LONDON ,England (AP) -- Nils Olav already has medals for good conduct and long service. He made honorary colonel-in-chief of the elite Norwegian King's Guard in 2005. And on Friday he was knighted.
Penguin Nils Olav inspects soldiers of the Norwegian King's Guard regiment.
Not bad for a 90-centimeter (three foot) tall penguin -- actually, three of them.
A resident of Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, the original Nils Olav was made an honorary member of the King's Guard in 1972 after being picked out as the guard's mascot by lieutenant Nils Egelien.
The guards adopted him because they often toured the zoo during their visits to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, an annual military music festival, according to zoo spokeswoman Maxine Finlay.
The king penguin was named after Egelien and Norway's then-King Olav V. When the penguin died -- Finlay said no one at the zoo knew exactly when -- he was replaced by a second penguin, who inherited Nils Olav's name and rank.
The current Nils Olav, the third penguin to serve as the guards' mascot, was promoted from honorable regimental sergeant major to honorary colonel-in-chief in 2005, Finlay said.
The knighthood ceremony began Friday morning with speeches and a fanfare before Nils arrived, under escort with the King's Guard Color Detachment.
Nils then reviewed the troops lined up outside the penguin enclosure at the zoo, waddling down the row of uniformed soldiers, occasionally stopping to crane his neck and peer inquisitively at their crisp uniforms before being guided forward by his handler.
Nils was then knighted by British Maj. Gen. Euan Loudon on behalf of Norway's King Harald V. Loudon dropped the king's sword on both sides of Nils's black-and-white frame, and the penguin's colonel-in-chief badge, tied to his flipper, was swapped for one symbolizing his knighthood.
The penguin probably thinks "what are all these silly apes doing"?
More seriously, what about the soldiers that actually did more shit then flap about and walk? I mean, its cute but why give a rank to the mascot? What about people that worked their ass off to archive something?
Credo!
Chat with me on Skype if you want to talk about writing, ideas or if you want a test-reader! PM for address.
Zixinus wrote:
More seriously, what about the soldiers that actually did more shit then flap about and walk? I mean, its cute but why give a rank to the mascot? What about people that worked their ass off to archive something?
You do understand the difference between an honorary rank and a real rank, right?
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
Giving someone an "honorary" anything is exactly that, honorary. It doesn't necessarily confer any recognition of accomplishments or status. So while someone might be given an honorary title or degree or whatever, it doesn't actually mean they've accomplished the same thing as someone who genuinely holds that rank or position, so it's not as if anything is being taken away. This article has another good example of someone being given an honorary rank.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
Honorary doctorates are also commonly given to various figures: for instance, I know Abraham Lincoln received at least one. He was not, however, allowed to call himself Dr. Lincoln.
Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him
My college has given out honorary doctorates in the past, but it's sort of weird since we don't have any graduate schools.
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
Kanastrous wrote:We have a chimpanzee for CinC, right now.
I find this insulting to real chimpanzee.
"Ha ha! Yes, Mark Evans is back, suckers, and he's the key to everything! He's the Half Blood Prince, he's Harry's Great-Aunt, he's the Heir of Gryffindor, he lives up the Pillar of Storgé and he owns the Mystic Kettle of Nackledirk!" - J.K. Rowling
***
"Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on
the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your
hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."
Richard Dean Anderson is an Honorary Major General of the USAF. Doesn't mean he can use the title "General", or that he can give orders.
"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
This reminds me too much of the Penguin Sketch from Monty Python.
When ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets.
—Abraham Lincoln
People pray so that God won't crush them like bugs.
—Dr. Gregory House
Oil an emergency?! It's about time, Brigadier, that the leaders of this planet of yours realised that to remain dependent upon a mineral slime simply doesn't make sense.
—The Doctor "Terror Of The Zygons" (1975)
Wasn't there also a bear that actually helped a bunch of Polish soldiers back in WWII by hauling stuff and eating cigarettes as a reward? Did he also get a honorable rank? Cause all I know is that he ended up in a zoo...
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
Vendetta wrote:Richard Gatling was a pioneer in US national healthcare. On discovering that most soldiers during the American Civil War were dying of disease rather than gunshots, he turned his mind to, rather than providing better sanitary conditions and medical care for troops, creating a machine to make sure they got shot faster.
Qwerty 42 wrote:Honorary doctorates are also commonly given to various figures: for instance, I know Abraham Lincoln received at least one. He was not, however, allowed to call himself Dr. Lincoln.
My high school band teacher didn't understand that fact. He recieved an honorary doctorate from a local private college, and immediately insisted that he be called Dr. Stone. Honorary titles and ranks are great when given to those that will accept it as an honor and show of recognition, not a expected and mandatory granting of a better status. People who let things like this go to their heads make themselves look liek total pricks. Luckily there's no such problem with animals.
Coyote: Warm it in the microwave first to avoid that 'necrophelia' effect.
Beowulf wrote:Richard Dean Anderson is an Honorary Major General of the USAF. Doesn't mean he can use the title "General", or that he can give orders.
On that note, Colonel Sanders was only a Colonel of Kentucky, which is just an honourary title bestowed by the state governer. He never actually served.
"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A
Beowulf wrote:Richard Dean Anderson is an Honorary Major General of the USAF. Doesn't mean he can use the title "General", or that he can give orders.
On that note, Colonel Sanders was only a Colonel of Kentucky, which is just an honourary title bestowed by the state governer. He never actually served.
He actually DID serve in the army, but only as a private.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Wasn't there also a bear that actually helped a bunch of Polish soldiers back in WWII by hauling stuff and eating cigarettes as a reward? Did he also get a honorable rank? Cause all I know is that he ended up in a zoo...
No, he was had the VERY REAL rank of Private, as his comrades enlisted him when some persnickety logistical officer insisted that, as a non-soldier, the bear could not come along onto the ships for the Italian campaign. So, no, not honorary at all.
He was originally just the unit mascot, but upon observing his fellow soldiers carrying boxes of heavy mortar rounds off the back of a truck, the bear began unloading them as well.
He's in a zoo in Scotland now, and he does not eat cigarettes, but smokes them. He just has a bit of trouble successfully getting them in his mouth, and of course someone else has to light them. One of his old comrades visits him and obliges him with smokes.
"The 4th Earl of Hereford led the fight on the bridge, but he and his men were caught in the arrow fire. Then one of de Harclay's pikemen, concealed beneath the bridge, thrust upwards between the planks and skewered the Earl of Hereford through the anus, twisting the head of the iron pike into his intestines. His dying screams turned the advance into a panic."'
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Wasn't there also a bear that actually helped a bunch of Polish soldiers back in WWII by hauling stuff and eating cigarettes as a reward? Did he also get a honorable rank? Cause all I know is that he ended up in a zoo...
No, he was had the VERY REAL rank of Private, as his comrades enlisted him when some persnickety logistical officer insisted that, as a non-soldier, the bear could not come along onto the ships for the Italian campaign. So, no, not honorary at all.
He was originally just the unit mascot, but upon observing his fellow soldiers carrying boxes of heavy mortar rounds off the back of a truck, the bear began unloading them as well.
He's in a zoo in Scotland now, and he does not eat cigarettes, but smokes them. He just has a bit of trouble successfully getting them in his mouth, and of course someone else has to light them. One of his old comrades visits him and obliges him with smokes.
You sure he's still around? Everything I saw seemed to suggest he had passed.
Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him
The bear died in 1963, so no he is not "still around"
But it makes me wonder as have some previous reports, we've managed to domesticate cats, to some extent Tiger's, though the risk is always there why not bears?
Shame, if some Euroasia monarch had sat down and decide to make a serious mutli-generation attempt at domestication then we would have a much more interesting today.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
And I imagine burglaries would result in a lot more fatalities.
'Smithers, release the bears.'
"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A
Mr Bean wrote:The bear died in 1963, so no he is not "still around"
But it makes me wonder as have some previous reports, we've managed to domesticate cats, to some extent Tiger's, though the risk is always there why not bears?
If you raise them from cubs, you can make tame individual bears. However, this is not often done by people who care, for example, orphan bears, because the goal is to get them to adulthood without domesticating them, because if you do that they can't survive in the wild. Though even "tame" bears are substantially more dangerous than dogs, with more pointed consequences if one should get pissed off.
However, there were always groups who did it historically. Norsemen were very fond of trapping bears as cubs and raising them as pets and labor animals. It can be done, but bears don't have the same social structure as humans or wolves do. They just take to it less.
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him
"
- PeZook
