title: Srirangam

text: Srirangam, is a neighbourhood in the city of Tiruchirappalli in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. A river island, Srirangam is bounded by the Kaveri River on one side and its distributary Kollidam on the other side. Considered as the first among the 108 Divya Desams, Srirangam is home to a significant population of Sri Vaishnavites (followers of Lord Vishnu).


title: Srirangam

text: Srirangam is famous for its Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, a major pilgrimage destination for Hindus (especially Srivaishnavites) and the largest temple complex in India.


title: Srirangam

text: According to the temple's website, Srirangam is considered the biggest functioning Hindu temple in the world, as it covers an area of about with a perimeter of 4 km (10,710 ft). Angkor Wat is bigger but non-functioning.


title: Srirangam

text: Srirangam among a few "self-manifested" shrines (Swayam Vyakta Kshetras) of Lord Vishnu. The temple complex is enormous and spans . It has seven "prakaras"' (enclosures). These enclosures are formed by thick and huge rampart walls which run round the sanctum. There are 21 magnificent towers in all "prakaras" providing a unique sight to any visitor. The temple town lies on an islet formed by the twin rivers Kaveri and Kollidam.


title: Srirangam

text: The Sriranganathaswamy Temple complex is composed of 7 concentric walled sections and 21 towers gopuram. The southern "gopuram" of the temple, called the "Rajagopuram", is 239.5 feet tall and, as of 2016, is the tallest in Asia. The construction of the Rajagopuram began during the reign of Achyuta Deva Raya of the Vijayanagara empire. However, construction was halted after his death and the structure of the Rajagopuram remained incomplete for over 400 years. The monumental task of completion of the Rajagopuram was undertaken and completed successfully by Sri Vedanta Desika Yatheendra Mahadesikan, the 44th jeeyar of Sri Ahobila Matha. The construction spanned 8 years before it was consecrated on 25 March 1987.


title: Srirangam

text: th, the highest at the outermost "prakara" and the lowest at the innermost. In historic times, just after the construction of this temple, the city of Srirangam lived completely within the walls of this temple and hence is quoted as an example of Hindu religious utopia during its peak of existence.


title: Srirangam

text: The Srirangam temple is one of the three temples of the God Ranganatha (Antya Ranga) that are situated in the natural islands formed in the Kaveri river. They are:


title: Srirangam

text: There is a gopuram fully made of gold, which is protected by an electrical fence. Clothes such as silk sarees, dhoti and towels, which are used for religious purposes are auctioned here.


title: Srirangam

text: Ramanuja (11th century), one of the most celebrated theologians of Hinduism, made his monastic home by the temple at Srirangam. Here he wrote his famous commentaries on the "Brahma Sutra", which expressed a qualified non-dualism of the Vedanta, his Vishishtadvaita. Ramanuja's body is said to come out of the Earth after he was buried and was preserved at this temple. Although, Ramanujar hailed from Sriperumbudur and a pivotal point in his lifetime, receiving the Ashtakshara mantram, happened in Thirukoshtiyur, he made Srirangam his home after the demise of his Acharya in spirit, Alavanthar or Yamunacharya.


title: Srirangam

text: Inside the temple complex, there is a separate temple dedicated to the goddess Andal. Additionally, there is a museum, a library and a bookshop.


title: Srirangam

text: Lord Rama performed aradhanam (pooja) to Vishnu's idol (deity in a reclining posture). As a symbol of love he gave the idol to Vibhishana (brother of Ravana of the Hindu epic Ramayana) to take back with him to Lanka. There was a condition that he could not set the idol on earth and if he did it would seat itself permanently. Vibishan took this idol and while travelling towards Lanka, came upon the banks of the river Kaveri. He placed the idol on banks of river Kaveri, while an utsavam was in progress. When the utsavam got over, the Lord refused to move as he loved the place (Srirangam). When Vibhishan requested him to come along with him, the lord refused but promised to bless Vibhishana by always facing South (the direction of Lanka, home to Vibhishana). Hence it is due this reason the deity (in a reclining posture) faces South. The Chola kings Dharmavarcholan and Killivalavan developed the shrine into the big temple seen now, with contribution of valorous Thirumangai Alvar too. They built the basic foundations and main buildings.


title: Srirangam

text: After the rise of Vijayanagara Empire, Krishna Deva Raya realized the importance of this sacred city and treated it on par with Tirupati and bequeathed plenty of treasures, jewels and lands to the Srirangam temple. During his period the Srirangam temple was reformed and many plans were executed for its growth and welfare of the people.


title: Srirangam

text: Old Tamil literature refers to the place as Tiruvarangam. The name owes itself to the legend that once the holy vimana (Sriranga Vimana) of Visnu got stuck at this place. An isle lying in the midst of the winding branches of a river is called arangam in Tamil. Thus the spot came to be known as Srirangam in Sanskrit


title: Srirangam

text: The Kaveri River diverges at the Upper Anaicut, a dam at the island's westernmost point. The Kollidam River, the first and largest distributary of the Kaveri, flows to the north of the island, while the continuation of the Kaveri flows to the island's south. While the Kollidam continues flowing east past the island unimpeded, the Grand Anaicut dams the Kaveri at the island's eastern end, splitting the river into four streams. One stream flows northeast for a short distance, joining the Kollidam and cutting off Srirangam Island on its eastern end. The island is in length and wide. The town of Srirangam, a prominent Hindu Vaishnavite pilgrimage centre, is located at the centre of this island. Most of the island forms part of the Srirangam zone of the Tiruchirappalli Municipal Corporation and includes the suburbs of Srirangam, Thiruvanaikaval, Srinivasa Nagar and Gitapuram.


title: Srirangam

text: Due to the famous temple, Srirangam has a thriving economy based on tourism. Devotees come from all parts of India and abroad. The number of devotees to the town increases greatly during the festivals like Vaikunta Ekadashi which falls on the Tamil month of "Marghazi" (Margashirsha).


title: Srirangam

text: There are many other famous temples near Srirangam. They include Pillaiyar Rockfort temple, Samayapuram Mariamman temple, Tiruvaanaikovil temple, Vayalur Murugan temple, Uraiyur Vekkali Amman temple, Kattu Azhagiya Singar temple etc.


title: Srirangam

text: In addition along the banks of Kaveri in areas near Srirangam and Tiruchirappalli there are other famous temples of Lord Vishnu most of which house the reclining form of him, namely the Sri Vadivazhagiya Nambi Perumal Temple (Thiru Anbil) and housing the deity Appala Ranganathar, also called the Appukudaththan Temple at Koviladi.


title: Srirangam

text: Another temple of Lord Vishnu is at Tiruchirappalli itself, the Azhagiya Nambi Temple at Woraiyur which is part of the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple at Srirangam.


title: Srirangam

text: Srirangam town is also home to several hundred people who work in offices and industries located in Tiruchirappalli. The public transport linking Srirangam to Tiruchirappalli (route #1) is very frequent.


title: Srirangam

text: There are numerous schools, both private and public, in the town. The Higher Secondary School for Boys was founded in 1896 and is the oldest one in the town. There is also a Higher Secondary School for girls which is almost as old as that of the boys.Sri Vageesha Vidhyashram Senior Secondary School, Srimad Andavan College, Chinmaya Vidyalaya Matric. School, Sri Akilandeswari Vidyalaya, Vignesh Sri Ranga Matriculation School, Sri Vaijayanthi Vidhyalaya etc., are other institutions in Srirangam. Most of the schools have English as a medium of instruction. Some have Tamil as a medium of instruction, and some have both. There are many school children who travel to nearby Tiruchirappalli also.


title: Srirangam

text: The nearest airport is Tiruchirappalli International Airport.Tiruchirappalli Airport has connections to Chennai, Singapore, Dubai, Sharjah, Colombo, Kuala Lumpur, Bengaluru and Mumbai .


title: Srirangam

text: Srirangam has a railway station that can be reached from Chennai through any of the major trains travelling in the Chennai-Kanyakumari railway track and the approximate journey time from Chennai is about 5 hours and 10 minutes (320 km). Only selected trains stop at Srirangam and rest at Tiruchirappalli junction. There is bus service from Tiruchirapalli Junction to Srirangam Temple every 5 minutes throughout the day. At night bus frequency is half an hour.


title: Srirangam

text: The Tiruchirappalli fort and Tiruchirapalli Junction which are at a distance of 2 km and 7 km respectively, serve as a connection point to many destinations in southern India, such as Thanjavur, Thiruvananthapuram, Chidambaram, Madurai, Tirupati, Tuticorin, Tenkasi, Rameswaram, Kollam, Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Mysuru, Kochi, Kanyakumari and Mangalore. It also connects cities in the western part of India, such as Pune, Surat, Jodhpur, Bikaner and Ahmedabad, and some North Indian cities like New Delhi and Jammu.


title: Srirangam

text: Tiruchirappalli Central bus stand has direct services to most parts of Tamil Nadu. From the bus stand, tourists can avail local buses, taxi and autorickshaws to reach Srirangam.


title: Srirangam

text: City Bus service to all places of tourist interest from Central Bus Stand and from Chinthamani - Main Guard Gate Bus Stand (Both in Tiruchirappalli). Tourist taxis and autorickshaws are also available at reasonable rates.


title: Srirangam

text: Route No. 1 of the City bus service runs between Srirangam and Central Bus stand. This route starts from Tiruchirappalli Central Bus Stand and goes via Tiruchirappalli Junction Railway Station, Palakkarai Rettai pillaiyar Kovil street, Main Guard Gate, Chatram Bus Stand, Cauvery River Bridge, Mambazha salai, Thiruvanaikkovil and ends at Srirangam Bus Stand near the Srirangam Therkku vaasal (South entrance to the temple).


title: Srirangam

text: Buses TNSTC are originating from Srirangam to various places like Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, Madurai, Kodaikanal, etc.


title: Srirangam

text: The climate of Tiruchirappalli (and Srirangam) is Tropical. Average Temperature Range (°C): Summer- Max. Min. ; Winter- Max. Min. ; Rainfall:


title: Srirangam

text: Srirangam Assembly constituency is a part of the Tiruchirappalli Lok Sabha constituency. The former chief minister of the state Jayalalithaa had represented this constituency.


title: Srirangam

text: Konar (Yadava) and Brahmins play a major role in Srirangam Assembly constituency, as a majority of voters are from this communities.


title: Manhattanhenge

text: Manhattanhenge, also inaccurately called the Manhattan Solstice, is an event during which the setting sun or the rising sun is aligned with the east–west streets of the main street grid of Manhattan, New York City. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has said that he coined the term, by analogy with Stonehenge. The sunsets and sunrises each align twice a year, on dates evenly spaced around the summer solstice and winter solstice. The sunset alignments occur around May 28 and July 13. The sunrise alignments occur around December 5 and January 8.


title: Manhattanhenge

text: Manhattan is a particularly remarkable place to view a phenomenon of this kind, due to its extensive urban canyons and its rectilinear street grid that is rotated 29° clockwise from true east–west. Excellent places for viewing Manhattanhenge include 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, and 57th Streets.


title: Manhattanhenge

text: The term "Manhattanhenge" is a reference to Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument located in Wiltshire, England, which was constructed so that the rising sun, seen from the center of the monument at the time of the summer solstice, aligns with the outer "Heel Stone". The phenomenon (but not the term "Manhattanhenge") was described by Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History and a native New Yorker in 1997 in the magazine "Natural History." In a later interview, Tyson stated that he coined the term, and that it was inspired by a childhood visit to Stonehenge on an expedition headed by Gerald Hawkins, an astronomer who was the first to propose Stonehenge's purpose as an ancient astronomical observatory used to predict movements of sun and stars, as outlined in his 1965 book "Stonehenge Decoded". According to Tyson,


title: Manhattanhenge

text: In accordance with the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, the street grid for most of Manhattan is rotated 29° clockwise from true east-west. Thus, when the azimuth for sunset is 299° (i.e., 29° north of due West), the sunset aligns with the streets on that grid. This rectilinear grid design runs from north of Houston Street in Lower Manhattan to south of 155th Street (Manhattan) in Upper Manhattan. A more impressive visual spectacle, and the one commonly referred to as Manhattanhenge, occurs a couple of days after the first such date of the year, and a couple of days before the second date, when a pedestrian looking down the centerline of the street westward toward New Jersey can see the full solar disk slightly above the horizon and in between the profiles of the buildings. The date shifts are due to the sunset time being when the last of the sun just disappears below the horizon.


title: Manhattanhenge

text: The precise dates of Manhattanhenge depend on the date of the summer solstice, which varies from year to year, but remains close to June 21. In 2014, the "full sun" Manhattanhenge occurred on May 30 at 8:18 p.m., and on July 11 at 8:24 p.m. The event has attracted increasing attention in recent years.


title: Manhattanhenge

text: The dates on which sunrise aligns with the streets on the Manhattan grid are evenly spaced around the winter solstice and correspond approximately to December 5 and January 8.


title: Manhattanhenge

text: In the following table, "full sun" refers to occurrences of the full solar disk just above the horizon, and "half sun" refers to occurrences of the solar disk partially hidden below the horizon.


title: Manhattanhenge

text: The same phenomenon happens in other cities with a uniform street grid and an unobstructed view of the horizon. If the streets on the grid were rigorously north-south and east-west, then both sunrise and sunset would be aligned on the days of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes (which occur around March 20 and September 23 respectively). In Baltimore, for instance, sunrise aligns on March 25 and September 18 and sunset on March 12 and September 29. In Chicago, the setting sun lines up with the grid system on March 20 and September 25, a phenomenon dubbed "Chicagohenge".


title: Manhattanhenge

text: In Toronto, the setting sun lines up with the east–west streets on February 16 and October 25, a phenomenon now known locally as "Torontohenge". In Montreal, there is a "Montrealhenge" each year around June 12.


title: Manhattanhenge

text: When the architects designing the city centre of Milton Keynes, in the United Kingdom, discovered that its main street almost framed the rising sun on Midsummer Day and the setting sun on Midwinter Day, they consulted Greenwich Observatory to obtain the exact angle required at their latitude, and persuaded their engineers to shift the grid of roads a few degrees.


title: Manhattanhenge

text: In Cambridge, Massachusetts, "MIThenge" occurs about January 29 and November 11, when the setting sun may be seen across the length of the "Infinite Corridor", at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: Mounam Pesiyadhe () is a 2002 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film, written and directed by Ameer in his directorial debut. It stars Suriya and debutant Trisha in the lead along with newcomers Nandha, Neha Pendse and choreographer-turned-actor Anju Mahendra in supporting roles along with several other newcomers, while Laila appears in a cameo role during the climax. The major part of the film is shot in Pondicherry. The film, released on 13 December 2002 and turned out to be a hit at the box office. It was remade in Telugu as "Aadanthe Ado Type" (2003) and later dubbed in the same language as "Kaanchu" (2006). The music by Yuvan Shankar Raja was released to positive response. It was also dubbed in Hindi as "Ghatak Returns" (2012).


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: Gautham (Suriya) and Kannan (Nandha) are close friends from childhood days. Gautham owns a restaurant while Kannan works as a sales executive in a firm. Kannan is in love with Mahalakshmmi "Maha" (Neha Pendse) while Gautham has no interest towards girls and prefers to be single despite his family members trying to get him married.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: Sandhya (Trisha) is the relative of Kannan and their family members plan to get them married. Kannan is scared of his father and he is unable to inform about his love. So he requests Gautham to meet Sandhya and inform about the love between Kannan and Maha.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: Gautham agrees and informs Sandhya about Kannan's love with Maha. Sandhya also says that even she is not interested in the marriage proposal and instead she prefers to marry someone like Gautham. Hearing this, Gautham is shocked and also confused.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: Kannan and Sandhya's parents understand that neither Kannan nor Sandhya are interested in marriage and cancels the wedding plans between them. Meanwhile, Gautham develops affection towards Sandhya. Gautham receives frequent phone calls and he believes it to be from Sandhya. Gautham also gets gifts which he also believes to be sent by Sandhya.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: Maha's father gets angry knowing about her love and engages a few thugs to beat up Kannan. Kannan is injured which angers Gautham. He smashes all those thugs and scolds Maha's father for involving in such activities. Maha's father realizes his mistake and apologizes. Kannan and Maha's wedding is fixed.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: One day, Sandhya calls Gautham to a restaurant. Gautham believes that she has called to convey her love but is shocked when she introduces Aravind as her lover. She also says that even Aravind is like Gautham who was not interested in girls but somehow is convinced by Sandhya. Gautham starts worrying and is confused about the happenings as he believed the phone calls and gifts were from Sandhya.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: On the day of Kannan and Maha's wedding, Gautham walks alone in the street thinking about his love failure. Suddenly a car comes in front of him and it is Laila. She walks towards Gautham and proposes her love. A small flashback is shown where Laila and Gautham were college mates and Laila was in love with Gautham. But Gautham did not reciprocate and avoided her during college.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: On the last day of the college, Laila told Gautham that she will keep following him always and will never forget him. As she told, she kept following Gautham and it was her who kept calling Gautham and sent him frequent gifts which Gautham misunderstood to be from Sandhya. Gautham realizes Laila's true love and accepts it. The movie ends with both leaving together in the car.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: The film's titled is based on a serial that was supposed to be directed by Vikram with Ameer working as the assistant director. Shooting took place in New Zealand, Italy, Mauritius, Egypt and other scenic locations in and around India. Moreover, a huge 30-lakhs-worth set was erected by art director Rajeevan at Pondicherry, India for a song. "Valentine" song was shot at AVM Studios, the rest of the songs were shot at locations in Mysore and Puducherry.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: The soundtrack was composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja and released on 6 October 2002. It features 8 tracks overall with lyrics penned by Vaali, Kamakodiyan, Snehan, Puthuvai Nambi and director Ameer himself. The soundtrack, upon release, was very much appreciated and became very successful. Yuvan Shankar Raja himself claimed the album to be "the best he ever created since he became music director" till then.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: E. V. V. Satyanarayana remade this film in Telugu as "Aadanthe Ado Type" with his son Aryan Rajesh in lead role, Yuvan composed the music for Telugu version too. The satellite rights of the film's Tamil version were sold to Sun TV.


title: Mounam Pesiyadhe

text: Malathi Rangarajan of "The Hindu" wrote, "But to his credit Ameer [...] has introduced an element of suspense in the story. The end shows that the director has tried to make things a little different. The comedy merges well with the main narration and the asides are examples of healthy humour".


title: Pluperfect

text: The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time in the past. Examples in English are: "we "had" arrived"; "they "had" written".


title: Pluperfect

text: The word derives from the Latin "plus quam perfectum", "more than perfect". The word "perfect" in this sense means "completed"; it contrasts with the "imperfect", which denotes uncompleted actions or states.


title: Pluperfect

text: In English grammar, the pluperfect (e.g. "had written") is now usually called the past perfect, since it combines past tense with perfect aspect. (The same term is sometimes used in relation to the grammar of other languages.) English also has a "past perfect progressive" (or "past perfect continuous") form: "had been writing".


title: Pluperfect

text: The pluperfect is traditionally described as a tense; in modern linguistic terminology it may be said to combine tense with grammatical aspect; namely past tense (reference to past time) and perfect aspect. It is used to refer to an occurrence that at a past time had already been started (but not necessarily completed), (e.g. "It had already been raining for a week when the big storm started.").


title: Pluperfect

text: Bernard Comrie classifies the pluperfect as an "absolute-relative tense", because it absolutely (not by context) establishes a deixis (the past event) and places the action relative to the deixis (before it).


title: Pluperfect

text: Examples of the English pluperfect (past perfect) are found in the following sentence (from Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning"):


title: Pluperfect

text: Here, "had thought" and "had reached" are examples of the pluperfect. They refer to an event (a man thinking he has reached the limit of his capacity to suffer), which takes place before another event (the man finding that his capacity to suffer has no limit), that is itself a past event, referred to using the past tense ("found"). The pluperfect is needed to make it clear that the first event (the thinking and the supposed reaching) is placed even earlier in the past.


title: Pluperfect

text: Some languages, like Latin, make pluperfects purely by inflecting the verb, whereas most modern European languages do so using appropriate auxiliary verbs in combination with past participles. The ways in which some languages form the pluperfect are described below.


title: Pluperfect

text: Ancient Greek verbs had a pluperfect form (called ὑπερσυντέλικος, "more than completed"). An example is ἐτεθύκει, "had sacrificed" – compare the perfect τέθυκε, "has sacrificed". See Ancient Greek verbs. Modern Greek uses auxiliaries to form the pluperfect; examples are given in the table at the end of this article.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Latin, the pluperfect ("plus quam perfectum") is formed without an auxiliary verb in the active voice, and with an auxiliary verb plus the perfect passive participle in the passive voice. For example, in the indicative mood:


title: Pluperfect

text: The subjunctive mood is formed similarly (in this case "dedisset" and "data esset" respectively). In many cases an ablative absolute phrase, consisting of a noun and perfect participle in the ablative case, may be used in place of a pluperfect; for example: "Pecuniis mercatori datis, cessit emptor", "When money had been given (more literally: Money having been given) to the merchant, the buyer left."


title: Pluperfect

text: In French, the indicative pluperfect ("Plus-que-parfait", "more than perfect") is formed by taking the appropriate form of the imperfect indicative of the auxiliaries "avoir" or "être" and adding the past participle, "j'avais mangé". Another type of pluperfect ("passé antérieur", "past anterior") can be formed with the appropriate simple past form of the auxiliary: "j'eus mangé", though it is rarely used now.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Italian, there are two pluperfects in the indicative mood: the recent pluperfect ("trapassato prossimo") and the remote pluperfect ("trapassato remoto"). The recent pluperfect is formed correspondingly to French by using the imperfect of the appropriate auxiliary verb ("essere" or "avere") plus the past participle. For example, "Ero affamato perché non avevo mangiato" "I was hungry because I had not eaten." The remote pluperfect is formed by using the preterite of the appropriate auxiliary verb plus the past participle. In the Italian consecutio temporum, the "trapassato remoto" should be used for completed actions in a clause subjugated to a clause whose verb is in the preterite.


title: Pluperfect

text: The second example may refer to an event that happened continuously or habitually in the past. (I.e. "After I used to find it, I would sell it" OR "After I would find it, I would sell it"). The first example, being the preterite, refers only to actions completed once in the remote past, or distant past.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Spanish, there are also two pluperfects, being the pluperfect proper ("pluscuamperfecto", or "antecopretérito") and the so called "pretérito anterior" (or "antepretérito"). While the former uses the imperfect of the auxiliary verb "haber" plus the past participle, the latter is formed with the simple past of "haber" plus the past participle. For example, in pluperfect Había comido cuando mi madre vino" 'I had eaten when my mother came', but in "pretérito anterior" Hube comido cuando mi madre vino" 'I had eaten when my mother would come'. This last form however is rarely used.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Portuguese and Galician, a synthetic pluperfect ("mais-que-perfeito" or "antepretérito") has been conserved from Latin. For example, "Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo morrera, 'When I came, I found out that my friend had died'. In Portuguese, however, its use has become mostly literary, and particularly in spoken communication, the pluperfect is usually formed using the auxiliary verb "ter", in the imperfect form (tinha tinhas tinha tínhamos tínheis tinham) plus the past participle. For example, "Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo tinha morrido. A more formal way of expressing the pluperfect uses the verb "haver". For example: "Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo havia morrido". This periphrastic construction is not permitted in Galician, so Galician uses the synthetic pluperfect exclusively.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Judeo-Spanish, the Latin pluperfect forms with little alteration have been preserved (e.g. final /m/ and /t/ are dropped) to express this tense ("pluskuamperfekto"), which is identical in form to the imperfect subjunctive. It has a similar form to the Portuguese, thus the Portuguese example above in Judeo-Spanish is, "Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver morera 'When I came I knew that my friend had died'. It remains the main spoken form, though in some varieties, similarly to Spanish or Portuguese, the pluperfect is formed using the auxiliary verbs "tener" or "aver" plus the past participle. For example, "Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver tuve morido or "Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver avía morido".


title: Pluperfect

text: In Romanian, the pluperfect ("mai mult ca perfect") is expressed without any auxiliary words, using a particular form of the verb, originated in the Latin pluperfect subjunctive. (compare Italian imperfect subjunctive "Sembrava che Elsa non venisse with Romanian pluperfect "Părea că Elsa nu venise). For example, in "Când l-am întrebat, el văzuse deja filmul" 'When I asked him, he had already seen the movie'. The verb "văzuse" is in the pluperfect form of "a vedea" 'to see'. Technically, this form is obtained from the singular third person form of the simple perfect tense by adding specific terminations for each person and number.


title: Pluperfect

text: However, in northern Transylvania there is a regional way to state the pluperfect (that may reflect the German influence). The pluperfect is expressed by combining the auxiliary verb "fost" or the short version "fo" (= "was" in English or "war" in German) with the participle, which (quite difficult to explain) is stated in its feminine form. Examples:


title: Pluperfect

text: "o fost foastă" (or "o fo' foastă") = he had been; "am fost văzută" = I had seen; "or fost venită" = they had come.


title: Pluperfect

text: In English grammar, the pluperfect is formed by combining the auxiliary verb "had" with the past participle of the main verb, as in "had jumped" or "had written" , often used in its contracted form "’d", as in "I’d jumped". It is commonly called the past perfect, being a combination of perfect aspect (marked by the use of the "have" auxiliary with the past participle) and past tense (marked by the use of the past tense of that auxiliary, "had"). It is one of a number of analogously formed perfect constructions, such as the present perfect ("have/has jumped"), future perfect ("will have jumped") and conditional perfect ("would have jumped").


title: Pluperfect

text: Unlike the present perfect, the past perfect can readily be used with an adverb specifying a past time frame for the occurrence. For example, it is incorrect to say *"I have done it last Friday" (the use of "last Friday", specifying the past time, would entail the use of the simple past, "I did it", rather than the present perfect). However, there is no such objection to a sentence like "I had done it last Friday", where the past perfect is accompanied by a specification of the time of occurrence, especially in a context that clearly provides for a connection with another past event, either specified (as in "I hadn’t met him then.") or implied (as in "I hadn’t expected that.").


title: Pluperfect

text: English also has a "past perfect progressive" (or "past perfect continuous") construction, such as "had been working". This is the past equivalent of the present perfect progressive, and is used to refer to an ongoing action that continued up to the past time of reference. For example: "It had been raining all night when he awoke." It is also commonly used to refer to actions that had led to consequences in the past (as in "I was sleepy because I’d been working all night.").


title: Pluperfect

text: The past perfect form also has some uses in which it does not directly refer to an actual past event. These are generally in condition clauses and some other dependent clauses referring to hypothetical circumstances (as in "If I’d known about that, I wouldn’t have asked."), as well as certain expressions of wish (as in "I wish I hadn’t been so stupid back then.").


title: Pluperfect

text: In German, the pluperfect ("Plusquamperfekt", "Präteritumperfekt", or "Vorvergangenheit", lit. "pre-past") is used in much the same manner, normally in a "nachdem" sentence. The "Plusquamperfekt" is formed with the "Partizip Perfekt" ("Partizip" II) of the full lexical verb, plus the auxiliary verb "haben" or "sein" in its preterite form, depending on the full lexical verb in question.


title: Pluperfect

text: When using modal verbs, one can use either the modal verb in the preterite or the auxiliary ("haben" for all modals):


title: Pluperfect

text: There is a drastic shift of meaning between these variants: the first sentences denote that it "had been necessary" to rain in the past. The second sentence denotes that the speaker assumed that it had rained.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Dutch, the pluperfect ("Voltooid verleden tijd") is formed similarly as in German: the past participle ("voltooid deelwoord") is combined with the past-tense form of the auxiliary verb "hebben" or "zijn", depending on the full lexical verb: "Voordat ik er erg in had, was het al twaalf uur geworden. " - "Before I noticed, it had become noon already". In addition, pluperfect is sometimes used instead of present perfect: "Dat had ik al gezien (voordat jij het zag)" - lit.: "I had seen that (before you did)". The parenthesized part is implied and, therefore, can be omitted.


title: Pluperfect

text: In standard Swedish, the pluperfect ("pluskvamperfekt") is similar to pluperfect in a number of other Germanic languages, but with a slightly different word order, and is formed with the preterite form of "ha" ("have" in English), i.e. "hade" ("had" in English), plus the supine form of the main verb: "När jag kom dit hade han gått hem" - "When I arrived there he had gone home".


title: Pluperfect

text: In some of the Slavic languages the pluperfect has fallen out of use or is rarely used; pluperfect meaning is often expressed using the ordinary past tense, with some adverb (such as "earlier") or other periphrastic construction to indicate prior occurrence.


title: Pluperfect

text: Ukrainian and Belarusian preserve a distinct pluperfect ("давньоминулий час" or "запрошлы час" – "davńomynulyj čas" or "zaprošły čas") that is formed by preceding the verb with "buv" / "bula" in Ukrainian and "byŭ" / "była" in Belarusian (literally, 'was'). It was and still is used in daily speech, especially in rural areas. Being mostly unused in literature during Soviet times, it is now regaining popularity. Here is an example of usage: "Ja vže buv pіšov, až raptom zhadav..." (Ukrainian) and "Ja ŭžo byŭ pajšoŭ, kali raptam zhadaŭ" (Belarusian) "I almost had gone already when I recalled..."


title: Pluperfect

text: In Slovenian, the pluperfect (predpreteklik, 'before the past') is formed with the verb 'to be' (biti) in past tense and the participle of the main verb. It is used to denote a completed action in the past before another action ("Pred nekaj leti so bile vode poplavile vsa nabrežja Savinje", 'A few years ago, all the banks of Savinja River had been flooded) or, with a modal verb, a past event that should have happened ("Moral bi ti bil povedati", 'I should have told you'). Its use is considered archaic and is rarely used even in literary language.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Polish pluperfect is only found in texts written in or imitating Old Polish, when it was formed with past (perfect) tense of "być" "to be" and past participle of the main verb. The person marking is movable, e.g. "zrobił byłem ~ zrobiłem był" "I had done". Past tense of the adjectival verbs ("powinienem był zrobić" "I should have done") and conditional mood ("zrobiłbym był" "I would have done") are often wrongly considered pluperfect forms – morphologically, the latter is actually past conditional, rarely used in modern Polish.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Serbo-Croatian, the pluperfect ("pluskvamperfekt") is constructed with the past tense ("perfekt") of the verb to be ("biti") plus the adjective form of the main verb.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Bulgarian, the pluperfect ("минало предварително време") is formed with the imperfect tense of the auxiliary verb "съм" (to be) and the perfect active participle of the main verb.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Korean the pluperfect is formed by adding an additional "었". "었" is a morpheme that is analogous to the suffix "ed" in English, in that it is also used to form the simple past tense.


title: Pluperfect

text: In Welsh, the pluperfect is formed without an auxiliary verb, usually by interpolating "-as-" before the simple past ending: "parhasem", "we had remained".


title: Pluperfect

text: In Irish, perfect forms are constructed using the idea of being (or having been) "after" doing something. In the pluperfect, "bhíomar tar éis imeacht", "we had gone", literally, "we were after going".


title: Pluperfect

text: In Finnish, the pluperfect ("pluskvamperfekti") is constructed with an auxiliary verb "olla" 'to be', which is in the past tense. The primary verbs get the past participle endings "-nyt/-nut" in singular, "-neet" in plural forms (the 'n' assimilates with certain consonants) and "-ttu/-tty/-tu/-ty" in passive forms.


title: Pluperfect

text: In German and French there is an additional way to construct a pluperfect by doubling the perfect tense particles. This is called doubled perfect ("doppeltes Perfekt") or super perfect ("Superperfekt") in German and plus past perfect ("temps surcomposé") in French. These forms are not commonly used in written language and they are not taught in school.


title: Pluperfect

text: Both languages allow to construct a past tense with a modal verb (like English "to have", in German "haben", in French "avoir"), for example "I have heard it". This is largely equivalent to the usage in English. The additional perfect tense is constructed by putting the modal verb ("to have") in the past tense as if being the full verb ("I have had") followed by the actual verb in the past particle mode ("I have had heard it"). The same applies to those verbs which require "to be" (German "sein", French "être") as the modal verb for the construction of the past tense (which would not work in English).


title: Pluperfect

text: In spoken language in Southern Germany the doubled perfect construction sometimes replaces the Standard German pluperfect construction.


title: Pluperfect

text: In France it is uncommon in the Northern regions (with Parisian influence) but it can be found widely in Provençal dialects as well as in other regions around the world. In all regions the doubled pluperfect ("I had had heard it") is uncommon although it is possible - all of these forms emphasize the perfect aspect by extending the modal verb so that a doubled pluperfect would add upon the pluperfect in another part of the speech.


title: Have a Nice Life

text: Have a Nice Life is an American post-punk band founded in Connecticut in 2000 by Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga.


title: Have a Nice Life

text: Have a Nice Life was formed in 2000 by Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga of Connecticut. They have mentioned the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division, New Order, Earth, Sunn O))), Xasthur, Lurker of Chalice, Nine Inch Nails, Swans, Sisters of Mercy, Kraftwerk, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as influences on their music.


title: Have a Nice Life

text: Their debut album, "Deathconsciousness", has received critical acclaim since its release in 2008. It initially did not receive much recognition but gained traction through discussions on online communities and word of mouth. The band have since developed a cult audience as a result of "Deathconsciousness"' online popularity.


title: Have a Nice Life

text: On January 27, 2014, Have a Nice Life released their second studio album "The Unnatural World". According to Metacritic, the album has received generally favorable reviews.


title: Have a Nice Life

text: Outside of music, Barrett runs a real estate marketing agency and Macuga is a high school English/History teacher.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Berlin Schönefeld Airport () (formerly ) was the secondary international airport of Berlin, the capital of Germany. It was located southeast of Berlin near the town of Schönefeld in the state of Brandenburg and bordered Berlin's southern boundary. It was the smaller of the two airports in Berlin, after Berlin Tegel Airport, and served as a base for easyJet and Ryanair. In 2017, the airport handled 12.9 million passengers by serving mainly European metropolitan and leisure destinations. In the same year, the travel portal eDreams ranked Berlin Schönefeld as the worst airport in the world after evaluating 65,000 airport reviews. Schönefeld Airport also was the major civil airport of East Germany (GDR) and the only airport of the former East Berlin.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: On 25 October 2020 the Schönefeld name and IATA code ceased to exist, marking its closure as an independent airport, with large parts of its infrastructure being incorporated into the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport as its "Terminal 5" with its sections renamed to "K", "L", "M" and "Q". However by November 2022, Terminal 5 has been closed for good.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: On 15 October 1934, construction began to build three long runways to serve the Henschel aircraft plant in Schönefeld. By the end of the Second World War, over 14,000 aircraft had been built. On 22 April 1945, the facilities were occupied by Soviet troops, and the plant was dismantled and demolished. By late 1947, the railway connection had been repaired and agricultural machinery was built and repaired on the site.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: In 1946, the Soviet Air Forces moved from Johannisthal Air Field to Schönefeld, including the civil airline Aeroflot. In 1947, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany approved the construction of a civilian airport at the site.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: A stipulation of the Four Power Agreement following World War II was a total ban on German carriers' participation in air transport to Berlin, where access was restricted to American, British, French, and Soviet airlines. Since Schönefeld airport was located outside the city boundaries of Berlin, this restriction did not apply. Thus, aircraft of the East German flag carrier Interflug could use Schönefeld airport, while West German Lufthansa was denied access to Tegel or Tempelhof airports.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Berlin Schönefeld Airport saw a major increase in passenger numbers over recent years, which was caused by the opening of bases for both easyJet and Germanwings. In 2008, the airport served 6.6 million passengers.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Following German reunification in 1990, operating three separate airports became increasingly cost-prohibitive, leading the Berlin legislature to pursue plans for a single airport that would be more efficient and would decrease the amount of aircraft noise from airports within the city. Therefore, it was decided to build Berlin Brandenburg Airport at the current site of Schönefeld Airport, originally scheduled to open in late 2012. For various reasons, mainly issues with the fire alarm/safety system, the opening was postponed to November 2020.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: At the start of the winter season in 2012 Germanwings left Schönefeld for Berlin-Tegel to maintain closer operations within the Lufthansa Group there. However, to provide competition for Ryanair's new routes, Germanwings announced a return to Schönefeld in addition to their Tegel operations from October 2015.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Aer Lingus also announced it would switch airports within Berlin, from Schönefeld to Tegel, by March 2015. Meanwhile, Ryanair announced the establishment of their sixth German base in Schönefeld by 27 October 2015 by deploying five aircraft to the airport and adding 16 new routes.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: On 2 May 2015, aircraft departing from Schönefeld became the first commercial flights to use the southern runway of the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport, which temporarily became Schönefeld's only runway while its own, which has become the northern runway of the new airport, was renovated.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Extension work at Schönefeld Airport was completed in 2016. Terminal K was extended by approx. and the baggage area was also enlarged by 40 per cent. Terminal M2, an entirely new arrival terminal was built west of Terminal M. Spanning almost , this building features three baggage carousels and the coach parking area was relocated to a new area in P6.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: The airport continued to see exceptionally high growth of passenger numbers with Berlin's economic growth. As of November 2016, the airport operated near full capacity despite several additions to the infrastructure in recent years.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: As of late 2018, construction works began to upgrade the airport's terminal and apron to provide higher capacity as part of its successor, nearby Berlin Brandenburg Airport. Previously, Schönefeld's facilities were supposed to be demolished to make way for a new government terminal.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: On 25 October 2020, Schönefeld Airport became Terminal 5 of Berlin Brandenburg Airport. The IATA code SXF was discontinued on this day. Schönefeld's terminal buildings were intended to be used until the inauguration of a planned Terminal 3 by 2030 with Ryanair as their primary tenant.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: However in November 2020, it was announced that Terminal 5 would be closed due to low passenger numbers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, with all flights relocating to the main Terminal 1. The terminal was subsequently indefinitely closed on 22 February 2021.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: In November 2022, it has been announced that Terminal 5, the former Schönefeld Airport, will be retired and never open again.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Schönefeld Airport consisted of the four terminals A, B, C, and D which were renamed to K, L, M, and Q prior to the merger into the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport. These terminals were located next to each other but have separate landside areas. However, they were connected through a joint airside concourse. Terminal Q had no check-in facilities; it was used exclusively for passengers clearing security checks to enter the airside boarding gates. Due to a lack of space, there were not as many facilities as those at many other international airports. There are some shops, however, including duty-free, newsstands, a few fast food restaurants, and a single airline lounge.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: The main building was the original part of the airport. It housed check-in for Terminals K and L. Terminal A featured check-in counters L01–L18, with the largest user being Ryanair alongside several other airlines like Aeroflot.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Terminal B, located in a side wing, was originally reserved for transit passengers to and from West Berlin who took advantage of cheaper airfares and package tours arranged by an East German travel agency. More recently it has been used exclusively by easyJet with check-in counters K20–K29 and has been refurbished in recent years. The airside consisted of three jet bridges as well as several walk-boarding aircraft stands located at "Pier 3a", an extension that was opened in 2005. Pier 3a was under extensive reconstruction until mid-2019 to allow use as part of the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Terminal C was originally built in the early 1980s as an external VIP lounge called "Sonderraum" (Special Room), and was tightly secured by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi). Only official guests of the East German government and its subordinated organizations were admitted. Check-in and all mandatory controls were either waived or done invisibly for travelers. After 1990, the Special Room was converted into Terminal C to accommodate highly security-sensitive flights like those of Israeli airlines, but also for charter flights to North America. It was reconfigured in 2008 to handle sightseeing trips and flights in connection with special events. It was further reconfigured in 2015 to provide access to all terminal gates. To reduce congestion in other terminals, it then housed additional security checkpoints for passengers who are checked in and have checked their luggage or only carry hand luggage.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Terminal D was opened in December 2005 due to rapidly growing passenger numbers. Being nearly identical to Terminal C at Berlin Tegel Airport, it featured check-in counters M40–M57, which were mainly used by Ryanair, Condor, and Norwegian Air Shuttle. It did not feature jet bridges but several walk-boarding stands. In November 2016, the new large arrivals area D"2" opened right next to Terminal D.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Prior to its closure as an independent airport, Schönefeld had been served mostly by low-cost and leisure carriers with easyJet, Ryanair, Condor, and Wizz Air offering the most destinations. The airport did not see any long-haul traffic but did serve several dozen routes to European metropolitan and leisure destinations around the Mediterranean. Only a few legacy carriers preferred Schönefeld over Tegel Airport, most notably Aeroflot, El Al and Egypt Air.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: Berlin Schönefeld Airport was served by Berlin-Schönefeld Flughafen railway station, a short walking distance through a ground-level covered walkway from the airport terminals. Berlin Central Station ("Berlin Hbf") was served directly by regional trains ("RE" Regional-Express or "RB" Regional-Bahn). These ran every 30 minutes and transit through Berlin Ostbahnhof, Alexanderplatz, Friedrichstraße, Berlin Central Station (after 30 minutes), Zoologischer Garten, Charlottenburg, and beyond. Berlin S-Bahn lines S9 and S45 ran every twenty minutes, but only the S9 went through Berlin Central Station.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: The airport could be reached via the nearby motorway A113 (Exit "Schönefeld Süd") which itself is connected to motorways A100 which leads to Berlin city center and A10 which circles around Berlin and connects further to all directions.


title: Berlin Schönefeld Airport

text: The airport was linked by local BVG bus lines 162 (towards Adlershof) and 171 (towards Neukölln). Additionally the X7 bus service provided a connection to the Berlin U-Bahn network at Rudow Station. At night, the underground replacement bus N7 was available.


title: Elif Batuman

text: Elif Batuman (born 1977) is an American author, academic, and journalist. She is the author of three books: a memoir, "The Possessed", and the novels "The Idiot," which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and "Either/Or". Batuman is a staff writer for "The New Yorker".


title: Elif Batuman

text: Elif Batuman was born in New York City to Turkish parents, and grew up in New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard College, and received her doctorate in comparative literature from Stanford University. While attending graduate school, Batuman studied the Uzbek language in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Her dissertation, "The Windmill and the Giant: Double-Entry Bookkeeping in the Novel," is about the process of social research and solitary construction undertaken by novelists.


title: Elif Batuman

text: In February 2010, Batuman published her first book, "The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them", based on material she previously published in "The New Yorker", "Harper's Magazine", and "N+1", which details her experiences as a comparative literature graduate student at Stanford University. Reviewing the book for "The New York Times", critic Dwight Garner praised the "winsome and infectious delight she feels in the presence of literary genius and beauty."


title: Elif Batuman

text: Batuman’s novel "The Idiot" is partly based on her own experiences attending Harvard in the mid-1990s and teaching English in Hungary in the summer of 1996. It was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.


title: Elif Batuman

text: from 2010 to 2013. She now lives in New York. In 2016, she met her partner; she writes that this relationship, her first non-heterosexual one, "resulted in a series of changes to [her] views not just of gender but also of genre" as Batuman realized how influential film and narrative had been to her ideas about how women should behave.


title: Elif Batuman

text: Batuman's 2018 article in "The New Yorker" on Japan's rental family industry won the National Magazine Award. In 2021, the magazine returned the award after an investigation revealed that three subjects in the essay had made false statements to Batuman and the magazine's fact-checkers.


title: Elif Batuman

text: Russian literature figures heavily in Batuman's work. Batuman says that her obsession with Russian literature began when she read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s "The Gulag Archipelago" in high school. Both "The Possessed" and "The Idiot" pay homage to Batuman's favorite Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky.


title: Elif Batuman

text: Batuman identifies as queer and stopped dating men at age 38. In an interview, she discussed reading Adrienne Rich's essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" after beginning to date her current partner, a woman, after a lifetime of dating only men, and how it related to certain behaviors by her protagonist Selin.


title: MERS

text: Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory infection caused by "Middle East respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus" (MERS-CoV). Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. Typical symptoms include fever, cough, diarrhea, and shortness of breath. The disease is typically more severe in those with other health problems.


title: MERS

text: The first case was identified in June 2012 by Egyptian physician Ali Mohamed Zaki at the Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and most cases have occurred in the Arabian Peninsula. Over 2,500 cases have been reported as of January 2021, including 45 cases in the year 2020. About 35% of those who are diagnosed with the disease die from it. Larger outbreaks have occurred in South Korea in 2015 and in Saudi Arabia in 2018.


title: MERS

text: MERS-CoV is a coronavirus believed to be originally from bats. However, humans are typically infected from camels, either during direct contact or indirectly. Spread between humans typically requires close contact with an infected person. Its spread is uncommon outside of hospitals. Thus, its risk to the global population is currently deemed to be fairly low. Diagnosis is by rRT-PCR testing of blood and respiratory samples.


title: MERS

text: , there is no specific vaccine or treatment for the disease, but a number are being developed. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that those who come in contact with camels wash their hands and not touch sick camels. They also recommend that camel-based food products be appropriately cooked. Treatments that help with the symptoms and support body functioning may be used.


title: MERS

text: Previous infection with MERS can confer cross-reactive immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and provide partial protection against COVID-19. However, co-infection with SARS-CoV-2 and MERS is possible and could lead to a recombination event.


title: MERS

text: Early reports compared the viruses to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and it has been referred to as Saudi Arabia's SARS-like virus. The first person, in June 2012, had a fever, cough, expectoration, and shortness of breath. One review of 47 laboratory confirmed cases in Saudi Arabia gave the most common presenting symptoms as fever in 98%, cough in 83%, shortness of breath in 72% and myalgia in 32% of people. There were also frequent gastrointestinal symptoms with diarrhea in 26%, vomiting in 21%, abdominal pain in 17% of people. 72% of people required mechanical ventilation. There were also 3.3 males for every female. One study of a hospital-based outbreak of MERS had an estimated incubation period of 5.5 days (95% confidence interval 1.9 to 14.7 days). MERS can range from asymptomatic disease to severe pneumonia leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Kidney failure, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), and pericarditis have also been reported.


title: MERS

text: Middle East respiratory syndrome is caused by the MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV), a species with single-stranded RNA belonging to the genus betacoronavirus which is distinct from SARS coronavirus and the common-cold coronavirus. Its genomes are phylogenetically classified into two clades, Clades A and B. Early cases of MERS were of Clade A clusters (EMC/2012 and Jordan-N3/2012) while new cases are genetically different in general (Clade B). The virus grows readily on Vero cells and LLC-MK2 cells. In November 2012, Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Zaki sent a virus sample from the first confirmed case in Saudi Arabia to virologist Ron Fouchier, a leading coronavirus researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The second laboratory-proven case was in London, confirmed by the UK Health Protection Agency (HPA). The HPA named the virus the London1_novel CoV 2012.


title: MERS

text: A study performed between 2010 and 2013, in which the incidence of MERS was evaluated in 310 dromedary camels, revealed high titers of neutralizing antibodies to MERS-CoV in the blood serum of these animals. A further study sequenced MERS-CoV from nasal swabs of dromedary camels in Saudi Arabia and found they had sequences identical to previously sequenced human isolates. Some individual camels were also found to have more than one genomic variant in their nasopharynx. There is also a report of a Saudi Arabian man who became ill seven days after applying topical medicine to the noses of several sick camels and later he and one of the camels were found to have identical strains of MERS-CoV. It is still unclear how the virus is transmitted from camels to humans. The World Health Organization advises avoiding contact with camels and to eat only fully cooked camel meat, pasteurized camel milk, and to avoid drinking camel urine. The Saudi Ministry of Agriculture has advised people to avoid contact with camels or wear breathing masks when around them. In response "some people have refused to listen to the government's advice" and kiss their camels in defiance of their government's advice.


title: MERS

text: There has been evidence of limited, but not sustained spread of MERS-CoV from person to person, both in households as well as in health care settings like hospitals. Most transmission has occurred "in the circumstances of close contact with severely ill persons in healthcare or household settings" and there is no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic cases. Cluster sizes have ranged from 1 to 26 people, with an average of 2.7.


title: MERS

text: According to World Health Organization, the interim case definition is that a confirmed case is identified in a person with a positive lab test by "molecular diagnostics including either a positive PCR on at least two specific genomic targets or a single positive target with sequencing on a second".


title: MERS

text: In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend investigating any person with:


title: MERS

text: Chest X-ray findings tend to show bilateral patchy infiltrates consistent with viral pneumonitis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Lower lobes tend to be more involved. CT scans show interstitial infiltrates.


title: MERS

text: MERS cases have been reported to have low white blood cell count, and in particular low lymphocytes. For PCR testing, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends obtaining samples from the lower respiratory tract via bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), sputum sample or tracheal aspirate as these have the highest viral loads. There have also been studies utilizing upper respiratory sampling via nasopharyngeal swab.


title: MERS

text: Several highly sensitive, confirmatory real-time RT-PCR assays exist for rapid identification of MERS-CoV from patient-derived samples. These assays attempt to amplify upE (targets elements upstream of the E gene), open reading frame 1B (targets the ORF1b gene) and open reading frame 1A (targets the ORF1a gene). The WHO recommends the upE target for screening assays as it is highly sensitive. In addition, hemi-nested sequencing amplicons targeting RdRp (present in all coronaviruses) and nucleocapsid (N) gene (specific to MERS-CoV) fragments can be generated for confirmation via sequencing. Reports of potential polymorphisms in the N gene between isolates highlight the necessity for sequence-based characterization.


title: MERS

text: The WHO recommended testing algorithm is to start with an upE RT-PCR and if positive confirm with ORF 1A assay or RdRp or N gene sequence assay for confirmation. If both an upE and secondary assay are positive it is considered a confirmed case.


title: MERS

text: Protocols for biologically safe immunofluorescence assays (IFA) have also been developed; however, antibodies against betacoronaviruses are known to cross-react within the genus. This effectively limits their use to confirmatory applications. A more specific protein-microarray based assay has also been developed that did not show any cross-reactivity against population samples and serum known to be positive for other betacoronaviruses. Due to the limited validation done so far with serological assays, WHO guidance is that "cases where the testing laboratory has reported positive serological test results in the absence of PCR testing or sequencing, are considered probable cases of MERS-CoV infection, if they meet the other conditions of that case definition."


title: MERS

text: While the mechanism of spread of MERS-CoV is currently not known, based on experience with prior coronaviruses, such as SARS, the WHO currently recommends that all individuals coming into contact with MERS suspects should (in addition to standard precautions):


title: MERS

text: For procedures which carry a risk of aerosolization, such as intubation, the WHO recommends that care providers also:


title: MERS

text: The duration of infectivity is also unknown so it is unclear how long people must be isolated, but current recommendations are for 24 hours after resolution of symptoms. In the SARS outbreak the virus was not cultured from people after the resolution of their symptoms.


title: MERS

text: It is believed that the existing SARS research may provide a useful template for developing vaccines and therapeutics against a MERS-CoV infection. As of March 2020 there was one (DNA based) MERS vaccine which completed phase I clinical trials in humans, and three others in progress all of which are viral vectored vaccines, two adenoviral vectored (ChAdOx1-MERS, BVRS-GamVac) and one MVA vectored (MVA-MERS-S).


title: MERS

text: As of 2020, there is no specific vaccine or treatment for the disease. Using extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) seems to improve outcomes significantly.


title: MERS

text: Neither the combination of antivirals and interferons (ribavirin + interferon alfa-2a or interferon alfa-2b) nor corticosteroids improved outcomes.


title: MERS

text: MERS has had a relatively low population-wide reproduction number in previous outbreaks, but such outbreaks have occurred due to superspreading events. Total laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS world-wide per year have been as follows:


title: MERS

text: MERS was also implicated in an outbreak in April 2014 in Saudi Arabia, where MERS has infected 688 people and 282 MERS-related deaths have been reported since 2012. In response to newly reported cases and deaths, and the resignation of four doctors at Jeddah's King Fahd Hospital who refused to treat MERS patients for fear of infection, the government removed the Minister of Health and set up three MERS treatment centers. Eighteen more cases were reported in early May. In June 2014, Saudi Arabia announced 113 previously unreported cases of MERS, revising the death toll to 282.


title: MERS

text: A hospital-related outbreak in Riyadh in the summer of 2015 increased fears of an epidemic occurring during the annual Hajj pilgrimage that was to begin in late September. After a period of few cases, cases began increasing in the middle of the summer. The CDC placed the travel health alert to level 2, which calls for taking enhanced precautions.


title: MERS

text: In May 2019, 14 cases of MERS were reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO) by Saudi authorities, of which five were fatal. All those who died had comorbidities and other relatively serious health problems ranging from only diabetes mellitus in one person (aged 35) to complicated combinations of diabetes mellitus, hypertension and ischemic heart disease in two (65 and 80 years old) and diabetes mellitus, hypertension and nephropathy in another one who was 73 years old. Another patient who died and was 64 years old, had diabetes mellitus and hypertension. All those who died were males and three of them were reported to have had contact with, and exposure to, camels. Among the nine persons who survived were two females who were believed to have had contact with a person infected with MERS, one being a 23-year-old healthcare worker. Of the total 14 cases, four were females and 10 were males. All females survived. Reports of fatal cases were from Riyadh, Jeddah, Madinah and Najran. WHO did not recommend screening of travelers upon arrival or traveling restrictions.


title: MERS

text: On 2 May 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first diagnosis of MERS in the United States at Community Hospital in Munster, Indiana. The man diagnosed was a health care worker who had been in Saudi Arabia a week earlier, and was reported to be in good condition. A second patient who also traveled from Saudi Arabia was reported in Orlando, Florida on 12 May 2014.


title: MERS

text: In May 2015, the first case in South Korea was confirmed in a man who had visited Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Another man from South Korea, who was travelling to China, was diagnosed as the first case in China. So far, no Chinese citizen has been found infected.


title: MERS

text: As of 27 June 2015, 19 people in South Korea have died from this outbreak, with 184 confirmed cases of infection. There have been at least 6508 quarantined.


title: MERS

text: One study found that severe cases of illness had higher viral loads than milder cases, and that concentrations peaked in the second week of illness.


title: MERS

text: In April 2014, MERS emerged in the Philippines with a suspected case of a home-bound Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW). Several suspected cases involving individuals who were on the same flight as the initial suspected case are being tracked but are believed to have dispersed throughout the country. Another suspected MERS-involved death in Sultan Kudarat province caused the Department of Health (DOH) to put out an alert.


title: MERS

text: On 6 July 2015 the DOH confirmed the second case of MERS in the Philippines. A 36-year-old male foreigner from the Middle East was tested positive.


title: MERS

text: On 27 July 2015, the accident and emergency department at Manchester Royal Infirmary closed after two patients were treated for suspected MERS infection. The facility was reopened later that evening, and it was later confirmed by Public Health England that the two patients had tested negative for the disease.


title: MERS

text: In January 2016, a larger outbreak of MERS among camels in Kenya was reported. By 5 February 2016 more than 500 camels had died of the disease. On 12 February 2016, the disease was reported to be MERS. No human cases were identified, although one study found antibodies in healthy humans in Kenya.


title: MERS

text: The table above provides a comparison between the 2014 Saudi Arabia outbreak and the South Korean outbreak in 2015 of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection.


title: MERS

text: Collaborative efforts were used in the identification of the MERS-CoV. Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki isolated and identified a previously unknown coronavirus from the lungs of a 60-year-old Saudi Arabian man with pneumonia and acute kidney injury. After routine diagnostics failed to identify the causative agent, Zaki contacted Ron Fouchier, a leading virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for advice. Fouchier sequenced the virus from a sample sent by Zaki.


title: MERS

text: Fouchier used a broad-spectrum "pan-coronavirus" real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) method to test for distinguishing features of a number of known coronaviruses (such as OC43, 229E, NL63, and SARS-CoV), as well as for RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), a gene conserved in all coronaviruses known to infect humans. While the screens for known coronaviruses were all negative, the RdRp screen was positive.


title: MERS

text: On 15 September 2012, Dr. Zaki's findings were posted on ProMED-mail, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, a public health on-line forum.


title: MERS

text: The United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency (HPA) confirmed the diagnosis of severe respiratory illness associated with a new type of coronavirus in a second patient, a 49-year-old Qatari man who had recently been flown into the UK. He died from an acute, serious respiratory illness in a London hospital. In September 2012, the UK HPA named it the London1 novel CoV/2012 and produced the virus' preliminary phylogenetic tree, the genetic sequence of the virus based on the virus's RNA obtained from the Qatari case.


title: MERS

text: On 25 September 2012, the WHO announced that it was "engaged in further characterizing the novel coronavirus" and that it had "immediately alerted all its Member States about the virus and has been leading the coordination and providing guidance to health authorities and technical health agencies". The Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam "tested, sequenced and identified" a sample provided to EMC virologist Ron Fouchier by Ali Mohamed Zaki in November 2012.


title: MERS

text: On 8 November 2012, in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Zaki and co-authors from the Erasmus Medical Center published more details, including a tentative name, Human Coronavirus-Erasmus Medical Center (HCoV-EMC), the virus's genetic makeup, and closest relatives (including SARS).


title: MERS

text: In May 2013, the Coronavirus Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses adopted the official designation, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which was adopted by WHO to "provide uniformity and facilitate communication about the disease". Prior to the designation, WHO had used the non-specific designation 'Novel coronavirus 2012' or simply 'the novel coronavirus'.


title: MERS

text: When rhesus macaques were given interferon-α2b and ribavirin and exposed to MERS, they developed less pneumonia than control animals. Five critically ill people with MERS in Saudi Arabia with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and on ventilators were given interferon-α2b and ribavirin but all ended up dying of the disease. The treatment was started late in their disease (a mean of 19 days after hospital admission) and they had already failed trials of steroids so it remains to be seen whether it may have benefit earlier in the course of disease. Another proposed therapy is inhibition of viral protease or kinase enzymes.


title: MERS

text: Researchers are investigating a number of medications, including using interferon, chloroquine, chlorpromazine, loperamide, lopinavir, remdesivir and galidesivir as well as other agents such as mycophenolic acid, camostat and nitazoxanide.


title: Ninjatō

text: The , , or , are the preferred weapon that the "shinobi" of feudal Japan carried, usually carried on the persons back, specifically horizontally at a height of around that of the person's waist. It is portrayed by modern ninjutsu practitioners (including Masaaki Hatsumi and Stephen K. Hayes) as the weapon of the ninja, and is prominently featured in popular culture. Replicas of this sword are displayed at the Ninja Museum of Igaryu, established in the mid-1960s., at the Koka Ninja Village Museum in Kōka, Shiga, and at the Gifu Castle Archives Museum in Gifu, Gifu Prefecture, Japan


title: Ninjatō

text: Historically, there is no physical evidence for the existence of this "katana-like short sword legendarily used by ninja" before the 20th century, though it is believed that the designs demonstrated by alleged replicas are based on the design of "wakizashi" or "chokutō" swords or the swords associated with ashigaru.


title: Ninjatō

text: Because of the lack of any physical evidence or antique swords from the Sengoku period to the Edo period (16th to 19th century) matching the description of the ninjatō, the history of the weapon can only be reliably chronicled from the 20th century onwards.


title: Ninjatō

text: The ninjatō is typically depicted as being a short sword, often portrayed as having a straight blade (similar to that of a shikomizue) with a square guard. Usually of a length "less than 60 cm", the rest of the sword is comparatively "thick, heavy and straight". Despite the disputed historical existence of the ninjato, Hayes claims to describe it in detail, and suggests that the typical description of the ninjatō could be due to ninja having to forge their own blades from slabs of steel or iron with the cutting edge being ground on a stone, with straight blades being easier to form than the much more refined curved traditional Japanese sword. His second possible reason for ninjatō being described as a straight-bladed, rather short sword could be that the ninja were emulating one of the patron Buddhist deities of ninja families, Fudo Myo-oh, who is depicted brandishing a straight-bladed short sword similar to a chokutō.


title: Ninjatō

text: Due to the lack of historical evidence regarding the existence of the ninjatō, techniques for usage in a martial context are largely speculative. When used in film and stage, ninjatō are depicted as being shorter than a katana with a straight blade but they are utilized in a "nearly identical" manner as the katana. Books and other written materials have described a number of possible ways to use the sword including "fast draw techniques centered around drawing the sword and cutting as a simultaneous defensive or attacking action", with "a thrust fencing technique", and with a "reverse grip".


title: Ninjatō

text: The scabbards were often said to have been used for various purposes such as a respiration pipe (snorkel) in underwater activities or for secretly overhearing conversations. The scabbard is also said to have been longer than the blade of the ninjatō in order to hide various objects such as chemicals used to blind pursuers. The tsuba (hand guard) of the ninjato is often described as being larger than average and square instead of the much more common round tsuba. One theory on the ninjatō tsuba size and shape is that it was used as a tool, the sword would be leaned against a wall and ninja would use the tsuba as a step to extend his normal reach, the sword would then be retrieved by pulling it up by the sageo (saya cord).


title: Bill Drummond

text: William Ernest Drummond (born 29 April 1953) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he famously burned £1 million in 1994. More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's chosen banner of the Penkiln Burn, include making and distributing cakes, soup, flowers, beds and shoe-shines. More recent music projects include No Music Day, and the international tour of a choir called The17. Drummond is the author of several books about art and music.


title: Bill Drummond

text: William Ernest Drummond was born in Butterworth, South Africa, where his father was a minister for the Church of Scotland. His family moved back to Scotland when he was 18 months old, and his early years were spent in the town of Newton Stewart. He moved to Corby, Northamptonshire at the age of 11. It was here that he first became involved in performing as a musician, initially working with school friends such as Gary Carson and Chris Ward. He attended the University of Northampton and the Art and Design Academy from 1970 to 1973. He later decided that "art should use everything, be everywhere" and that, as an artist, he would "use whatever medium is to hand". He spent two years working as a milkman, gardener, steel worker, nursing assistant, theatre carpenter, and scene painter. Drummond also worked on a trawler.


title: Bill Drummond

text: In 1975 Drummond began working at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool as a carpenter and scene painter. In 1976 he was the set designer for the first stage production of "The Illuminatus Trilogy", a 12-hour performance which opened on 23 November 1976, and which was staged by Ken Campbell's "Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool". The production transferred to the National Theatre, and then the Roundhouse, in London. According to Campbell, Drummond became known as "the man who went for Araldite": "In the middle of a tour, Drummond announced he was popping out to get some glue – and never returned." Drummond later wrote that none of his career would have happened as it did if not for what he learnt from Campbell, starting with the advice "Bill, don’t bother doing anything unless it is heroic!"


title: Bill Drummond

text: After absconding from the "Illuminatus!" production in London, Drummond returned to Liverpool and co-founded the band Big in Japan. Other members included Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes to Hollywood), Budgie (Siouxsie and the Banshees), Jayne Casey (Pink Military/Pink Industry) and Ian Broudie (The Lightning Seeds). After the band's demise, Drummond and another member, his best friend David Balfe, founded Zoo Records. Zoo's first release was Big in Japan's posthumous EP, "From Y To Z and Never Again". They went on to act as producers of the debut albums by Echo & the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes, both of which Drummond would later manage somewhat idiosyncratically. With Zoo Music Ltd, Drummond and Balfe were also music publishers for Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction and The Proclaimers. The production team of Drummond and Balfe was christened The Chameleons, who recorded the single "Touch" together with singer Lori Lartey as Lori and the Chameleons and were involved with the production on Echo & the Bunnymen's debut album, released on the Korova label.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Drummond later took a job in the mainstream music business as an A&R consultant for the label WEA working with, amongst others, Strawberry Switchblade and Brilliant. In July 1986, on his 33 and a third birthday, Drummond repented his corporate involvement and resigned his job by way of a "ringingly quixotic press release": "I will be 33.5 (sic) years old in September, a time for a revolution in my life. There is a mountain to climb the hard way, and I want to see the world from the top..." (In an interview in December 1990, Drummond recalled spending half a million pounds at WEA on the band Brilliant – for whom he envisioned massive worldwide success – only for them to completely flop. "At that point I thought 'What am I doing this for?' and I got out.")


title: Bill Drummond

text: Drummond was "obviously very sharp," said WEA chairman Rob Dickens, "and he knew the business. But he was too radical to be happy inside a corporate structure. He was better off working as an outsider."


title: Bill Drummond

text: Later in the year, Drummond issued a solo album, "The Man", a country/folk music recording, backed by Australian rock group The Triffids. The album was released on Creation Records and included the sardonic "Julian Cope Is Dead", where he outlined his fantasy of shooting the Teardrop Explodes frontman in the head, to ensure the band's early demise and subsequent legendary status. The song has commonly been seen as a reply to the Cope song "Bill Drummond Said". Drummond wrote and performed "The Manager", filmed by Bill Butt in which he lamented the state of the music industry and offered his services at £100 a time to help fix it; one of his complaints was about remixes: "songs have to be written, not layered". The spoken-word recording also appeared as a B-side, and on some compilations as "The Manager's Speech".


title: Bill Drummond

text: "The Man" received positive reviews – including 4 stars from "Q Magazine"; and 5 from "Sounds" Magazine who called the album a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement". Drummond intended to focus on writing books once "The Man" had been issued but, as he recalled in 1990, "That only lasted three months, until I had an[other] idea for a record and got dragged back into it all".


title: Bill Drummond

text: While out walking on New Year's Day 1987, Drummond formulated a plan to make a hip-hop record. However, "I wasn't brave enough to go and do it myself", he said. "...although I can play the guitar, and I can knock out a few things on the piano, I knew nothing, personally, about the technology. And, I thought, I knew Jimmy [Cauty], I knew he was a like spirit, we share similar tastes and backgrounds in music and things. So I phoned him up that day and said 'Let's form a band called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu'. And he knew exactly, to coin a phrase, 'where I was coming from'".


title: Bill Drummond

text: Drummond and Cauty (who Drummond had signed to Food/WEA as a member of Brilliant) released their first single, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu's "All You Need Is Love", in March 1987. This was followed by an album – "1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)" – in June of the same year, and a high-profile copyright dispute with ABBA and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society. A second album – "Who Killed The JAMs?", also the last album under the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs) name, was released in February 1988.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Later in 1988, Drummond and Cauty released a 'novelty' pop single, "Doctorin' the Tardis" as The Timelords. The song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart on 12 June, and charted highly in Australia and New Zealand. On the back of this success, the duo self-published a book, "The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)".


title: Bill Drummond

text: In late 1988, the duo and released their first singles under the moniker The KLF, "Burn the Bastards" and "Burn the Beat" (both taken from the JAMs' last album). (From late 1987, Drummond and Cauty's independent record label had been named "KLF Communications".) As The KLF, Drummond and Cauty would amass fame and fortune. "What Time Is Love?" – a signature song which they would revisit and revitalise several times in the coming years – saw its first release in July 1988, and its success spawned an album, "The "What Time Is Love?" Story", in September 1989.


title: Bill Drummond

text: "Chill Out", an ambient house album which had its roots in Cauty's chill-out sessions with The Orb's Alex Paterson, was released in February 1990. Described by "The Times" as "The KLF's comedown classic", "Chill Out" was named the fifth best dance album of all time in a 1996 "Mixmag" feature.


title: Bill Drummond

text: The KLF's commercial success peaked in 1991, with "The White Room" album and the accompanying "Stadium House" singles, remixes of 1988's "What Time Is Love?", 1989's "3 a.m. Eternal", 1990's "Last Train to Trancentral"; and "Justified and Ancient", a new song based on a sample from "1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?)"


title: Bill Drummond

text: In 1992, The KLF were awarded the "Best British group" BRIT Award. With grindcore group Extreme Noise Terror, The KLF performed a live "violently antagonistic performance" of "3 a.m. Eternal" at the BRIT Awards ceremony in front of "a stunned music-business audience".


title: Bill Drummond

text: Later in the evening Drummond and Cauty dumped a dead sheep at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. "NME" listed this appearance at number 4 in their "top 100 rock moments", and, in 2003, "The Observer" named it the fifth greatest "publicity stunt" in the history of popular music.


title: Bill Drummond

text: On 14 May 1992, The KLF announced their immediate retirement from the music industry and the deletion of their entire back catalogue, an act which associate Scott Piering described as "[throwing] away a fortune".


title: Bill Drummond

text: When he left WEA, Drummond issued an enigmatic press release, this time talking of a "wild and wounded, glum and glorious, shit but shining path" he and Cauty had been following "...these past five years. The last two of which has led us up onto the commercial high ground—we are at a point where the path is about to take a sharp turn from these sunny uplands down into a netherworld of we know not what." There have been numerous suggestions that in 1992 Drummond was at the edge of a nervous breakdown. "Vox" Magazine wrote, for example, that 1992 was "the year of Bill's 'breakdown', when The KLF, perched on the peak of greater-than-ever success, quit the music business, ... [and] machine gunned the tuxedo'd twats in the front row of that year's BRIT Awards ceremony." Drummond himself said that he was on the edge of the "abyss".


title: Bill Drummond

text: Despite The KLF's retirement from the music business, Drummond's involvement with Jimmy Cauty was far from over. In 1993, the pair regrouped as the K Foundation, ostensibly a foundation for the arts. They established the K Foundation art award for the ""worst" artist of the year". The award, worth £40,000, was presented to Rachel Whiteread on 23 November 1993 outside London's Tate Gallery. Ms Whiteread had just accepted the £20,000 1993 Turner Prize award for best British Contemporary artist inside the gallery. The K Foundation award attracted huge interest from the British broadsheet newspapers.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Infamy followed when, on 23 August 1994, the K Foundation burnt what remained of The KLF's earnings, one million pounds, at a boathouse on the Scottish island of Jura. A film of the event – "Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid" – was taken on tour, with Drummond and Cauty discussing the incineration with members of the public after each screening. In 2004 Drummond admitted to the BBC that he now regretted burning the money. "It's a hard one to explain to your kids and it doesn't get any easier. I wish I could explain why I did it so people would understand."


title: Bill Drummond

text: On 4 September 1995 the duo recorded "The Magnificent" for "The Help Album". In 1997, Drummond and Cauty briefly re-emerged as 2K and K2 Plant Hire Ltd. with various plans to "Fuck the Millennium". K2 Plant Hire's published aim was to "build a massive pyramid containing one brick for every person born in the UK during the 20th century" Members of the public were urged to donate bricks, with 1.5 bricks per Briton being needed to complete the project. Drummond also contributed a short story titled "Let’s Grind, or How K2 Plant Hire Ltd Went to Work" to the book "Disco 2000".


title: Bill Drummond

text: In 1996-1997 Bill Drummond did a music project in Finland, with Mark Manning and a selection of Finnish artists.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Drummond's involvement in the music industry has been minimal since his final collaboration with Jimmy Cauty as 2K in 1997.


title: Bill Drummond

text: In 1998, the Scottish Football Association invited Drummond to write and record a theme song for the Scotland national football team's 1998 FIFA World Cup campaign. Drummond decided against doing it (Del Amitri got the job) but he wondered if he had twisted fate by declining, because the other major football songs of that year were made by associates of his: Keith Allen ("Vindaloo") and Ian Broudie ("Three Lions"), two men he had met on the same day when working on "Illuminatus!" in 1976, and former protege Ian McCulloch.


title: Bill Drummond

text: In 2000, Drummond released "45", a book consisting of a "series of loosely related vignettes forming the rambling diary of one year." "45" also explored Drummond's KLF legacy, and was well received by the press.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Drummond featured on Seeming's 2020 album "The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity", performing the spoken-word portion of "Learn to Vanish". It was his first appearance on record in 20 years.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Drummond studied painting at Liverpool School of Art from 1972 to 1973. Following that, he decided that instead of limiting his practice to paint and canvas, as an artist he would use any medium that came to hand. He has said that much of his work since – including the pop-music, book-writing, and The17 choir – has been done as art.


title: Bill Drummond

text: From 1998, Drummond's art activities have been carried out using the brand-name of the Penkiln Burn. This is the name of the river in Scotland upon the banks of which he played and fished as a boy.


title: Bill Drummond

text: In 1995, Drummond bought "A Smell of Sulphur in the Wind" by Richard Long, for $20,000. In Drummond’s own words, he 'fell in love with Richard Long’s work because' "it was art by walking and doing things on his walks." Five years later, Drummond felt that he was no longer "getting his money's worth" from the photograph. He decided to try to sell it by placing a series of placards around the country. When this failed to result in its sale, in 2001 he cut the photograph and mounting card into 20,000 pieces to sell for $1 each. His plan, upon retrieving the $20,000 in cash, is to walk with it to the remote place in Iceland where Richard Long had made the photograph and bury it in a box beneath the stone circle. He will then take his own photograph of the site, bring it home, frame it, hang it in the same place in his bedroom where the Richard Long hung, and call the new work "The Smell of Money Underground". Drummond's books "How to be an Artist" and a later soft-bound edition titled "$20,000" recounts this story.


title: Bill Drummond

text: In 2002, Drummond was involved in a controversial exhibition at the deconsecrated St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool. Drummond contributed a guestbook which asked visitors "Is God a Cunt?". It was later reported that the artwork had been stolen and a £1000 reward offered for its return. Drummond himself said that he would answer "no" to his own question: "God is responsible for all the things I love, the speckles on a brown trout; the sound of Angus Young's guitar, the nape of my girlfriend's neck, the song of the blackcap when he returns in Spring. I never blame God for all the shit, for the baby Rwandan slaughtered in a casual genocide, the ever-present wars, drudgery and misery that fills most of our lives."


title: Bill Drummond

text: Several Penkiln Burn projects involve making things and then distributing them. Drummond has created a Soup Line drawn across a map going through Belfast and Nottingham to the edges of the British Isles. Anyone living on the Soup Line may contact Drummond to come to their house and make soup for them, their family and friends. Drummond has also constructed – and encourages others to construct – Cake Circles drawn on maps. Cakes are then made and delivered to people who live within the circle with the words "I have baked you a cake, here it is". Other projects involve Drummond building beds from timber in public places which are then raffled off. In 2011, for the Venice Biennale, Drummond took up shoe-shining on the streets of Venice. Each spring, Drummond gives away 40 bunches of daffodils to strangers on the street in different cities.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Drummond's web-based projects include MyDeath.net, where people can plan their own funeral. Another site, youwhores.com, was meant for anyone to advertise any kind of service at their own set price. Due to misuse though, youwhores.com has become archival only. Still open for contributions is Drummond's website www.openmanifesto.com which "exists to define what art is and art is not." The Open Manifesto site invites definitions of art in 100 words or less.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Drummond was a Director of The Foundry, an arts centre in Shoreditch, London which closed in 2010. He is also owner of The Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland. Via an arts trust called in You We Trust, the Curfew Tower acts as an artists' residency.


title: Bill Drummond

text: In 2005, Drummond announced an annual No Music Day on 21 November. The 22 November is Saint Cecilia day – the Patron Saint of Music – so No Music Day represents a fast before the feast. No Music Day was held between 2005 and 2010. In this time, BBC Radio Scotland observed it by broadcasting no music, including jingles, for 24 hours. Radio Resonance FM also acknowledged it. In 2009 the entire city of Linz, Austria observed No Music Day with the backing of the city mayor; music was not played on local radio stations or in shops, and the cinemas only showed films without music soundtracks.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Drummond's most recent music project is a choir called The17. His first formal performance of The17 was staged with 16 other men in a studio in Leicester in 2004. It followed thoughts about music that Drummond had been having for many years. With the advent of recorded music via the internet, iPods and MP3 players etc. Drummond proclaims that "all recorded music has run its course." The17 creates music that follows no musical history, or necessarily has words, melodies or rhythms. It may be made up of many human voices or none. Performances may only be recorded and played back once and then deleted. The17 can be made up of as many people who want to be a part of it at the time of a performance; they are all then lifetime members.


title: Bill Drummond

text: After the first 17 Scores for The17 Drummond opened the writing process to collaborations with The17 members. The17 now has several thousand members who have carried out performances on Drummond's Coast-to-Coast tour across the UK, and a World Tour which has included Jerusalem, Beijing, Port-au-Prince and Gothenburg. 100 performances REPEAT in the town of Derby as a residency for the new Quad arts centre titled "Slice Through Derby", were photographed as an ongoing exhibit at the gallery and published as a 100 piece photoset. Performances and actions in Port-au-Prince for the Ghetto Biennale at the end of 2009 preceded the January Haitian earthquake, and the habitual graffito "Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow And All Music Has Disappeared" took on a new resonance in a city with no electricity or infrastructure, rendered suddenly -relatively - musicless. Local artist Claudel Casseus wrote an account of this for Drummond during the reconstruction published as a book "Imajine" (Penkiln Burn 14, 2011), and Drummond's own feelings on the residency and the17 actions, Haiti and the earthquake form four of the interview questions in Drummond's "100" project originally posed by Radio 4.


title: Bill Drummond

text: The17 is the subject of the 2008 book "17" published by Beautiful Books/PB (Penkiln Burn 12, 2008). This was preceded by a small book "SCORES 18-76" (Penkiln Burn 11, 2006) featuring the second batch of works by The17, developed in actions in schools in the North East of England, in May 2006, Performances, scores, tours and Drummond's related graffiti are documented on a website: the17.org.


title: Bill Drummond

text: In 2012 Drummond had a residency in Sheffield at Site Gallery, and the17 were convened at sites around the city, the actions performed here are recounted in the book "Ragworts" (Penkiln Burn 18, 2012) and led to the instigation of the annual "Ragwort Week". The book was published in an edition of 1000 copies, and 100 copies are made available each year and sold only during "Ragwort Week".


title: Bill Drummond

text: A performance of The17's SURROUND, originally planned to take place in Damascus, Syria, took place in London on 18 March 2012. Drummond explains in his essay for Treuchet Magazine: 'it would best for all concerned if the Syrian leg of the tri-nation festival was postponed for a few weeks or maybe months, when things would have undoubtedly settled down'.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Between 8-19 April 2012 saw a series of Drummond actions and invocations of The17 in a performance titled "The Atlantic Archipelago". This was to mark the conclusion of the 17 project, or at least its curation by Drummond. It began with a performance of Man Bangs a Drum - which would become a staple of his later 25 Paintings tour - on Skegness beach, before heading west along a straight line drawn across a map crossing Matthew St in Liverpool, and ending in Inshmore in Ireland. The17 were summoned at various locations along this line and the preparations for these performances were filmed by director Stefan Schwietert for a film "Coast to Coast", and documented by photographer Tracey Moberly for a book of the same name.


title: Bill Drummond

text: On 28 April 2013, the day before his 60th birthday, Drummond took part in what has been billed as the last performance of The17. A seventeen-hour version of Score 1: IMAGINE was performed while standing on a manhole cover at the bottom of Mathew Street in Liverpool.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Between 3 and 8 July - Drummond screened a film of his Atlantic Archipelago project, "Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow And All Music Has Disappeared" along the same 53.1256 degree line of latitude the original performances had been undertaken. Beginning at the home of film and gender theorist Ellen Wright, in Louth, Lincolnshire, with a version of The17 which include musicians Robert Wyatt, Hell Uberend and Dave Formula. before moving on to a dawn screening on Skegness beach, through the various locations featured in the film, taking in The Galway Film Fleadh (the only paid ticketed event on the tour), culminating in a sunset screening at Dún Aonghasa on the west coast of Ireland.


title: Bill Drummond

text: Between dawn on Monday the 4th of July to sunset on Friday 8 July, Bill Drummond will be screening the film at numerous locations along the latitude ofs North.