The Virtual Stoa

From Whipsnade Zoo:

On 4 December, London Zoo’s elephants were successfully moved to Whipsnade Wild Animal Park following the completion of the Park’s additional new facilities.

As part of the European Endangered Species Programme (EEP), Mya, Layang Layang and Dilberta are now being integrated with the Whipsnade herd to join the conservation effort to save this endangered species. The three elephants have been settling into their new home and getting to know their companions: Whipsnade’s three female elephants Anna, Lucha and Kaylee, and Emmett, the bull elephant.

Moving elephants is a complex business and requires a lot of planning. It all went extremely smoothly and that was down to the expert team involved in the move. Encouraging signs are now being seen as the two elephant groups are integrated. Bonds are being formed between the females, in particular Layang Layang and Anna are becoming great friends.On arrival, the three London Zoo elephants were kept separately from the Whipsnade herd but as the new elephants were so calm, introductions to the resident females began soon after. To ensure that introductions went well, staff had to take into account all the elephants’ different personalities and their status within the two herds. Initially, they had visual contact, and then there were neighbourly greetings over the fence, involving a lot of trunk touching and snorting. Today they are mixed in different combinations as the settling-in process continues.

Whipsnade’s extended elephant facility, which is over seven acres, has five linked outside areas including a huge grass paddock as well as two separate houses. Visitors can see the elephants taking advantage of the many additional facilities designed specially for them. There are two pools, mud wallows and dust baths, as well as rubbing posts, shades for summer and high-level feeders.

As Emmett, the bull elephant, is rapidly maturing the new facilities have been designed to withstand his incredible strength, especially when he is in musth. Emmett has already proven himself as a breeding male, with two of Whipsnade’s original herd due to give birth this year. The new additional facilities have been designed particularly with him in mind as they will have to withstand the force of a 4 tonne elephant moving at 30 miles per hour.

The new Whipsnade herd, which is the largest group of breeding females in the UK, will play an important role in the European Endangered Species Programme as Asian elephants become even more threatened in the wild. With only 20,000 to 40,000 wild Asian elephants left, ZSL’s herd at Whipsnade will help to ensure that this species is not lost forever and will inspire our visitors to join our commitment to the conservation of this fantastic animal.

In memory of Jim Robson, Senior Keeper who was tragically killed at London Zoo in October 2001, some evergreen oaks will be planted at Whipsnade. Jim died working with the elephants he loved and it was felt to be appropriate to plant trees that will provide a supply of ‘browse’ on which future generations of Whipsnade elephants can feed.

It’s nice to know there was a lot of trunk touching and snorting. Good elephants! (Bad elephants, though, for trampling poor Jim Robson to death).

Students here at Magdalen have voted for a flat rate for their room rents, starting from the next academic year. Good for them, and good for Alec, who seems to have done a ton of useful work to educate, agitate and organise the JCR referendum, and who has produced useful and informative cross-tabs here.

Only in the Daily Telegraph:

By Oliver Poole in Los Angeles

A university course on male and female sexuality has been suspended after students took part in orgies and were taken to a gay strip bar where they watched their instructor have sex.

Male undergraduates at the University of California at Berkeley also complained that they were made to listen to other people’s depraved sexual fantasies, take pictures of their genitalia and watch explicit pornography.

A female sexuality class at the university, which was synonymous in the 1960s with the spirit of free love and psychedelia, is also being investigated after it emerged that it, too, involved visits to strip clubs, along with lectures from porn stars.

Social science faculty heads took action after student Jessica McMahon said that at the end of the trip to the gay strip club the class instructor stripped on stage and started to engage in sexual activity with one of the club’s male performers.

She said: “It got kind of crazy and one of the [strippers] ended up getting fired.”

Christy Kovacs, a Berkeley freshman on the course last term, said that there had been an open invitation to any students who were interested in attending an after-class orgy at another instructor’s home.

They were encouraged to pair off and disappear into one of the bedrooms before swapping to have sex with another partner.

Marie Felde, the university’s spokesman, said that an investigation into the accusations had begun. She said: “Those sorts of activities are not part of the approved course curriculum.”

State senator Dick Ackerman, a Republican and a former student at the university, has demanded the institution “re-evaluate” its approach to pastoral care.

The male and female sexuality courses were set up by the university a decade ago to examine the limits and prejudices surrounding sex.

Although established and monitored by the social sciences faculty, student instructors ran the classes, which counted towards end of year marks.

Among the lecturers scheduled to speak at the male sexuality class this term were Nina Hartley, a porn star who appeared in the Hollywood film Boogie Nights, a representative from an anti-circumcision organisation, and the owner of Good Vibrations, a local sex shop.

It’s such a good Daily Telegraph story that the reader has no idea at all as to whether it might be true.

More on Consignia, this time from the CWU:

Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, today called on all newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets to boycott the name ‘Consignia’ and call it “by its real name” the Post Office. “I’m sure the public will welcome the media ignoring this name which has been foisted on us all by slick media men, big corporations and corporate spin-doctors,” Billy said. “It is time to reclaim our Post Office.”

Billy says the campaign will not only prove popular with the public but will save gallons of ink and avoid hundreds of sore throats every day! Why? “Because every time reporters writes the word ‘Consignia’, they have to add the explanation ‘We really mean the Post Office’. Every time broadcasters mentions the name ‘Consignia’, they have to add “That is, the silly new name the Post Office calls itself.” … The union wants the public to write to newspapers or ring radio or television stations who use the name ‘Consignia’.

Billy says that there is a serious political side to the campaign. “Consignia means a profit-centred declining competition-ridden low-wage outfit in constant crisis. “The Post Office means service to the public; decent wages and conditions to which people aspire rather than reluctantly accept; and a seamless integrated postal service for all…

OK. No more mentions of Consignia in this weblog again.

Here’s a press release, issued last night at 11pm, from the Campaign Against Arbitrary Detention and the Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers

Asylum rights campaigners to hold press conference at gates of Yarl’s Wood

The Campaign Against Arbitrary Detention at Yarl’s Wood has called a press conference for 3.00 pm on Sunday 17 February outside the gates of the government’s flagship asylum detention centre, devastated by fire last Thursday night / Friday morning.

Local resident and Campaign member, Emma Ginn, said: “The latest statements from the Bedfordshire police indicate that our worst fears may yet be realised and that detainees died in the blaze. Quite literally, it looks like the policy of arbitrary detention can kill. At present, we are looking into a serious allegation that firefighters may have been blocked from reaching detainees in one of the burning blocks”.

Meanwhile, The Sun has seized on the tragic events at Yarl’s Wood to launch still another vicious campaign against asylum seekers. “We are giving the media the opportunity to hear the other side of the story about the reality of the conditions that had prevailed at Yarl’s Wood prior to the fire and about the treatment of the detainees since then”, said Ginn.

Ginn will be joined at the press conference by a representative from the National Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers (CDAS), Green Party representative Marc Schiemann, Weyman Bennett, the Black Officer of the Socialist Alliance and other local labour movement activists.

CDAS secretary, George Binette, said “If nothing else, the tragic events at Yarl’s Wood should serve to discredit the whole of the government’s asylum policy and, in particular, its determination to increase the use of detention in what are essentially Category B prisons.”

The Bedford-based campaign has already established that detainees, including a woman and her two-month-old infant, were left to stand for hours partially clothed in the sub-zero cold of Friday morning. Detainees, who were bussed to other detention facilities on Friday, were placed in handcuffs. Neither the police nor Group 4 officials have been forthcoming with information about the whereabouts or condition of detainees, despite repeated requests from relatives and regular visitors to the facility.

Group 4, a company awarded a �100 million contract to construct and operate the Yarl’s Wood complex, under a Private Finance Initiative deal with the Home Office, admits that the records it kept at the detention centre have probably been destroyed.

Emma Ginn noted that “The appeals of detainees could be placed at risk. We know of one man due to have a hearing on Tuesday of this coming week that will determine whether he will be able to stay in this country. Group 4 have so far refused to tell his solicitor of his whereabouts.”

This is the same company that, with the apparent approval of the Home Office, ignored repeated recommendations from the local Fire Service to install a sprinkler system in a complex built primarily of timber and brick. In mid-October 2000 an article in a Bedfordshire paper suggested that the facility could well prove to be “a death trap” in the event of a major fire.

The Campaign Against Arbitrary Detention at Yarl’s Wood has also called for another demonstration outside the detention complex to press its call for the immediate closure of Yarl’s Wood, the release of all its detainees and a full public inquiry into the events of last Thursday night and the conditions that triggered them.

For further information, call Viv Smith on 07905 589865, or Emma Ginn of the Campaign Against Arbitrary Detention at 07786 517379, or you can reach Alan Gibson, the Chair of the Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers 07905 566183, or George Binette, its Secretary, on 07905 826304.

Daniel Graeber, writing in the current New Left Review:

At the American Party Conventions, Billionaires for Bush (or Gore) dressed in high-camp tuxedos and evening gowns and tried to press wads of fake money into the cops’ pockets, thanking them for repressing the dissent. None were even slightly hurt - perhaps police are given aversion therapy against hitting anyone in a tuxedo. The Revolutionary Anarchist Clown Bloc, with their high bicycles, rainbow wigs and squeaky mallets, confused the cops by attacking each other (or the billionaires). They had all the best chants: “Democracy? Ha Ha Ha!”, “The pizza united can never be defeated”, “Hey ho, hey ho - ha ha, hee hee!”, as well as meta-chants like “Call! Response! Call! Response!” and - everyone’s favourite - “Three Word Chant! Three Word Chant!”

There’s more useful information here, which includes the RACB’s official communiqu�, calling on people to come to Philadelphia “to show the Republicans they are not the only clowns in town”:

We are not, however, calling for a strictly anarchist clown bloc. We hereby open the call to those who do not identify as anarcho-clowns, but nonetheless struggle to create the same revolutionary antics: autonomist fan-dancers, situationist contortionists, anti-fascist jugglers, council communist hula-hoopers, wobbly tall-bike riders and stilt walkers, radical cheerleaders, primitivist fire breathers, and yes, even anti-state libertarian marxist mimes! Our intent is not to be divisive of the larger protests, but to support them by wearing very large shoes.

The same page also reports an excellent Billionaires for Bush (or Gore) chant: “What do we want? Prison labor! How do we want it? Cheap!”

Jo wrote [16.2.2002]: That’s all fine, but why no mention of the passing of Waylon Jennings, the hardest working man in Country?

From today’s Times:

PO chief wants hated name to be consigned to history,
by Christine Buckley, Industrial Editor

The public hate it, the staff hate it and now the man in charge admits he hates it: Allan Leighton, the chairman of Consignia, wants to get rid of the Post Office’s controversial new name.

In an interview with The Times, the interim chairman said that staff, whose morale is low because of impending job losses and a pay dispute, felt that ditching �Consignia� would be like pulling down the Berlin Wall. �It is the thing that is mentioned every time I talk to anyone,� he said. �There is a lot of history here that needn�t have been changed.�

The Post Office renamed itself Consignia last year when it became a plc. The exercise, which cost �1 million, was intended to establish a new international identity for the organisation that includes the Post Office Counters network, Royal Mail and Parcelforce.

But the name, which means nothing in any language, has met universal condemnation and requires continual laborious explanation. Even the company�s letterheads describe it as �Consignia � The new name for the Post Office Group�.

This was always the kind of rebranding exercise which only very highly paid consultants could ever have thought was a good idea.

Semester Abroad Spent Drinking With Other American Students.

Raj writes to the weblog:

Here’s something from the “coffee after a meal keeps you awake” stable, c/o the BBC:

After crunching data from five decades of Olympics, two Harvard economists have deduced that cold countries perform better than hot ones in the winter games, and that large states produce more athletes than their smaller neighbours.

You can download their paper here.

Whenever I put on one of my very small number of reggae CDs, I’m always delighted to listen to “Rivers of Babylon” by the Melodians:

By the rivers of Babylon,
where we sat down,
and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
‘Cause the wicked carried us away in captivity,
required from us a song,
How can we sing King Alpha’s song
in a strange land? …

And this, of course, is a very close paraphrase of the opening four verses of Psalm 137, the inspiration also of Verdi’s famous Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco, here in the King James Version:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

(The beginning of the Psalm is far better well known than the end, with the very violent sentiments of its final two verses: “O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”)So I was very pleased today to find a terrific article by Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, “Tuning Hebrew Psalms to Reggae Rhythms: Rastas’ Revolutionary Lamentations for Social Change” in Cross Currents, which presents an extraordinarily detailed account of the transformation of the ancient text into the modern, which sheds a great deal of light on what is going on in this marvellous song, with its strange composite lyric (”So, let the words of our mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight…”), and which provides a fine commentary on the politics of Rastafarianism. Good stuff.

I was also pleased to come across an online Anglo-Saxon translation of the Psalm, too.

New material for February at The Voice of the Turtle includes Leo Zeilig’s review of Ridley Scott’s shocking Black Hawk Down, another fine article by Aziz Choudry, Raj Patel’s review of Sasha Abramsky’s Hard Time Blues, and James Murphy’s blunt thoughts on the future of the NHS.

Nick Assinder writes in his bit of the BBC website:

It is impossible to stand next to Tony Blair in a village in Sierra Leone, surrounded by some of the poorest and most traumatised children in the world, and argue that he is wrong to have come to Africa. And to suggest he is simply playing politics with these people is, frankly, insulting.

Only a fool would suggest the poverty, internal strife and economic problems of Africa can be solved overnight

If one thing has become clear during this whirlwind tour of west Africa it is that Tony Blair means what he says when he talks about the West’s moral duty to help this struggling continent.

It is also clear that the prime minister feels personally driven to use his position to do what he can.

Talking to him on the trip has only served to convince most of those travelling with him that he is absolutely sincere.

This is nothing to do with grand politics or sweeping gestures, it is about not standing by. And the prospect of failure is no excuse for not trying, he insists.

And it would also seem particularly odd if a leader of the Labour party, which prides itself on its internationalism, did not lift his eyes beyond purely domestic politics.

Don’t you love that one word, “frankly”? In any case, there are plenty of reasons to be troubled by Mr. Blair’s zeal for his Mission to Africa, and one place to start thinking about what these might be Raj Patel’s incendiary new article over at ZNet.

Nick wrote [11.2.2002]: Today’s Voice of the Turtle article on “What does NEPAD stand for?” got me thinking — surely we are meant to understand that this is a “kneepad”, and that therefore the scarred conscience of the world is located in its knees. Shades of playground frolics past…?

I’ve finally fixed the code error that meant that the weblog never appeared properly in versions of Netscape 4.x. This is good news, especially for Richard, who used to point it out to me.

Richard writes [13.2.2002]: As a dedicated 4.7 Netscape user, thank you… another blow for Microsoft haters everywhere.

Tom writes [19.2.2002]: Just to let you know that it works fine in my new favourite browser - OmniWeb - a particularly beautiful (OS X - only: I’m now a Mac hugger again) browser that I’m getting rather enamoured of. Oh, except that your ‘byline’ style is such a subtle shade of grey that it almost blends into the background…

The Government has recently published its new White Paper on immigration, asylum, nationality and citizenship questions: Secure Borders, Safe Haven. There is much to be criticised in it, unsurprisingly enough, but also some things to be welcomed, such as the closure of the detention facility at Campsfield House here in Oxfordshire before the end of the year, the phasing out of the degrading voucher system, and the fact that asylum seekers are no longer being locked up in prisons any more.

Watch these spaces for further comments, once I’ve read my way through the document and ruminated a little on its contents. In the meantime, the following links might be helpful: the White Paper itself can be downloaded here; you can follow the discussion in Parliament after the statements by Home Office ministers David Blunkett in the Commons here and Jeff Rooker in the Lords here; the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has devoted a portion of its website to discussion of the White Paper, and The Guardian has a page of links to reports on asylum issues around the world here.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, died this day, 1881.

My old friend Sasha Abramsky continues his excellent work to expose the grim conditions in America’s prisons. Here’s his latest article, in the current issue of The American Prospect.

News from the BBC:

Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith will not be immortalised in wax at London’s Madame Tussauds because the museum thinks he is too uninspiring, it is reported. Since the waxworks museum opened at its current site in 1884, it has made models of every major political leader, including Mr Duncan Smith’s predecessor, William Hague.

A Madame Tussauds spokeswoman told The Times: “We want figures who will inspire strong emotions and provoke strong reactions.

“In our view, Mr Duncan Smith, who most people have never even heard of, is unlikely to achieve either of those feats. Ever.

“He is hardly in the news, nobody ever talks about him, and the people who do know who he is do not seem to care less about him either way.”

The story on the front page of The Times has the same spokesperson saying, �Frankly, there are better ways we can spend that sort of money”, referring to the �40,000 cost of a new waxwork, and reports that one Tory MP “roared with laughter” on being told the news last night and said that, �We thought he might be a bit of a dummy. Well Madame Tussaud�s clearly does not even think he is that”.

Nick reminded me yesterday of the excellent Washington Post competition from 1999, asking people to amalgamate literary classics into strange new forms:

Green Eggs and Hamlet — Would you kill him in his bed? Thrust a dagger through his head? I would not, could not, kill the King. I could not do that evil thing. I would not wed this girl, you see. Now get her to a nunnery.

Catch-22 in the Rye — Holden learns that if you’re insane, you’ll probably flunk out of prep school, but if you’re flunking out of prep school, you’re probably not insane.

2001: A Space Iliad — The Hal 9000 computer wages an insane 10-year war against the Greeks after falling victim to the Y2K bug.

The others are very good, too (and they include some not on the list you sent me, Nick): follow the link above to see the rest.

From Private Eye:

GSCE BIOLOGY

Candidates must answer 7 of the following 4 questions. Write on all three sides of the paper. You have 2 1/2 seconds.

1. Explain the difference between the following parts of the human body:

a) The arse
b) The elbow

4. If you were unable to answer question one, would you like a job at Edexcel?

Pleasingly, the people at Edexcel have learned how to talk in meaningless managementspeak. Its Chief Executive John Kerr commented in the wake of one of the more recent cock-ups that “It is important to re-iterate that this error will not disadvantage students’ progression opportunities”. That’s good to know: there I was worrying that it might affect their results.

Both here and here.

From the Newshour with Jim Lehrer:

JIM LEHRER: Before 9/11, you talked much about reforming the military, changing the way things work, changing the culture. Does this budget reflect any of that?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, indeed, it does. The 2003 budget, which was part of the President’s budget announced today, has a great deal of transformation in it. There’s some who define transformation one way, would say that there’s some $20 billion worth of transformational activities; another way of defining it would say $50 billion. I think it’s almost inappropriate to look at dollars. I think that - that transformation is not an event; it is a process. It is something that involves a mind set, an attitude, a culture. It is something that, for example, might not even involve a new weapons system. It might just be the connectivity among existing weapons systems. It might be a different way of organizing or fighting, as we found in Afghanistan. So I think the transformation - the word - needs to think about it and understand that it’s more of a process than an event.

Got that?This part of the interview is gibberish –but it gets a little more sinister when Mr. Rumsfeld immediately goes on to analogise the US military to the Nazi Blitzkrieg units.

Job 41: 1-34 (KJV):

1 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?
2 Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?
3 Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?
4 Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?
5 Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?
6 Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?
7 Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?
8 Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.
9 Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?
10 None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me? 11 Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.
12 I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion.
13 Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can come to him with his double bridle?
14 Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.
15 His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.
16 One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.
17 They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.
18 By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.
19 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.
20 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.
21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.
22 In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.
23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved.
24 His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.
25 When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves.
26 The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.
27 He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.
28 The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble.
29 Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.
30 Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire.
31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.
33 Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.
34 He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.

“Neesings” is a very good word indeed, and not one I think I have encountered before. The OED rises to the occasion, defining it as “Sneezing; a sneeze” and giving us these useful attestations:

1382 WYCLIF Job xli. 9 His nesing [is] shynyng of fyr, and his eyen as eyelidis of morutid. 1432-50 tr. Higden (Rolls) V. 389 A mervellous pestilence folowede.., pereschynge moche peple in yoskenge or nesynge. 1530 PALSGR. 247/2 Nesyng with the nose, esternuement. 1543 TRAHERON Vigo’s Chirurg. IV. 148 Nysynge also, provoked by arte, is convenient in thys case. 1578 LYTE Dodoens 194 The same roote… put into the nose causeth Sternutation or niesing. 1609 B. JONSON Sil. Wom. IV. i, The spitting, the coughing, the laughter, the neesing. 1663 J. SPENCER Prodigies (1665) 61 That..usage of praying for a Person upon neezing. 1676 Gentleman’s Jockey 286 There be two other excellent helps for sick Horses, as Frictions and Neesings.

This is very helpful.

Chris adds [6.2.2002]: I was discussing “neesings” earlier today with a colleague, who told me that the shift from “neesing” to “sneezing” is probably a phonesthemic change — I think that’s the right word — in which a word which makes a great deal of sense on its own (through its connection to “nez”, “nose”, etc.) gets an “s” stuck on the front of it, which brings it into the family of “sn-” words with general family resemblances, including “sniffle”, “snuffle”, “sniff”, “snort”, and so on.

I’ve just read the very sad news that, as of twelve and a quarter hours ago, the Met Office got rid of Finisterre. There’s a useful page of links over at the Guardian’s website about this change — apparently now we are supposed to call it FitzRoy.

Non-UK readers of the weblog will not have the slightest idea what this is about, but BBC Radio Four (the worthy, news-heavy, not-terribly-exciting British equivalent of NPR which the educated middle classes listen to fairly religiously) carries the Shipping Forecast a few times a day. The Shipping Forecast gives detailed weather reports for the various chunks of sea off the coast of Britain and Ireland, which, although of no direct relevance to those of us in landlocked university towns, provides a fixed reference point for, a set of shared understandings in, a calming influence on our busy, fragmented, postmodern lives. “Finisterre” was one of the bits of the sea, off the North-Western corner of Spain, and apparently as part of some international coordination exercise, we’ve agreed to get rid of the name, one of the most evocative names in the litany of the Forecast.

Here’s the press release from the Met Office, issued on 31 January:

At noon on Monday 4 February 2002, listeners to the Shipping Forecast broadcast by the BBC will have a new name to conjure with. The area Finisterre is to be re-named FitzRoy after Admiral Robert FitzRoy, who was the first ever professional weatherman and founded the Met Office in 1853.The change has become necessary following an international agreement that Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco will use a co-ordinated set of sea areas in forecasts for shipping. In the discussions, Spain requested that the area that they have called Finisterre be retained in the co-ordinated set of areas.

The area Finisterre used by the Met Office is a considerably larger area than that defined by the Spanish Meteorological Service (Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia), and, as the area is not strictly in the United Kingdom’s area of responsibility for the issue of forecasts and warnings, a new name was required.

Some 53 years have passed since the name Finisterre was first heard on the shipping forecasts; the familiar rhythmic pattern will no longer be Portland, Plymouth, Biscay, Finisterre, Sole, Lundy, Fasnet� as FitzRoy replaces Finisterre.

“The Met Office operates on an international scale; by working with the meteorological services in other countries we are making it easier for listeners to interpret shipping forecasts,” explained Martin Stubbs, specialist consultant in marine matters at the Met Office.

“The last major changes in sea area names was in 1984 when the countries bordering the North Sea agreed a co-ordinated set of areas. These changes demonstrate the effectiveness of the World Meteorological Organization in bringing countries together and ensuring the best possible services for the mariner,” added Mr Stubbs

The Shipping Forecast is a British institution broadcast by the BBC four times a day and also disseminated via HM Coastguard Stations and other marine communication services attracting many thousands of listeners.

FitzRoy is set to become a household name both in and outside the sailing fraternity.

This is no good. How will future generations make sense of the splendid poetry of Carol Ann Duffy?

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer –
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

No-one will be writing poems about bloody FitzRoy in years to come, I can tell you. Please send your protests and reminiscences to the weblog.

Katherine wrote [7.2.2002]: In my A-level Italian oral, I was asked what my favourite radio programme was (this now seems to me to be a suspiciously Radio 4 type question, indeed) and I got into all sorts of difficulties trying to explain the shipping forecast. I now explain to my own language students that it is important to lie in such situations.

Jess wrote [8.2.2002]: As a lover of the shipping forecast for nineteen years, I join you in mourning the passing of Finisterre. The forecast won’t be quite the same without it — though Admiral Fitzroy deserves a sea area named after him if anyone does. (I still regard North Utsire and South Utsire as upstart interlopers…)

I asked Jess to elaborate on this last, slightly worrying thought, and got this reply [8.2.2002]: North Utsire and South Utsire were born on 1 August 1984, at the instigation of the Scandinavian countries. Previously the adjacent sea areas (eg Viking) extended right up to the coast. The list of the coastal stations has changed beyond recognition since I began listening in ‘82 - remember Sumburgh, Bell Rock, Goeree Light Tower Automatic Weather Station…?

During the time I lived in Boston, I was far more interested in the fortunes of the Boston Red Sox than I ever was in American Football. On the whole, the more baseball I watch, the more I enjoy the game, and the more interest I find in it — whereas the more football I watched, the more I thought it was just the same old stuff over and over again. But I was there for long enough not to be entirely unaffected by the news that the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl last night in a major upset against the St Louis Rams. Here’s what Brian, a real New Englander, has to say:

One of the earliest gifts I remember was a red sweater with a white zipper up the front and a big patch over the left breast. I was probably five years old, and it was cool, it looked to me like a space outfit. Actually, it was a New England Patriots sweater my godfather gave me. I’ve been a fan since my earliest memories.I went over to a friend’s house between Porter Square and Davis Square. Vegas had the Rams to win by 14 points, which is a blowout, and the pre-game discussion was all about the Rams this and the Rams that. And here came this team that was supposed to come in last in their conference, played well, had a great coach, and didn’t give up.

I don’t know if you saw the game, since the second half especially is shown absurdly late. The Pats had a huge lead and the Rams came back and tied the game with less than two minutes to play. It was crushing. But they fought back, and moved the ball up the field with surprising confidence, kicking a field goal with something like three seconds left.

It was wonderful.

OK, that’s enough about football. The baseball season beckons…