kate can do no wrong! Now the royals can stop pretending they were fine with a girl 1st!
Tina Brown can go fuck herself.
Can anyone even name a British king from the last 200 years? (Not you, ajay. Put your hand down.) The most famous one was the stutterer, and that's just because they made a movie about him. Then there's the almost-Nazi, and the one that I only know existed because of the adjective, and then a bunch of Georges. They should just have all named themselves George III-1 through 4, like Final Fantasy XIII-2.
Or like George Foreman and his sons.
His five sons are George Jr., George III ("Monk"), George IV ("Big Wheel"), George V ("Red"), and George VI ("Little Joey").
142: Wow, also some named Victoria Arbiter who seems to be on CNN's royalty beat:
"I was just thrilled, I can't believe that we finally after all of this waiting know that we have a boy," Victoria Arbiter said immediately following the announcement. "My first thought, I have to say, this is how brilliant a royal Kate is. There are women throughout British royal family history that have panicked over not being able to deliver a boy, and here we are, Kate did it first time,"
An apparently large number of royalty commenters don't seem to be familiar with the basic facts of reproduction.
On the veldt, women who feared beheading were less likely to give birth to a son.
148: And the new U.K. default porn filter isn't going to help.
Tina Brown can go fuck herself.
When it comes to British journalists, I think we need to retrain whoever does the H-2B visas.
Can anyone even name a British king from the last 200 years?
If you can, and you didn't go to school in Britain, you need to get a life - they're all complete nonentities. (Technically George III was still king 200 years ago, but he was isolated under medical supervision.)
George the First was always reckoned Vile, but viler George the Second. And what mortal ever heard Any good of George the Third? When from earth the Fourth descended, God be praised! the Georges ended.
(Until 1910.)
Ugh:
George the First was always reckoned
Vile, but viler George the Second.
And what mortal ever heard
Any good of George the Third?
When from earth the Fourth descended,
God be praised! the Georges ended.
Wow, also some named Victoria Arbiter who seems to be on CNN's royalty beat:
Good name for some one a royalty beat, though. "Nah, not as good as Queen Victoria."
Can anyone even name a British king from the last 200 years?
[Kicks copy of the Duchess of Windsor's The Duke of Windsor's Favorite Southern Recipes under the couch.]
Uh, of course not.
Michael Gambon was my favorite king. Tough love, the country needed it.
No relation to Petronius, one assumes.
Can anyone even name a British king from the last 200 years? (Not you, ajay. Put your hand down.)
Well, there haven't actually been that many. For most of the time we've had queens and they've done all the interesting stuff like TAKING OVER THE WORLD and so on.
Wow, also some named Victoria Arbiter who seems to be on CNN's royalty beat:
Descended from Petronius Arbiter, who covered the royalty beat for Acta Diurna.
161 is funny.
(I love Petronius. He uses the word "circumminxit"!)
They should name him Kong so when he ascends to the throne he'll be King Kong. In the meantime he can go by the nickname 'Donkey.'
Here in the US, "Spencer" is a first name. Choosing this would explode enough heads to move the lad smartly up the line.
They could try to rehabilitate John - has had bad press for 800 years for losing Normandy and being forced by the barons to do Magna Carta.
163: Likewise, the crown prince of Norway is named "King".
A friend reminds me on twitter that royal powers in the UK are not purely ceremonial:
http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/14/secret-papers-royals-veto-bills
161 is funny.
Though pwned by 160! Harrumph.
167: indeed; during the Cold War there was a lot of debate over the Queen's role and powers with regard to, you know, incinerating Moscow.
They should name him Kong so when he ascends to the throne he'll be King Kong.
Or they could name him Crimson. Or, if they're feeling really adventurous, Ghidorah . . .
Royal baby update - named George Alexander Louis. "Prince George" - there's a county in Maryland already named for him.
160.3: That was my point. The UK is famous for its queens, which makes Tina Brown's comment extra stupid. Go move to some Salic Law country, Tina!
102 explains the middle names. They did it to spite Halford!
Fuck them. Time to seize the throne.
"Alexander" is OK, there were three rather good Kings Alexander. But "Louis"? French!