title: Karoo

text: The main highway (the N1) and railway line from Cape Town to the north enter the Lower Karoo from the Hex River Valley just before Touws River and follow a course about 50 km south of the Great Escarpment up to Beaufort West. Thereafter, they gradually ascend the Great Escarpment along a broad valley to Three Sisters on the Central Plateau and the Upper Karoo.


title: Karoo

text: Turning north from the N1 between Touws River and Beaufort West, at Matjiesfontein, the road ascends the Great Escarpment through the Verlatenkloof Pass to reach Sutherland, at 1456 m above sea level, which is reputedly the coldest town in South Africa with average minimum temperatures of −6.1 °C during winter. Parts of the eastern Mpumalangan Highveld do at times experience lower temperatures than Sutherland, but not as consistently as Sutherland does. Snowfalls are not infrequent during the southern winter months. The South African Astronomical Observatory has an emplacement of telescopes about 20 km east of the town, on a small plateau 1798 m above sea level, and is home to the Southern African Large Telescope, the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. To the north, still on the Plateau, and 75 km north-west of Carnarvon, seven radio dishes form part of the Square Kilometer Array which will, 2500 in total, be scattered in other parts of South Africa and Australia, to survey the southern skies at radio frequencies. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, one of the main targets of this enterprise, is best viewed from the Southern Hemisphere.


title: Karoo

text: The Upper Karoo is indeed an ideal site for an astronomical observatory. This is not only because of the clear skies, absence of artificial lights, and high altitude, but also because it is tectonically completely inactive (meaning that there are no fault lines or volcanoes nearby, and no earth tremors or earthquakes occur, even at great distances).


title: Karoo

text: Geographically, it is a 290 km-long valley, only 40–60 km wide, formed by two parallel Cape Fold Mountain ranges, the Swartberg to the north, and the continuous Langeberg-Outeniqua range to the south. The northern strip of the valley, within 10–20 km from the foot of the Swartberg mountains is least karoo-like, in that it is a well-watered area both from the rain and the many streams that cascade down the mountain, or through narrow defiles in the Swartberg from the Great Karoo. The main towns of the region are situated along this northern strip of the Little Karoo: Montagu, Barrydale, Ladismith, Calitzdorp, Oudtshoorn, and De Rust, as well as such well-known mission stations such as Zoar, Amalienstein, and Dysselsdorp.


title: Karoo

text: The southern 30– to 50 km-wide strip, north of the Langeberg range, is as arid as the western Lower Karoo, except in the east, where the Langeberg range (arbitrarily) starts to be called the Outeniqua Mountains.


title: Karoo

text: The Little Karoo can only be accessed by road through the narrow defiles cut through the surrounding Cape Fold Mountains by ancient, but still flowing, rivers. A few roads traverse the mountains over passes, the most famous and impressive of which is the Swartberg Pass between Oudtshoorn in the Little Karoo and Prince Albert on the other side of the Swartberg mountains in the Great Karoo. Also, the main road between Oudtshoorn and George, on the coastal plain, crosses the mountains to the south via the Outeniqua Pass. The only exit from the Little Karoo that does not involve crossing a mountain range is through the 150 km-long, narrow Langkloof valley between Uniondale and Humansdorp, near Plettenberg Bay.


title: Karoo

text: In geological terms, the Karoo Supergroup refers to an extensive and geologically recent (180–310 million years old) sequence of sedimentary and igneous rocks, which is flanked to the south by the Cape Fold Mountains, and to the north by the more ancient Ventersdorp Lavas, the Transvaal Supergroup and Waterberg Supergroup. It covers two-thirds of South Africa and extends in places to 8000 m below the land surface, constituting an immense volume of rocks which was formed, geologically speaking, in a short period of time.


title: Karoo

text: Although almost the whole of the Great Karoo is situated on Karoo Supergroup rocks, the geological Karoo rocks extend over a very much larger area, both within South Africa and Lesotho, but also beyond its borders and onto other continents that formed part of Gondwana.


title: Karoo

text: The Karoo Supergroup was formed in a vast inland basin starting 320 million years ago, at a time when that part of Gondwana which would eventually become Africa, lay over the South Pole. Icebergs that had calved off the glaciers and ice sheets to the north deposited a 1 km-thick layer of mud containing dropstones of varying origins and sizes into this basin. This became the Dwyka Group consisting primarily of tillite, the lowermost layer of the Karoo Supergroup. As Gondwana drifted northwards, the basin turned into an inland sea with extensive swampy deltas along its northern shores. The peat in these swamps eventually turned into large deposits of coal which are mined in KwaZulu-Natal and on the Highveld. This 3 km-thick layer is known as the Ecca Group, which is overlain by the 5.6 km-thick Beaufort Group, laid down on a vast plain with Mississippi-like rivers depositing mud from an immense range of mountains to the south. Ancient reptiles and amphibians prospered in the wet forests, and their remains have made the Karoo famous amongst palaeontologists. The first of these Karoo fossils was discovered in 1838 by Scots-born Andrew Geddes Bain at a road cutting near Fort Beaufort. He sent his specimens to the British Museum, where fellow Scotsman Robert Broom recognised the Karoo fossils' mammal-like characteristics in 1897.


title: Karoo

text: After the Beaufort period, Southern Africa (still part of Gondwana) became an arid sand desert with only ephemeral rivers and pans. These sands consolidated to form the Stormberg Group, the remnants of which are found only in the immediate vicinity of Lesotho. Several dinosaur nests, containing eggs, some with dinosaur fetal skeletons in them, have been found in these rocks, near what had once been a swampy pan.


title: Karoo

text: Finally, about 180 million years ago, volcanic activity took place on a titanic scale, which brought an end to a flourishing reptile evolution. These genera represent some of the extinct, mainly predinosaur, animals of the Karoo:


title: Karoo

text: Karoo Koppies hills are capped by hard, erosion-resistant dolerite sills. This is solidified lava that was forced under high pressure between the horizontal strata of the sedimentary rocks that make up most of the Karoo’s geology. This occurred about 180 million years ago, when huge volumes of lava were extruded over most of Southern Africa and adjoining regions of Gondwana, both on the surface and deep below the surface between the sedimentary strata. Since this massive extrusion of lava, Southern Africa has undergone a prolonged period of erosion, exposing the older, softer rocks, except where they were protected by a cap of dolerite. The genera present include:


title: Karoo

text: The lava outpourings that ended the Karoo deposition of rocks, not only covered the African surface, and other parts of Gondwana with a 1.6 km thick layer basaltic lava, but it also forced its way, under high pressure, between the horizontal layers of sedimentary rocks belonging to the Ecca and Beaufort groups, to solidify into dolerite sills. The long vertical fissures through which the lava welled up solidified into dikes which resemble the Great Wall of China from the air.


title: Karoo

text: From about 150 million years ago the South African surface has been subjected to an almost uninterrupted period of erosion, particularly during the past 20 million years, shaving off many kilometers of sediments. This exposed the dolerite sills, which were more resistant to erosion than the Karoo sediments, forming one of the most characteristic features of the Karoo landscape, namely the flat topped hills, called "Karoo Koppies".


title: Karoo

text: The geology of the Little Karoo bears no resemblance to that of the Great Karoo (see the diagram on the left, of a NS geological cross-section through the Little and Great Karoos). The valley is an integral part of the Cape Fold Mountain Belt, with the two ranges on either side composed of extremely hard, erosion-resistant, quartzitic sandstone belonging to the 450- to 510-million-year-old Table Mountain Group (i.e. the oldest layer of the Cape Supergroup). The valley floor is covered, in the main, by the next (younger) layer of the Supergroup, namely the much softer Bokkeveld shales. The dolerite of the Great Karoo did not penetrate these rocks, so Karoo Koppies are not seen in the Little Karoo.


title: Karoo

text: The Little Karoo contains two other geological features that give the landscape a special character. During the erosion of the African interior following the bulging of the continent during the massive lava outpourings that ended the Karoo sedimentation 180 million years ago, some of the eroded material was trapped in the valleys of the Cape Fold Mountains, especially during the Cretaceous period, about to years (Ma) ago. These "Enon Conglomerates", as they are known, were deposited by high energy, fast flowing rivers, and are found between Calitzdorp and Oudtshoorn, where they form the strikingly red "Redstone Hills".


title: Karoo

text: The second special geological feature that marks the Little Karoo is the 300 km-long fault line along the southern edge of the Swartberg Mountains. The Swartberg Mountains were lifted up along this fault, to such an extent that in the Oudtshoorn region, the rocks that form the base of the Cape Supergroup are exposed. These are locally known as the Cango Group, but are probably continuous with the Malmesbury Group that forms the base of Table Mountain on the Cape Peninsula, and similar outcrops in the Western Cape. In the Little Karoo, the outcrop is composed of limestone, into which an underground stream has carved the impressively extensive Cango Caves.


title: Karoo

text: The World Wildlife Fund has classified the Great Karoo and Little Karoo as almost entirely within two of what they consider South Africa’s eight botanical biomes,


title: Karoo

text: they have coined their biomes succulent Karoo and the Nama Karoo, although both, like the geological Karoo Supergroup, are more extensive than the geographical or historical Karoo described in South African atlases and guide books (compare the map on the right with the map at the beginning of the article).


title: Karoo

text: The succulent Karoo biome runs along the West Coast, from approximately Lamberts Bay northwards to over 200 km into southern Namibia. It starts in the south just north of the sandveld geographical region, about 250 km north of Cape Town, and continues through Namaqualand, the Richtersveld, immediately south of the Orange River, and on into the Namaqualand or Namaland region of southern Namibia. None of these regions is ever referred to, either geographically or locally, as "Karoo". However, it has a major extension inland into the Tankwa Karoo and Moordenaarskaroo regions of the Lower Karoo, and adjoining Upper Karoo region of the geographic Great Karoo. It also occurs to the south, in part of the Breede River Valley, as the Robertson Karoo. From here, it continues eastwards into the western half of the Little Karoo.


title: Karoo

text: The succulent Karoo biome is dominated by dwarf, leafy-succulent shrubs, and annuals, predominantly Asteraceae, popularly known as Namaqualand daisies, which put on spectacular flower displays covering vast stretches of the landscape in the southern spring-time (August–September) after good rains in the winter. Grasses are uncommon, making most of the biome unsuitable for grazing. The low rainfall, in fact, discourages most forms of agriculture. An exception is the thriving ostrich-farming industry in the Little Karoo, which is heavily dependent on supplementary feeding with lucerne. The difference between the succulent Karoo biome and the Nama Karoo biome is that the former receives the little rain that falls as cyclonic rainfall in winter, which has less erosive power than the infrequent but violent summer thunderstorms of the Nama Karoo. Frost is also less common in the succulent Karoo biome than in the Nama Karoo biome. The number of mainly succulent plant species is very high for an arid area of this size anywhere in the world.


title: Karoo

text: The Nama Karoo biome is located entirely on the central plateau mostly at altitudes between 1000 and 1500 m. It incorporates nearly the whole of the historical and geographical Great Karoo, but also includes a portion of southern Namibia's Namaqualand, and South Africa's Bushmanland (both local geographical names, not names of biomes). It is the second-largest biome in South Africa, and forms the botanical transition between the fynbos biome to the south and the savannah biome to the north. It is defined primarily by the dominance of dwarf (less than 1 m high) shrubs with a co-dominance of grasses especially towards the north-east and east where it grades into the grassland biome of the highveld and the Eastern Midlands. The shrubs and grasses are deciduous, mainly in response to the irregular rainfall.


title: Karoo

text: Much of the Nama Karoo biome is used for sheep and goat farming, providing mutton, wool, and pelts for local and international markets, especially since livestock can frequently be provided with a regular supply of water from boreholes. Overgrazing exacerbates the erosion caused by the violent thunderstorms that occur, infrequently, in the summer. It also promotes the replacement of the grasses by shrubs, especially the less edible varieties such as the threethorn ("Rhigozum trichotomum"), bitterbos ("Chrysocoma ciliata"), and sweet thorn ("Acacia karroo"). However, there are few rare or Red Data Book plant species in the Nama Karoo biome.


title: Karoo

text: The Great Karoo used to support a large variety of antelope (particularly the springbok), the quagga, and other large game, especially on the grassy flats in the east. Francois Le Vaillant, the famous French explorer, naturalist, and ornithologist, who traveled through the Great Karoo in the 1780s, killed a hippopotamus in the Great Fish River in the Karoo (and ate its foot for breakfast). He also recorded that he saw the spoor of a rhinoceros near Cranemere, in the Camdeboo Plains (eastern Lower Karoo). Elephant tusks have been found by farmers in the Camdeboo district, but no records exist of any having been seen alive in that region.


title: Karoo

text: The quagga roamed the Karoo in great numbers together with wildebeest and ostriches, which always seemed to accompany them. These quagga seemed gentle and easy to domesticate. (A pair of quagga was used to draw a horse carriage through London, more for curiosity than for any superiority the quagga might have had over a horse.) They were consequently also easy prey for hunters, who hunted them for sport rather than their meat. By the middle of the 1800s, they were almost extinct, and in 1883, the last one died in an Amsterdam zoo.


title: Karoo

text: Probably the strangest and most puzzling zoological phenomenon in the Great Karoo was the periodic, unpredictable appearance of massive springbok migrations. These migrations always came from the north, and could either go west towards Namaqualand and the sea, south-west through towns such as Beaufort West, or south through the Camdeboo district. These vast herds moved steadily and inexorably across the plains, trampling all before them, including their own kind. Le Vaillant gave the first eyewitness account of such a migration in 1782. He rode through the herd filling the Plains of Camdeboo, seeing neither the beginning nor end of the moving mass.


title: Karoo

text: In 1849, a massive herd of springbok, amongst which were intermingled wildebeest, blesbok, quagga, and eland, moved through Beaufort West. Early one morning, the town was awakened to a sound like that of a strong wind, and suddenly the town was filled with animals. They devoured every sprig of foliage in the town and surrounding countryside. The last of the continuously moving herd left the town 3 days later, to disappear towards the west. The Karoo looked as if a fire had swept through it. During these migrations, the plains and hillsides on every side were thickly covered by one vast mass of springbok, packed like sheep in a fold. As far as the eye could see, the landscape was alive with them.


title: Karoo

text: During these migrations, the springbok never ran or trotted. On the whole, they were silent, except for the shudder of their stamping hoofs. Nothing could divert them, and hunters could ride amongst them, shooting them at random, without apparently causing alarm. People could move amongst them and kill them with sticks, or cripple them by seizing a leg and breaking it. Not only people followed these herds for the easy meat they provided, but also lions, leopards, cheetahs, African wild dogs, hyenas, and jackals preyed on them.


title: Karoo

text: No one knew how, why, or where these migrations started, nor where they ended, nor did anyone know if these animals ever returned to where they had started. The migrations were always unidirectional, from north of the Great Karoo.


title: Karoo

text: Great locust swarms also frequently invaded or arose in the Great Karoo, and still occur from time to time today.


title: Karoo

text: The riverine rabbit, a critically endangered animal, lives exclusively in seasonal river basins and a very particular set of scrubland in the central semiarid region in the Karoo. It is hunted by falconiformes and Verreaux's eagles. Its numbers have been consistently lowering due to destruction of its habitat. They are unique relative to similar species through how they are polygamous and how each female can only produce one or two offspring per year.


title: Karoo

text: The introduction of the windpump to tap the Great Karoo’s underground water resources in the late 1800s made permanent human habitation and sheep farming possible over large parts of the Great Karoo for the first time. As a result, the teeming number of large antelope in the Karoo has dwindled into insignificance, and with them, the large carnivores have all but disappeared. Today, the caracal (7–19 kg), black-backed jackal (6–10 kg), Verreaux's eagle (3.0–5.8 kg) and the martial eagle (3.0–6.2 kg) are arguably the largest predators likely to be seen in the Great Karoo today. Leopards (20–90 kg) do occur, especially in the mountains, but are very secretive, so are rarely seen. Many of the animals that formerly inhabited the Karoo in large numbers, including lions, have been reintroduced to the area in nature reserves and game farms.


title: Karoo

text: As in the Great Karoo, antelope and other big game inhabited the Little Karoo in the past. However, the dominant zebra was not the quagga, but the Cape mountain zebra, ("Equus zebra zebra") which is adapted for life on rugged, mountainous terrain. Their hooves are harder and faster-growing than those of Burchell’s zebra ("Equus quagga burchellii"), which lives on the plains. The two species are, therefore, rarely seen in the same habitat. The quagga is closely related to Burchell's zebra, and appears also to have been confined to the plains.


title: Karoo

text: The mountain zebra occurred in the mountain regions of the Cape Fold Belt and along the southern portion of the Great Escarpment. Thus, they were endemic to, amongst others, the western Lower Karoo and the Little Karoo. However, they were hunted to near extinction, leaving fewer than 100 individuals by the 1930s. Conservation efforts since then brought their numbers up to 1200 by 1998, mainly by concentrating these zebra in nature reserves and protected areas, the most well-known of these being the Mountain Zebra National Park near Cradock in the Great Karoo. Cape mountain zebras are still found in protected areas managed by Cape Nature, including the Kamanassie and Gamkaberg Nature Reserves.


title: Karoo

text: The ostrich is found throughout Africa, but the most handsome specimens came from the Little Karoo, where the dry weather, but plentiful water in the streams formed an ideal habitat for these large, flightless birds. Here, they grow to over 2 m in height, and weigh over 100 kg. The male’s feathers have been prized by many cultures in Africa, Europe, and Asia over thousands of years. In the 1860s, a farmer in the Graaff-Reinet district was apparently the first person to demonstrate that the ostrich could successfully be domesticated, bred in captivity, and the eggs hatched in incubators, while still producing the magnificent feathers. This idea was quickly adopted by farmers in the Little Karoo, where they started growing lucerne as the birds' favorite food. During 1880, no less than 74,000 kg of feathers were exported, and in 1904, it passed the 210,000-kg mark.


title: Karoo

text: The First World War brought about a slump in the ostrich feather market, but the industry recovered in later years, when not only the feathers were sought after, but also ostrich leather, and its meat, which is very tasty, and a major export item. Today, several farms can be visited by tourists, near Oudtshoorn, the center of the ostrich industry.


title: Karoo

text: The first European settlers landed in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, and between 1659 and 1664, made several unsuccessful attempts to penetrate the Great Karoo from the south-west. The Europeans who first entered the Great Karoo did so from the south-east (traveling north from Algoa Bay), which is slightly less arid than the western Karoo. These were the "trekboers" of the mid-1700s, who led a nomadic existence, enduring great hardships in the relentless aridity, the intense heat (such that even their dogs could not walk on the scorching ground and had to be lifted into the overcrowded wagons), and the bitter cold in winter, especially at night. Before that time, the only inhabitants were the Khoe-speaking clans migrating through the area, and !Ui-speaking peoples, who lived in small family groups and, it is believed, remained largely in their own "territories", killing their own game, and gathering bulbs and roots and drinking from a spring or other water source within their territory. Sometimes these territories were very large and the family group moved from one part to the other. Their only domestic animals were dogs. The Ntu-speaking agriculturalists to the east of the Great Karoo did not occupy this arid region due to the scarce rainfall which prevented the farming of cattle.


title: Karoo

text: In 1854, Daniel Halladay invented the multibladed windpump (windmill) in the USA. It was perfected in 1883, and soon South Africa (and elsewhere) produced them in large numbers. These windpumps transformed the Great Karoo, making permanent settlement and stock farming (predominantly sheep) possible over large parts of the Karoo for the first time. Like the Karoo Koppie, the multibladed windpump became an iconic feature of the Great Karoo.


title: Karoo

text: Sheep farming and the fencing off of the land have meant that antelope numbers have dwindled significantly, and with them, the big carnivores. Leopards still occur in the mountains, but lions now only occur in nature reserves, where they have been recently reintroduced into the Great Karoo.


title: Karoo

text: In 1872, construction was started to connect the Cape Colony's coastal railway system with the diamond fields in Kimberley, The new line started in Worcester and entered the Lower Karoo through the Hex River valley, where it followed a course almost midway between the Swartberg Mountains to the south and the Great Escarpment to the north. Along the way, it passed through the quaint Victorian village of Matjiesfontein, with the historic Lord Milner Hotel, which is still operational today. The railway reached this point in 1878, before proceeding to Beaufort West at the foot of the Great Escarpment. From there, it reached the top of the African Plateau near Three Sisters along a valley with such a low gradient that passengers were (and still are) hardly aware that they were ascending the Great Escarpment. From there it continued through the Upper Karoo, to De Aar, and crossed the Orange River at Hopetown, where South Africa’s first diamond, the Eureka Diamond, was found. The Orange River, at this point, forms the local unofficial boundary between the Great Karoo and the Highveld.


title: Karoo

text: The line reached Kimberley in 1885, and has since been extended via Botswana (then Bechuanaland) to reach Zimbabwe and Zambia (when they were still known as South and North Rhodesia), and branch lines have been constructed to Namibia and Port Elizabeth through a hub at De Aar, in the Great Karoo. Further branch lines were later built from points further north to Bloemfontein, Durban, and, of course, to Johannesburg.


title: Karoo

text: During the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, three Republican commando units, reinforced by the sympathizers ("rebels") from the Cape Colony, conducted widespread operations throughout the Karoo. Countless skirmishes took place in the region, with the Calvinia magisterial district, in particular, contributing a significant number of fighters to the Republican cause. Fought both conventionally and as a guerrilla struggle over the Karoo's vast expanses, it was a bloody war of attrition wherein both sides used newly developed technologies to their advantage. Numerous abandoned blockhouses can still be seen at strategic locations, especially along the railway line, throughout the Great Karoo. A prime example still "guards" a bridge over the Buffels River, to the east of the town of Laingsburg, in the Lower Karoo, between Matjiesfontein and Beaufort West.


title: Karoo

text: Recently, nature reserves and game farms have been established in many parts of the Great Karoo, turning what was once regarded as a forbiddingly desolate and unattractive geographical barrier into a tourist destination.


title: Karoo

text: This area was explored by European settlers in the late 17th century, who encountered the Khoisan people as the original inhabitants of this area. The latter called the Swartberg Mountains "kango" meaning "a place rich in water". The Cango Caves in the Swartberg Mountains are named after this Khoisan word.


title: Karoo

text: The Little Karoo, and especially Oudtshoorn, became synonymous with the ostrich-feather industry in the 1880s. The resulting "feather millionaires" built Victorian "Feather Palaces" all over town, using the red rocks belonging to the Enon Conglomerate, and related Kirkwood Formation, to build them. These grand red palaces and other buildings in Oudtshoorn can still be admired today.


title: Karoo

text: A railway line was built to connect Calitzdorp and Oudtshoorn, to Willowmore and from there, via Klipplaat, to Port Elizabeth, from where the ostrich feathers from the Little Karoo’s ostrich farms could be exported to Europe. That line is no longer in use today.


title: Karoo

text: The Swartberg Pass was built, with convict labor, between 1881 and 1888 by Thomas Bain, son of the famous Andrew Geddes Bain, who built Bain's Kloof Pass and many others in the Western Cape. The main motivation for building the pass was to provide an all-weather road connection between the southern Great Karoo, and Oudtshoorn (and from there to the sea). The two alternative roads, through the Meiringspoort and the Seweweekspoort defiles, were subject to periodic flooding, after heavy thunderstorms in the Great Karoo. The Swartberg Pass is not tarred and can be treacherously slippery after rain. It also becomes impassable after heavy snowfalls on the mountain, a not infrequent occurrence in winter.


title: Karoo

text: Rudyard Kipling, in his 1901 poem "Bridge-Guard in the Karroo", evoked the loneliness experienced by blockhouse soldiers at Ketting station on the Dwyka River while guarding the Karoo railway track, a lifeline during the South African War.


title: Figure skating at the 2022 Winter Olympics – Women's singles

text: The women's singles competition in figure skating at the 2022 Winter Olympics was held on 15 February (short program) and 17 February (free skating), at the Capital Indoor Stadium in Haidian District of Beijing. Anna Shcherbakova, representing the Russian Olympic Committee, won the event, and her teammate, Alexandra Trusova, the silver medal. Kaori Sakamoto of Japan won bronze. For all, it was their first individual Olympic medals; Sakamoto had earlier won a medal in the team event.


text: All three medalists from the 2018 Olympics either retired from competition (Evgenia Medvedeva, Kaetlyn Osmond) or had taken a prolonged break from the sport without an official retirement announcement (Alina Zagitova). The 2021–22 season was dominated by Russian skaters, who held the six highest scores prior to the Olympics. Of those six, Kamila Valieva, Anna Shcherbakova, and Alexandra Trusova were selected for the Olympics. Kaori Sakamoto in seventh was the highest non-Russian skater on the list. Valieva dominated the Olympic season, winning every competition she entered and with her lowest international score still over 10 points higher than that of any of her competitors. Her undefeated season coupled with her status as the world record holder in all three segments saw her deemed the heavy favorite to win the Olympics prior to her becoming subject to a doping investigation. With Shcherbakova the 2021 World champion and Trusova the 2021 World bronze medalist, predictions considered a sweep by the ROC the most likely scenario.


text: Valieva won the short program, with Shcherbakova second, Sakamoto third, and Trusova fourth. Trusova won the free skate and became the first woman to land five quadruple jumps in the same program. Valieva and Shcherbakova were the only other competitors to attempt quadruple jumps, and Valieva was the first woman to land a quad at the Olympics just one week earlier, during the team event free skate. Out of her five quads, Trusova landed only two cleanly. Shcherbakova landed two quadruple jumps, both cleanly. Valieva, skating last, fell twice, made a number of other mistakes, and dropped to fourth place overall.


text: On 8 February, a day after the ROC victory in the team event, a positive test result for trimetazidine from the Russian Championships in December for Kamila Valieva of the ROC was released by a Swedish lab, and her participation at the Olympics became subject to a doping investigation. The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled on 14 February that she would not be provisionally suspended and would be allowed to compete in the individual event as planned, still subject to further and ongoing investigation. The decision from the court was made on three grounds: (1) Due to her age, she is a "Protected Person" as per WADA Code, subject to different rules than adult athletes; (2) Athlete did not test positive during the Olympic Games in Beijing; (3) "There were serious issues of untimely notification of the results, ... which impinged upon the Athlete's ability to establish certain legal requirements for her benefit". In its decision, the CAS stated that preventing "the Athlete from competing at the Olympic Games would cause her irreparable harm in these circumstances". As a result, the IOC decided that, should Valieva win a medal, there would be no flower ceremony or medal ceremony held until the investigation into her doping case is over and there is a concrete decision whether or not to strip her of her medals. To allow for the possibility that her results might be disqualified, the IOC asked the ISU to expand the qualifying field for the free skating by one to 25, contingent upon Valieva being one of the top 24 skaters after the short program.


text: On 15 February, after the short program, "The New York Times" reported that Valieva's sample tested positive for an additional two substances, hypoxen and L-Carnitine, which are not on the banned list, in addition to trimetazidine. WADA's filing in Valieva's hearing indicated that her acknowledgement of taking the two permitted substances undercut her testimony that the banned substance was ingested by error. By the end of the Beijing Olympics, a total five athletes were reported for doping violations.


text: In mid-November, WADA requested that CAS take up the review of the Valieva case with an eye towards a 4-year suspension of Valieva, which would exclude her from competition at the next Winter Olympics, and to rescind her first place performance in the team event at the previous Beijing Olympics because, "the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) did not meet a WADA-imposed Nov. 4 deadline to deliver a verdict on Valiyeva's case."


text: The CAS decision to allow Valieva to compete despite her positive test drew backlash across the sporting community and in the media, with some questioning as to whether Russia had been adequately punished for their statewide doping program. While the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the Canadian Olympic Committee blasted the decision as a "disappointment" and "extremely unfortunate", the Russian Olympic Committee vowed to take "comprehensive measures" to "keep the honestly won Olympic gold medal [in the team event]". Condemnation of the CAS decision also came from former and current figure skaters alike on social media, although several of Valieva's teammates defended her. Several American skaters noted parallels with the case of U.S. pairs skater Jessica Calalang, who served an eight-month suspension from competition while under investigation for a positive doping test; Calalang was later absolved of any violations after the substance was concluded to be a metabolite of ingredients in her makeup, but she and her partner missed several key competitions during her suspension, including the 2021 World Figure Skating Championships. Some commenting on the situation suggested that blame should not rest with the 15-year-old Valieva, but rather with the Russian system and the coaches and doctors around her. Due to Valieva being a minor, both the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency have launched investigations into her entourage, including coach Eteri Tutberidze and Russian team doctor Filipp Shvetsky. The Russian government and community remained steadfast in their support for Valieva; the Kremlin first referred to the situation as a "misunderstanding", and later issued the following statement: "We boundlessly and fully support Kamila Valieva and call on everyone to support her. And we say to Kamila: don't hide your face. You are a Russian — perform and defeat everybody!"


text: On 15 February, after the short program, competitors asked about Valieva in the mixed zone largely tried to distance themselves from the situation, indicating that they preferred to focus on their own performances. A few athletes made general references about supporting "clean sport" and a "level playing field". Some expressed regret that no medal ceremony for the team event, and potentially the individual event, would be held; the individual event medal ceremony was eventually held as planned after Valieva placed outside the top three. Valieva herself did not speak with reporters in the mixed zone or attend the press conference for the top three after the short program, where fellow top finishers Anna Shcherbakova and Kaori Sakamoto also declined to comment. IOC spokesman Mark Adams noted that press conferences are not mandatory at the Olympics, and that if Valieva were to medal, they did not expect her to attend that press conference either. Valieva ultimately finished off the podium in fourth; she did not stop in the mixed zone after the free skating.


text: In a press conference the day after the free skating, IOC president Thomas Bach said he was "very, very disturbed" by the "chilling atmosphere" surrounding Valieva as coach Eteri Tutberidze berated her following a mistake-filled performance that dropped her off the podium. Bach also insinuated that her coaches likely played a role in her positive test, saying that "doping is very rarely done alone with the athletes," and that "the ones who have administered this drug in her body, these are the ones who are guilty." The Kremlin responded that "harshness of a coach in high-level sport is key for their athletes to achieve victories" and that Tutberidze's athletes were seeing strong results. Tutberidze herself claimed to be "at a loss from the assessment of our work by the esteemed Mr Bach" in a comment on an Instagram post by fellow ROC coach Alexander Zhulin. Several Western media outlets pointed to the extreme emotional reactions of the three ROC skaters – Shcherbakova (gold) stated that she felt empty inside, Trusova (silver) was seen shouting that she "hated the sport" and pledged to never skate again, and Valieva (fourth) broke down sobbing – as further evidence of the extreme pressure they were all under to deliver results, as well as the abuse they were subjected to from their team.


text: By 9 March 2022, Travis Tygart of the USADA reported that Valieva had not requested that her "B" sample be tested, apparently accepting the results of initial testing and relying on her explanation that the banned substance TMZ belonged to her grandfather and only accidentally contaminated or became mixed into her own use of allowed nutrients and supplements. Tygart further stated that as a minor Valieva could still be either fully exculpated or given a warning concerning her testing positive depending on the extent of findings in the on-going RUSADA investigation of doping. According to Tygart, an adverse finding against her as a first offense could still be assessed as a two year suspension, which is half of the suspension time which could be assessed for adults.


title: Frying pan

text: A frying pan, frypan, or skillet is a flat-bottomed pan used for frying, searing, and browning foods. It is typically in diameter with relatively low sides that flare outwards, a long handle, and no lid. Larger pans may have a small grab handle opposite the main handle. A pan of similar dimensions, but with less flared, more vertical sides and often with a lid, is called a sauté pan. While a sauté pan can be used as a frying pan, it is designed for lower heat cooking.


title: Frying pan

text: Copper frying pans were used in ancient Mesopotamia. Frying pans were also known in ancient Greece where they were called "tagēnon" (Greek: τάγηνον) and Rome, where they were called "patella" or "sartago". The word "pan" derives from the Old English "panna". Before the introduction of the kitchen stove in the mid-19th century, a commonly used cast-iron cooking pan called a 'spider' had a handle and three legs used to stand up in the coals and ashes of the fire. Cooking pots and pans with legless, flat bottoms were designed when cooking stoves became popular; this period of the late 19th


title: Frying pan

text: A versatile pan that combines the best of both the sauté pan and the frying pan has higher, sloping sides that are often slightly curved. This pan is called a "sauteuse" (literally a sauté pan in the female gender), an "evasée" (denoting a pan with sloping sides), or a "fait-tout" (literally "does everything"). Most professional kitchens have several of these utensils in varying sizes.


title: Frying pan

text: A "rappie pan" is a pan used to make rappie pie, an Acadian potato dish. The pan is made from aluminum or stainless steel.


title: Frying pan

text: Traditionally, frying pans were made of cast iron, carbon steel or copper lined with tin, for their different qualities and properties. Copper pans are highly thermally conductive, making them useful for evenly sautéing. However, they are also highly reactive with most foods, so today a large number of copper pans are sold with a tin lining which can be replaced when it wears out. Cast iron pans are used because although they do not conduct heat very evenly, they do retain it quite well, making them useful for searing meats and vegetables. Carbon steel cookware is used because over time it can develop a highly nonstick patina of polymerized oil called seasoning useful for cooking protein that is prone to stick, such as fish and eggs. While all of these materials are still commonly used in professional kitchens, many modern materials have supplanted them in the consumer market. Nowadays, most frying pans are now made from metals such as aluminium or stainless steel. The materials and construction method used in modern frying pans vary greatly and some typical materials include:


title: Frying pan

text: A coating is sometimes applied to the surface of the pan to make it non-stick. Frying pans made from bare cast iron or carbon steel can also gain non-stick properties through seasoning and use.


title: Frying pan

text: A process for bonding Teflon to chemically roughened aluminium was patented in France by Marc Gregoire in 1954. In 1956 he formed a company to market non-stick cookware under the "Tefal" brand name. The durability of the early coatings was initially poor, but improvements in manufacturing have made these products a kitchen standard. The surface is not as tough as metal and the use of metal utensils (e.g. spatulas) can permanently mar the coating and degrade its non-stick property.


title: Frying pan

text: For some cooking preparations a non-stick frying pan is inappropriate, especially for deglazing, where the residue of browning is to be incorporated in a later step such as a pan sauce. Since little or no residue can stick to the surface, the sauce will fail for lack of its primary flavouring agent.


title: Frying pan

text: Non-stick frying pans featuring Teflon coatings may give off toxic fumes, as the coating decomposes when heated beyond approximately . Such temperatures can be reached within minutes on gas or electric ranges using high heat.


title: Frying pan

text: An electric frying pan or electric skillet incorporates an electric heating element into the frying pan itself and so can function independently off of a cooking stove. Accordingly, it has heat-insulated legs for standing on a countertop. (The legs usually attach to handles.) Electric frying pans are common in shapes that are unusual for 'unpowered' frying pans, notably square and rectangular. Most are designed with straighter sides than their stovetop cousins and include a lid. In this way they are a cross between a frying pan and a sauté pan.


title: Frying pan

text: A modern electric skillet has an additional advantage over the stovetop version: heat regulation. The detachable power cord incorporates a thermostatic control for maintaining the desired temperature.


title: Frying pan

text: With the perfection of the thermostatic control, the electric skillet became a popular kitchen appliance. Although it largely has been supplanted by the microwave oven, it is still in use in many kitchens.


title: Joanna Roth

text: Joanna Roth (born Joanna Angelis in 1965) is a Danish-British actress. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and has appeared in film, TV, video games and theatre, in roles such as Ophelia in the film "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead".


title: Joanna Roth

text: She is married to the Scottish actor John Hannah. She appeared with her husband in the BBC One drama series "New Street Law", ITV's "Rebus", the film "Sliding Doors", and onstage at London's Bush Theatre in "A Bright Light Shining". She provided the voice of Aveline Vallen in "Dragon Age II".


title: Medieval Greek

text: Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.


title: Medieval Greek

text: From the 7th century onwards, Greek was the only language of administration and government in the Byzantine Empire. This stage of language is thus described as Byzantine Greek. The study of the Medieval Greek language and literature is a branch of Byzantine studies, the study of the history and culture of the Byzantine Empire.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The beginning of Medieval Greek is occasionally dated back to as early as the 4th century, either to 330 AD, when the political centre of the Roman Empire was moved to Constantinople, or to 395 AD, the division of the empire. However, this approach is rather arbitrary as it is more an assumption of political, as opposed to cultural and linguistic, developments. Indeed, by this time the spoken language, particularly pronunciation, had already shifted towards modern forms.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The conquests of Alexander the Great, and the ensuing Hellenistic period, had caused Greek to spread to peoples throughout Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean, altering the spoken language's pronunciation and structure.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Medieval Greek is the link between this vernacular, known as Koine Greek, and Modern Greek. Though Byzantine Greek literature was still strongly influenced by Attic Greek, it was also influenced by vernacular Koine Greek, which is the language of the New Testament and the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Constantine (the Great) moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople) in 330. The city, though a major imperial residence like other cities such as Trier, Milan and Sirmium, was not officially a capital until 359. Nonetheless, the imperial court resided there and the city was the political centre of the eastern parts of the Roman Empire where Greek was the dominant language. At first, Latin remained the language of both the court and the army. It was used for official documents, but its influence waned. From the beginning of the 6th century, amendments to the law were mostly written in Greek. Furthermore, parts of the Roman "Corpus Iuris Civilis" were gradually translated into Greek. Under the rule of Emperor Heraclius (610–641 AD), who also assumed the Greek title "Basileus" (, 'monarch') in 610, Greek became the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire. This was in spite of the fact that the inhabitants of the empire still considered themselves ('Romans') until its end in 1453, as they saw their State as the perpetuation of Roman rule. Latin continued to be used on the coinage until the ninth century and in certain court ceremonies for even longer.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Despite the absence of reliable demographic figures, it has been estimated that less than one third of the inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire, around eight million people, were native speakers of Greek. The number of those who were able to communicate in Greek may have been far higher. The native Greek speakers consisted of many of the inhabitants of the southern Balkan Peninsula, south of the Jireček Line, and all of the inhabitants of Asia Minor, where the native tongues (Phrygian, Lycian, Lydian, Carian etc.), except Armenian in the east, had become extinct and replaced by Greek by the 5th century.


title: Medieval Greek

text: In the period between 603 and 619, the southern and eastern parts of the empire (Syria, Egypt, North Africa) were occupied by Persian Sassanids and, after being recaptured by Heraclius in the years 622 to 628, were conquered by the Arabs in the course of the Muslim conquests a few years later.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Alexandria, a centre of Greek culture and language, fell to the Arabs in 642. During the seventh and eighth centuries, Greek was gradually replaced by Arabic as an official language in conquered territories such as Egypt, as more people learned Arabic. Thus, the use of Greek declined early on in Syria and Egypt. The invasion of the Slavs into the Balkan Peninsula reduced the area where Greek and Latin was spoken (roughly north of a line from Montenegro to Varna on the Black Sea in Bulgaria). Sicily and parts of Magna Graecia, Cyprus, Asia Minor and more generally Anatolia, parts of the Crimean Peninsula remained Greek-speaking. The southern Balkans which would henceforth be contested between Byzantium and various Slavic kingdoms or empires. The Greek language spoken by one-third of the population of Sicily at the time of the Norman conquest 1060–1090 remained vibrant for more than a century, but slowly died out (as did Arabic) to a deliberate policy of Latinization in language and religion from the mid-1160s.


title: Medieval Greek

text: From the late 11th century onwards, the interior of Anatolia was invaded by Seljuq Turks, who advanced westwards. With the Ottoman conquests of Constantinople in 1453, the Peloponnese in 1459 or 1460, the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, Athens in 1465, and two centuries later the Duchy of Candia in 1669, the Greek language lost its status as a national language until the emergence of modern Greece in the year 1821. Language varieties after 1453 are referred to as Modern Greek.


title: Medieval Greek

text: As early as in the Hellenistic period, there was a tendency towards a state of diglossia between the Attic literary language and the constantly developing vernacular Koine. By late antiquity, the gap had become impossible to ignore. In the Byzantine era, written Greek manifested itself in a whole spectrum of divergent registers, all of which were consciously archaic in comparison with the contemporary spoken vernacular, but in different degrees.


title: Medieval Greek

text: They ranged from a moderately archaic style employed for most every-day writing and based mostly on the written Koine of the Bible and early Christian literature, to a highly artificial learned style, employed by authors with higher literary ambitions and closely imitating the model of classical Attic, in continuation of the movement of Atticism in late antiquity. At the same time, the spoken vernacular language developed on the basis of earlier spoken Koine, and reached a stage that in many ways resembles present-day Modern Greek in terms of grammar and phonology by the turn of the first millennium AD. Written literature reflecting this Demotic Greek begins to appear around 1100.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Among the preserved literature in the Attic literary language, various forms of historiography take a prominent place. They comprise chronicles as well as classicist, contemporary works of historiography, theological documents, and saints' lives. Poetry can be found in the form of hymns and ecclesiastical poetry. Many of the Byzantine emperors were active writers themselves and wrote chronicles or works on the running of the Byzantine state and strategic or philological works.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Furthermore, letters, legal texts, and numerous registers and lists in Medieval Greek exist. Concessions to spoken Greek can be found, for example, in John Malalas's "Chronography" from the 6th century, the "Chronicle" of Theophanes the Confessor (9th century) and the works of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (mid-10th century). These are influenced by the vernacular language of their time in choice of words and idiom, but largely follow the models of written Koine in their morphology and syntax.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The spoken form of Greek was called ("glōssa dēmōdēs" 'vernacular language'), ("haploellēnikē" 'basic Greek'), ("kathōmilēmenē" 'spoken') or ("Rhōmaiïkē" 'Roman language'). Before the 13th century, examples of texts written in vernacular Greek are very rare. They are restricted to isolated passages of popular acclamations, sayings, and particularly common or untranslatable formulations which occasionally made their way into Greek literature. Since the end of the 11th century, vernacular Greek poems from the literary realm of Constantinople are documented.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The Digenes Akritas, a collection of heroic sagas from the 12th century that was later collated in a verse epic, was the first literary work completely written in the vernacular. The Greek vernacular verse epic appeared in the 12th century, around the time of the French romance novel, almost as a backlash to the Attic renaissance during the dynasty of the Komnenoi in works like Psellos's "Chronography" (in the middle of the 11th century) or the "Alexiad", the biography of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos written by his daughter Anna Komnena about a century later. In fifteen-syllable blank verse (versus politicus), the "Digenes Akritas" deals with both ancient and medieval heroic sagas, but also with stories of animals and plants. The "Chronicle of the Morea", a verse chronicle from the 14th century, is unique. It has also been preserved in French, Italian and Aragonese versions, and covers the history of Frankish feudalism on the Peloponnese during the "Latinokratia" of the Principality of Achaea, a crusader state set up after the Fourth Crusade and the 13th century fall of Constantinople.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The earliest evidence of prose vernacular Greek exists in some documents from southern Italy written in the tenth century. Later prose literature consists of statute books, chronicles and fragments of religious, historical and medical works. The dualism of literary language and vernacular was to persist until well into the 20th century, when the Greek language question was decided in favor of the vernacular in 1976.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The persistence until the Middle Ages of a single Greek speaking state, the Byzantine Empire, meant that, unlike Vulgar Latin, Greek did not split into separate languages. However, with the fracturing of the Byzantine state after the turn of the first millennium, newly isolated dialects such as Mariupol Greek, spoken in Crimea, Pontic Greek, spoken along the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor, and Cappadocian, spoken in central Asia Minor, began to diverge. In Griko, a language spoken in the southern Italian exclaves, and in Tsakonian, which is spoken on the Peloponnese, dialects of older origin continue to be used today. Cypriot Greek was already in a literary form in the late Middle Ages, being used in the Assizes of Cyprus and the chronicles of Leontios Makhairas and Georgios Boustronios.


title: Medieval Greek

text: It is assumed that most of the developments leading to the phonology of Modern Greek had either already taken place in Medieval Greek and its Hellenistic period predecessor Koine Greek, or were continuing to develop during this period. Above all, these developments included the establishment of dynamic stress, which had already replaced the tonal system of Ancient Greek during the Hellenistic period. In addition, the vowel system was gradually reduced to five phonemes without any differentiation in vowel length, a process also well begun during the Hellenistic period. Furthermore, Ancient Greek diphthongs became monophthongs.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The Suda, an encyclopedia from the late 10th century, gives some indication of the vowel inventory. Following the antistoichic system, it lists terms alphabetically but arranges similarly pronounced letters side by side. In this way, for indicating homophony, is grouped together with ; and together with ; with , and with . At least in educated speech, the vowel , which had also merged with , likely did not lose lip-rounding and become until the 10th/11th centuries. Up to this point, transliterations into Georgian continue using a different letter for than for , and in the year 1030, Michael the Grammarian could still make fun of the bishop of Philomelion for confusing for . In the 10th century, Georgian transliterations begin using the letter representing () for , in line with the alternative development in certain dialects like Tsakonian, Megaran and South Italian Greek where reverted to . This phenomenon perhaps indirectly indicates that the same original phoneme had merged with in mainstream varieties at roughly the same time (the same documents also transcribe with very sporadically).


title: Medieval Greek

text: In the original closing diphthongs , and , the offglide had developed into a consonantal or early on (possibly through an intermediate stage of and ). Before , turned to ( → , → , → ), and before it was dropped ( → ). Before , it occasionally turned to ( → ).


title: Medieval Greek

text: A regular phenomenon in most dialects is synizesis ("merging" of vowels). In many words with the combinations , , and , the stress shifted to the second vowel, and the first became a glide . Thus: → ('Roman'), → ('nine'), → ('which'), → ('the children'). This accentual shift is already reflected in the metre of the 6th century hymns of Romanos the Melodist. In many cases, the vowel disappeared in the endings and ( → , → , → ). This phenomenon is attested to have begun earlier, in the Hellenistic Koine Greek papyri.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The shift in the consonant system from voiced plosives (), (), () and aspirated voiceless plosives (), (), () to corresponding fricatives ( and , respectively) was already completed during Late Antiquity. However, the original voiced plosives remained as such after nasal consonants, with (), (), (). The velar sounds (, , , , ) were realised as palatal allophones () before front vowels. The fricative , which had been present in Classical Greek, had been lost early on, although it continued to be reflected in spelling through the rough breathing, a diacritic mark added to vowels.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Changes in the phonological system mainly affect consonant clusters that show sandhi processes. In clusters of two different plosives or two different fricatives, there is a tendency for dissimilation such that the first consonant becomes a fricative and/or the second becomes a plosive ultimately favoring a fricative-plosive cluster. But if the first consonant was a fricative and the second consonant was , the first consonant instead became a plosive, favoring a plosive- cluster. Medieval Greek also had cluster voicing harmony favoring the voice of the final plosive or fricative; when the resulting clusters became voiceless, the aforementioned sandhi would further apply. This process of assimilation and sandhi was highly regular and predictable, forming a rule of Medieval Greek phonotactics that would persist into Early Modern Greek. When dialects started deleting unstressed and between two consonants (such as when Myzithras became Mystras), new clusters were formed and similarly assimilated by sandhi; on the other hand it is arguable that the dissimilation of voiceless obstruents occurred before the loss of close vowels, as the clusters resulting from this development do not necessarily undergo the change to [fricative + stop], e.g. as not .


title: Medieval Greek

text: The disappearance of in word-final position, which had begun sporadically in Late Antiquity, became more widespread, excluding certain dialects such as South Italian and Cypriot. The nasals and also disappeared before voiceless fricatives, for example → , → .


title: Medieval Greek

text: A new set of voiced plosives , and developed through voicing of voiceless plosives after nasals. There is some dispute as to when exactly this development took place but apparently it began during the Byzantine period. The graphemes , and for , and can already be found in transcriptions from neighboring languages in Byzantine sources, like in , from ('dervish'). On the other hand, some scholars contend that post-nasal voicing of voiceless plosives began already in the Koine, as interchanges with , , and in this position are found in the papyri. The prenasalized voiced spirants , and were still plosives by this time, causing a merger between , and , which would remain except within educated varieties, where spelling pronunciations did make for segments such as


title: Medieval Greek

text: Many decisive changes between Ancient and Modern Greek were completed by AD. There is a striking reduction of inflectional categories inherited from Indo-European, especially in the verbal system, and a complementary tendency of developing new analytical formations and periphrastic constructions.


title: Medieval Greek

text: In morphology, the inflectional paradigms of declension, conjugation and comparison were regularised through analogy. Thus, in nouns, the Ancient Greek third declension, which showed an unequal number of syllables in the different cases, was adjusted to the regular first and second declension by forming a new nominative form out of the oblique case forms: Ancient Greek → Modern Greek , in analogy to the accusative form . Feminine nouns ending in and formed the nominative according to the accusative , as in → ('hope'), → ('homeland'), and in → ('Greece'). Only a few nouns remained unaffected by this simplification, such as (both nominative and accusative), (genitive).


title: Medieval Greek

text: The Ancient Greek formation of the comparative of adjectives ending in , , which was partly irregular, was gradually replaced by the formation using the more regular suffix , , , : → ('the bigger').


title: Medieval Greek

text: The enclitic genitive forms of the first and second person personal pronoun, as well as the genitive forms of the third person demonstrative pronoun, developed into unstressed enclitic possessive pronouns that were attached to nouns: , , , , , , .


title: Medieval Greek

text: Irregularities in verb inflection were also reduced through analogy. Thus, the contracted verbs ending in , etc., which earlier showed a complex set of vowel alternations, readopted the endings of the regular forms: → ('he loves'). The use of the past tense prefix, known as augment, was gradually limited to regular forms in which the augment was required to carry word stress. Reduplication in the verb stem, which was a feature of the old perfect forms, was gradually abandoned and only retained in antiquated forms. The small ancient Greek class of irregular verbs in disappeared in favour of regular forms ending in ; → ('push'). The auxiliary ('be'), originally part of the same class, adopted a new set of endings modelled on the passive of regular verbs, as in the following examples:


title: Medieval Greek

text: In most cases, the numerous stem variants that appeared in the Ancient Greek system of aspect inflection were reduced to only two basic stem forms, sometimes only one. Thus, in Ancient Greek the stem of the verb ('to take') appears in the variants , , , and . In Medieval Greek, it is reduced to the forms (imperfective or present system) and (perfective or aorist system).


title: Medieval Greek

text: One of the numerous forms that disappeared was the dative. It was replaced in the 10th century by the genitive and the prepositional construction of ('in, to') + accusative. In addition, nearly all the participles and the imperative forms of the 3rd person were lost. The subjunctive was replaced by the construction of subordinate clauses with the conjunctions ('that') and ('so that'). first became and was later shortened to . By the end of the Byzantine era, the construction ('I want that…') + subordinate clause developed into . Eventually, became the Modern Greek future particle , which replaced the old future forms. Ancient formations like the genitive absolute, the accusative and infinitive and nearly all common participle constructions were gradually substituted by the constructions of subordinate clauses and the newly emerged gerund.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The most noticeable grammatical change in comparison to ancient Greek is the almost complete loss of the infinitive, which has been replaced by subordinate clauses with the particle να. Possibly transmitted through Greek, this phenomenon can also be found in the adjacent languages and dialects of the Balkans. Bulgarian and Romanian, for example, are in many respects typologically similar to medieval and present day Greek, although genealogically they are not closely related.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Lexicographic changes in Medieval Greek influenced by Christianity can be found for instance in words like ('messenger') → heavenly messenger → angel) or 'love' → 'altruistic love', which is strictly differentiated from , ('physical love'). In everyday usage, some old Greek stems were replaced, for example, the expression for "wine" where the word ('mixture') replaced the old Greek . The word (meaning 'something you eat with bread') combined with the suffix , which was borrowed from the Latin , became 'fish' ( ), which after apheresis, synizesis and the loss of final became the new Greek and eliminated the Old Greek , which became an acrostic for Jesus Christ and a symbol for Christianity.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Especially at the beginning of the Byzantine Empire, Medieval Greek borrowed numerous words from Latin, among them mainly titles and other terms of the imperial court's life like ('Augustus'), (, 'Prince'), (, 'Master'), (, 'Quaestor'), (, 'official'). In addition, Latin words from everyday life entered the Greek language, for example (, 'hostel', therefore “house”, in Modern Greek), ('saddle'), ('tavern'), (, 'candle'), (, 'oven') and (, 'wine bottle').


title: Medieval Greek

text: Other influences on Medieval Greek arose from contact with neighboring languages and the languages of Venetian, Frankish and Arab conquerors. Some of the loanwords from these languages have been permanently retained in Greek or in its dialects:


title: Medieval Greek

text: Middle Greek used the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet which, until the end of antiquity, were predominantly used as lapidary and majuscule letters and without a space between words and with diacritics.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The first Greek script, a cursive script, developed from quick carving into wax tablets with a slate pencil. This cursive script already showed descenders and ascenders, as well as combinations of letters.


title: Medieval Greek

text: In the third century, the Greek uncial developed under the influence of the Latin script because of the need to write on papyrus with a reed pen. In the Middle Ages, uncial became the main script for the Greek language.


title: Medieval Greek

text: A common feature of the medieval majuscule script like the uncial is an abundance of abbreviations (e.g. for "Christos") and ligatures. Several letters of the uncial ( for , for , for ) were also used as majuscules especially in a sacral context. The lunate sigma was adopted in this form as "" in the Cyrillic script.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The Greek uncial used the interpunct in order to separate sentences for the first time, but there were still no spaces between words.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The Greek minuscule script, which probably emerged from the cursive writing in Syria, appears more and more frequently from the 9th century onwards. It is the first script that regularly uses accents and spiritus, which had already been developed in the 3rd century BC. This very fluent script, with ascenders and descenders and many possible combinations of letters, is the first to use gaps between words. The last forms which developed in the 12th century were Iota subscript and word-final sigma (). The type for Greek majuscules and minuscules that was developed in the 17th century by a printer from the Antwerp printing dynasty, Wetstein, eventually became the norm in modern Greek printing.


title: Medieval Greek

text: As the language of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Middle Greek has, especially with the conversion of the Slavs by the brothers Cyril and Methodius, found entrance into the Slavic languages via the religious sector, in particular to the Old Church Slavonic and over its subsequent varieties, the different Church Slavonic manuscripts, also into the language of the countries with an Orthodox population, thus primarily into Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian and Serbian, as well as on Romanian, sometimes partly through South Slavic intermediates. For this reason, Greek loanwords and neologisms in these languages often correspond to the Byzantine phonology, while they found their way into the languages of Western Europe over Latin mediation in the sound shape of the classical Greek ("cf." vs. "avtomobil," and the differences in Serbo-Croatian).


title: Medieval Greek

text: Some words in Germanic languages, mainly from the religious context, have also been borrowed from Medieval Greek and have found their way into languages like German or English through the Gothic language. These include the word "church" (from 'House of the Lord') via Germanic: , and the German word for Pentecost, (from ‚ 'the fiftieth [day after Easter]').


title: Medieval Greek

text: Byzantine research played an important role in the Greek State, which was refounded in 1832, as the young nation tried to restore its cultural identity through antique and orthodox-medieval traditions. Spyridon Lambros (1851–1919), later Prime Minister of Greece, founded Greek Byzantinology, which was continued by his and Krumbacher's students.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The following texts clearly illustrate the case of diglossia in Byzantine Greek, as they date from roughly the same time but show marked differences in terms of grammar and lexicon, and likely in phonology as well. The first selection is an example of high literary classicizing historiography, while the second is a vernacular poem which is more compromising to ordinary speech.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The first excerpt is from the "Alexiad" of Anna Komnena, recounting the invasion by Bohemond I of Antioch, son of Robert Guiscard, in 1107. The writer employs much ancient vocabulary, influenced by Herodotean Ionic, though post-classical terminology is also used (e.g. , from ). Anna has a strong command of classical morphology and syntax, but again there are occasional 'errors' reflecting interference from the popular language, such as the use of + accusative instead of classical + dative to mean 'in'. As seen in the phonetic transcription, although most major sound changes resulting in the Modern Greek system (including the merger of with ) are assumed complete by this period, learned speech likely resisted the loss of final , aphaeresis and synizesis.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The second excerpt is from the epic of Digenes Akritas (manuscript E), possibly dating originally to the 12th century. This text is one of the earliest examples of Byzantine folk literature, and includes many features in line with developments in the demotic language. The poetic metre adheres to the fully developed Greek 15-syllable political verse. Features of popular speech like synezisis, elision and apheresis are regular, as is recognized in the transcription despite the conservative orthography. Also seen is the simplification of to modern . In morphology, note the use of modern possessive pronouns, the concurrence of classical and modern 3rd person plural endings, the lack of reduplication in perfect passive participles and the addition of ν to the neuter adjective in γλυκύν. In other parts of the poem, the dative case has been almost completely replaced with the genitive and accusative for indirect objects.


title: Medieval Greek

text: In the Byzantine Empire, Ancient and Medieval Greek texts were copied repeatedly; studying these texts was part of Byzantine education. Several collections of transcriptions tried to record the entire body of Greek literature since antiquity. As there had already been extensive exchange with Italian academics since the 14th century, many scholars and a large number of manuscripts found their way to Italy during the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire. Renaissance Italian and Greek humanists set up important collections in Rome, Florence and Venice. The conveyance of Greek by Greek contemporaries also brought about the itacistic tradition of Greek studies in Italy.


title: Medieval Greek

text: The Greek tradition was also taken to Western and Middle Europe in the 16th century by scholars who had studied at Italian universities. It included Byzantine works that mainly had classical Philology, History and Theology but not Medieval Greek language and literature as their objects of research. Hieronymus Wolf (1516–1580) is said to be the "father" of German Byzantism. In France, the first prominent Byzantist was Charles du Fresne (1610–1688). As the Enlightenment saw in Byzantium mainly the decadent, perishing culture of the last days of the empire, the interest in Byzantine research decreased considerably in the 18th century.


title: Medieval Greek

text: It was not until the 19th century that the publication of and research on Medieval Greek sources began to increase rapidly, which was particularly inspired by Philhellenism. Furthermore, the first texts in vernacular Greek were edited. The branch of Byzantinology gradually split from Classical Philology and became an independent field of research. The Bavarian scholar Karl Krumbacher (1856–1909) carried out research in the newly founded state of Greece, and is considered the founder of Medieval and Modern Greek Philology. From 1897 onwards, he held the academic chair of Medieval and Modern Greek at the University of Munich. In the same century Russian Byzantinology evolved from a former connection between the Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Empire.


title: Medieval Greek

text: Byzantinology also plays a large role in the other countries on the Balkan Peninsula, as Byzantine sources are often very important for the history of each individual people. There is, therefore, a long tradition of research, for example in countries like Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. Further centres of Byzantinology can be found in the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy. Today the two most important centres of Byzantinology in German speaking countries are the Institute for Byzantine Studies, Byzantine Art History and the Institute of Modern Greek Language and Literature at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and the Institute of Byzantine Studies and of Modern Greek Language and Literature at the University of Vienna. The International Byzantine Association is the umbrella organization for Byzantine Studies and has its head office in Paris.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: Besides the manga series, Orihime appears in other media, including the anime series, anime films, video games and rock musicals. She has been fairly popular among readers of the manga since her introduction, having ranked within the top 10 or the top 20 in all of the characters popularity polls of the series. Additionally, various pieces of merchandising have been developed based on her appearance such as figurines and key chains. Publications from manga, anime and other media have also commented on her character with most praising her traits and development.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: In the anime series adaptation of "Bleach", Orihime is voiced by Yuki Matsuoka in Japanese. In the English adaptations, she is voiced by Stephanie Sheh. In the 2018 live action film "Bleach", she is portrayed by Japanese actress and singer Erina Mano.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: Along with Ichigo, Orihime has the hardest face to draw according to Kubo. Due to her importance in the manga, Kubo wanted more practice drawing her so that it would be easier to do so. When Kubo was asked to make a cover with a female character during Christmas, Kubo initially thought of using Rukia Kuchiki; However, he later changed to use Orihime as he thought she was more suitable for such a role. She becomes the true female lead for the rest of the "Bleach" franchise after the second anime season/manga arc, which was recognized when her character depth and importance raised drastically after she came back from the Soul Society and started to become a prominent plot device for Ichigo's character development and for the story itself, consequently Orihime was featured along with female leads from other "Weekly Shōnen Jump" series on a special "Shonen Jump" cover. Stephanie Sheh, Orihime's English voice actress, found her to be a "tricky" character as she noted a challenge to find a balance with her voice as although she sometimes seems ditzy, in other times she is very strong.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: Orihime is politely kind. She comes off as naïve and rather clueless, which is at odds with her exceptionally high marks in school. Her cooking style can be described as very bad, disgusting, or more often strange to the point that aside from Rangiku Matsumoto, no one would think it delectable, and is one of the running jokes in the series. Orihime has a tendency to rush into situations without thinking, sometimes leading to embarrassing or even dangerous consequences. She tends to have an overactive imagination and gets carried away thinking of implausible scenarios, such as initially fantasizing a date with Ichigo, later ending into her becoming a boxing champion prior to being shot. Her hair is worn long in honor of the promise Tatsuki Arisawa once made to protect her.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: Orihime experiences most feelings, which leads her to be jealous of the relationship that Ichigo and Rukia Kuchiki share despite her friendship and admiration of both of them. Through her expanding role in the manga, Orihime was happier and goofier at the start of the series, but later arcs deal with her feelings of inadequacy and inner turmoils. Orihime lives by herself in Karakura Town, where the story takes place, and is supported by her distant aunt provided that she continuously obtain good marks in school, which she does. She and her brother Sora were raised by parents who treated them poorly. When Sora turned eighteen, he ran away with Orihime, who was three years old, and raised her since. For nine years, the siblings lived in harmony, until Sora died in a car accident.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: Orihime first appears in "Bleach" pilot chapter that Kubo submitted to "Weekly Shōnen Jump". She is a teenager who attends Karakura High School and Ichigo's friend. After Ichigo gains the powers of a Soul Reaper, his interactions with Orihime begin to have unforeseen side effects. Orihime become spiritually aware after being saved by Ichigo from Acidwire, her late brother turned into a hollow. The hollow attacks Karakura High School, but Orihime uses her own power "Shun Shun Rikka" to save Tatsuki Arisawa. After Rukia Kuchiki is taken back to the Soul Society to be executed, Orihime joins Ichigo with Uryū Ishida, Yasutora Sado and Yoruichi Shihoin, in an effort to save her. Upon arriving there, their group is split up, and Orihime wanders the city with Uryū. Later on, Orihime is captured by Makizō Aramaki, a Soul Reaper of the 11th division, but is later freed by captain Kenpachi Zaraki. After Rukia is saved by Ichigo, the group returns to the human world.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: Orihime joins the others when they deal with the Bount in anime-only episodes. Afterwards, arrancar begin to invade Karakura Town. During a battle with the Espada Yammy, the attack component of Orihime's "Shun Shun Rikka" is destroyed, making her not helping in the next battles. After sitting on the sidelines for the second arrancar invasion, Orihime has Tsubaki restored by Hachigen Ushōda, and Orihime goes to the Soul Society to train for the next attack. While traveling between the two realms, she meets Ulquiorra Cifer, who threatens to kill Ichigo and her friends, unless she agrees to go to Hueco Mundo. Orihime leaves and heads to Hueco Mundo. There, Orihime meets Sōsuke Aizen, a former Soul Reaper and current leader of the Arrancar. Aizen explains that he intends to use Orihime's "Shun Shun Rikka" to restore the , though she decides to use her powers to destroy the Orb instead. Before she can act on her plans, Ichigo and a group of others arrive in Hueco Mundo to save her. When Ichigo is defeated while facing Ulquiorra, Grimmjow Jeagerjaques, wanting to battle Ichigo at full strength, frees Orihime from her confinements so that she can heal him. Ichigo battles with Grimmjow and ultimately claims victory. They are then attacked by Nnoitora Jiruga, but after Nnoitora's death at the hands of Kenpachi, Orihime is captured once again. Ichigo rushes to her location, and engages Ulquiorra in battle, but is once again defeated. During the aftermath, she discovers that Ichigo is transformed into a new hollow and he mortally hurts Ulquiorra. Ulquiorra starts to turn into ashes as he asks Orihime if she is afraid of him. Orihime, after saying that he is not frightening, tries to reach his hand but Ulquiorra finally disappears. As Ichigo returns to the world of the living, Orihime remains behind to heal Uryū.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: After Aizen's arrest, Orihime spends her normal life, until Uryū is attacked by a human with supernatural powers. It turns out that Tsukishima attacked Uryū, and his subordinate Shishigawara, and Tsukishima stabs her with his Fullbring before leaving. Later, it is revealed that Tsukishima's power has altered her memories. Later, Orihime and her friends went to Hueco Mundo to fight off the Wandenreich, a group of Quincys seeking to destroy the Soul Society led by their leader Yhwach. Orihime and the others fight them off and liberate Hueco Mundo from one of the Wandenreich's high-ranked officers Quilge Opie. Later, Ichigo finds out that the Wandenreich are attacking the Soul Society. When Ichigo gets overwhelmed, Orihime saves him. Ten years after the war, Orihime marries Ichigo and has a son, Kazui.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: Her character has gained additional popularity even among non-fans thanks to a short looped animation of Orihime twirling a leek (specifically, a "negi", or Welsh onion) played to "Ievan Polkka". Known as the Loituma Girl, the five frames used in the flash cartoon were taken from the second episode in the anime. Orihime appears in the "", "" and "", albeit in a minor role. She also appears in the "Bleach" video games such as "" as a playable character. Orihime also stars alongside Rukia Kuchiki in the "Bleach Beat Collection Season 2" with solo song "La La La" and duet song "Holy Fight." In the 2018 live action film "Bleach", Orihime is played by Japanese actress and singer Erina Mano.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: At the first Seiyu Awards in March 2007, Yuki Matsuoka was one of the winners in the category "Best Actresses in supporting roles" for her role as Orihime. The character of Orihime has been well received by readers from the manga, appearing at No. 5 in the first characters popularity poll. She did not appear in the top ten from the second (having ranked 12th), but returned in the two followings; in the 3rd poll she ranked 10th, and was 8th in the most recent, surpassing Izuru Kira by 123 votes. Various types of merchandising have been released based on Orihime's character such as plush, key chains and figurines. Pins based on her hair clips have also been released for cosplaying.


title: Orihime Inoue

text: Various publications for manga, anime and other media have commented on Orihime's character, adding praise to her traits and development. Mania Entertainment writer Jarred Pine liked Orihime's development in the first volume of the manga as her encounter with the hollow from her brother added "more dimension" to her character rather than her portray of a "big-breasted bimbo" in which she was initially introduced. Although Carlo Santos from Anime News Network (ANN) found her character to be stereotypical due to the way she uses her powers, he noted that (like each character) she was very interesting due to the personality she has. D. F. Smith from IGN complained on Orihime's appearances when she joins her friends to rescue Rukia Kuchiki since most of them were only comical and they were very repetitive. Stephanie Sheh was praised as one of the best voice actors from Viz Media's dub by Carl Kimlinger from ANN. Carlos Alexandre from popcultureshock.com also praised Sheh's work, noting that she makes a good interpretation from Orihime's character. In an Anime News Network poll, Orihime was voted as the fourth worst cook in anime.


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: LSD: Dream Emulator is a 1998 exploration game by Asmik Ace Entertainment that released for the PlayStation. In "LSD", the player explores surreal environments without any objective. The player can only move and touch objects that will warp them to another setting. The game was conceived by Japanese artist Osamu Sato, who rejected the idea of games, and wanted to use the PlayStation as a medium for creating contemporary art. The game's concept is based on a dream diary kept by an Asmik Ace employee for over a decade.


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: The game received a limited release in Japan, alongside a soundtrack and a book composed of excerpts from the dream diary. "LSD" quickly fell into obscurity, but in years since has experienced a resurgence in popularity due to its eccentricity being an engaging point of discussion for humor blogs and Let's Play commentators. The game was also released on the Japanese PlayStation Store in 2010. Critics have praised its whimsical qualities, with it being cited as one of the most experimental video games of all time.


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: "LSD: Dream Emulator" is an exploration game that has been described as a "playable dream" in which the player explores surrealistic environments without any overarching goals. Gameplay takes place in a first-person perspective in a 3D environment with the player's control limited to moving frontward and backward, turning, strafing, running, and looking behind. The game is played in levels or "dreams" lasting up to ten minutes. The player begins each dream in a random area in which they can begin exploring. By walking into any object or walking through certain tunnels, the player will be transported to another setting. "LSD" has a set of several static and defined environments to explore including a Japanese village, a field, a city, houses, and a factory, among others. While the environments are static, the default textures are sometimes swapped and they may also be populated with random objects, animals, and characters roaming about to add variety. Each dream ends after ten minutes in which the character wakes up, or ends early if the player interacts with certain objects or dies.


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: After each dream, one day passes in the game, and the dream the player just experienced is marked on a graph. The graph rates dreams in relation to being an "Upper", "Downer", "Static", or "Dynamic" dream. As a player plays through more and more dreams, the game adds more variety to the dreams by changing textures more often. This results in the environments becoming more surreal and psychedelic over time. Sometimes when starting a new dream, a video is played instead of a playable dream. After a number of in-game days, a "flashback" option appears on the main menu which allows the player to experience an abbreviated version of the last dream they played. There is a humanoid figure, also known as the Gray or Shadow Man, that may appear in some dreams that, if touched by the player, prevents them from using the flashback option and undoes any progress made from that dream.


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: "LSD: Dream Emulator" was conceived by Osamu Sato, a Japanese multimedia artist. Sato started his art career in photography and writing music in the 1980s, before turning to digital graphic design and computer art by the 1990s. In the 1990s, he began experimenting with CD-ROM technology, creating animated 3D videos with a dimension of interactivity. Although these projects resembled video games, Sato's intent was not to create games but to use game platforms as a means of creating contemporary works of art. Sato's first such project was funded by Sony Music Entertainment Japan and released in 1994, titled "". It was released in Japan and the United States. Because "Eastern Mind" was released in the United States and received some awards, Sato was able to source funding for his next project which would become "LSD".


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: Sato still rejected the idea of video games, and wanted to use the PlayStation game console as a medium for creating art and music. He chose the PlayStation as a platform because he felt Sony was already embracing elaborate concepts while he felt Sega and Nintendo had greater reputations as toy companies. Sato got the idea for "LSD" after playing racing games. He found racing games difficult and boring since he was not a skilled player, and so he imagined the possibilities of smashing the car into a wall and transporting the player to another dimension. He thought it would be more enjoyable for players like him that were unskilled at other games. From there, he got the idea of creating an imaginary world with the same irrationality and easily forgettable nature as dreams. He did not give the game any objectives because, according to him, they are not essential in video games because even natural human existence cannot be reduced to simple objectives. For inspiration, Sato pulled ideas from a dream diary written by Hiroko Nishikawa, a game designer at Asmik Ace Entertainment, who had been writing in the diary for about a decade.


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: As Sato is also a musician, he composed the game's soundtrack using samples to create around 500 musical patterns. He felt this approach more closely resembled the chaos of a dream state in contrast to full drawn-out melodies. He was particularly influenced from music coming out of England's Warp record label. Initially he was going to include more pentatonic scales and melodies to give the game an Asian flair, but he came to realize this was not necessary after seeing the international success of Japanese producers like Ken Ishii, who was later featured on a remix soundtrack featuring some of the game's music. The title "LSD" is a reference to the drug of the same name, lysergic acid diethylamide, in a bid to attract the hippie and psychedelic subcultures. The acronym was not given any single interpretation in the game. Instead, there were many interpretations in the game such as "in Life, the Sensuous Dream" and "in Limbo, the Silent Dream". Sato felt this represented the chaos and confusion of dreams.


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: The game was released in Japan on October 22, 1998. Sato had hoped for an American release as with "Eastern Mind", but he had no further say in localization. "LSD" sold few copies and now is rare to find on secondary markets, selling for high prices when it becomes listed for sale. It was re-released on the Japanese PlayStation Store on August 11, 2010. "LSD" was released as a standalone game and in a limited edition set which came with a bonus CD titled ""Lucy in the Sky with Dynamites"" and a book called ""Lovely Sweet Dream"". The CD contains about an hour of acid techno music and the book is composed of excerpts from Nishikawa's dream diary. The book has English translations of many dreams and illustrations provided by a wide variety of artists. Sato was adamant about releasing a special soundtrack, so a double-disc soundtrack compilation titled "LSD and Remixes" was issued alongside the game. It features remixes by Ken Ishii, Jimi Tenor, µ-Ziq, and Morgan Geist, among others.


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: "LSD: Dream Emulator" quickly fell into obscurity after release due to its limited availability and the eccentric nature of its content, but it gained an avid cult following in subsequent years. The cause of its growing interest among Western audiences years after its release is a mystery to Sato. "Motherboard" wrote that its popularity is due to the internet, primarily from appearances on humor blogs like Cracked.com and YouTube Let's Play video curators who feed off the game's quirky qualities. "Hardcore Gaming 101" concluded that the popularity of "LSD" is a testament to the consumer demand for hallucinogenic and experimental games. Enough people contacted Sony about "LSD" that they re-released it on the Japanese PlayStation Network in 2010, generating even more interest. Sato has noticed young audiences visiting his art exhibits because they heard about him due to "LSD" online popularity. English indie rock band Alt-J received permission from Sato directly to use a screenshot from "LSD" for the cover art of their studio album, "Relaxer" (2017). In 2011, a fan began developing an unofficial remake made in the Unity engine for personal computers, with a public alpha version being made available in 2014.


title: LSD: Dream Emulator

text: Regarding the quality of the game itself, "Kill Screen" called "LSD" "one of the most unnerving and unpredictable weird video games ever made." "Hardcore Gaming 101" said "there has never been another video game that so effectively conferred the feeling of an actual dream," and continued saying that the game is somewhat dated but is still worth experiencing. They compared the game to the comic series "Little Nemo" and "The Sandman", the film "Dreams", and "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" as a work of art designed to emulate dreams. Red Bull Music Academy called it one of the most "experimental titles" in all of gaming. An English fan translation was released in 2020.


title: Na. Muthukumar

text: Nagarajan Muthukumar (12 July 1975 – 14 August 2016) was a Tamil poet, lyricist, and author. Best known for his Tamil language film songs, he received the most Filmfare Awards for Best Lyricist in Tamil and was a two-time recipient of the National Film Award for Best Lyrics for his works in "Thanga Meenkal" (2013) and "Saivam" (2014).


title: Na. Muthukumar

text: Muthukumar grew up in Kannikapuram village in Kancheepuram, India in a middle-class family. He has a brother Ramesh Kumar. At the age of six and half, he lost his mother. At a young age, he acquired an interest in reading.


title: Na. Muthukumar

text: He began his career working under Balu Mahendra for four years. He was later offered to write lyrics in the film "Veera Nadai", directed by Seeman. He has been credited as a dialogue writer in a few films, including "Kireedam" (2007) and "Vaaranam Aayiram" (2008). His last movie as lyricist is "Sarvam Thaala Mayam" with A.R.Rahman.


title: Na. Muthukumar

text: Na. Muthukumar was born at Kannikapuram, Kancheepuram on 12 July 1975. He did his graduation in Physics at Kancheepuram Pachaippa college. He pursued his master's degree in Tamil at Chennai Pachaippa college. With the aim of becoming a director, he joined as an assistant director to the legendary Balumahendra. His Poem 'Thoor' took him to great heights.


title: Na. Muthukumar

text: Muthukumar, who had been suffering from jaundice for a long time, died on the morning of 14 August 2016, at his Chennai residence of cardiac arrest. He is survived by his wife, son and daughter.


title: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

text: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys is the fifth studio album by English rock band Traffic, released in 1971. The album was Traffic's most successful in the United States, reaching number 7 on the "Billboard" 200 and becoming their only platinum-certified album there, indicating sales in excess of one million. However, it failed to chart in the United Kingdom. The album features the minor hit "Rock & Roll Stew" and the title track, which received heavy FM airplay.


title: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

text: It was Traffic's first studio album to feature percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, and the only studio appearance of drummer Jim Gordon and bassist Ric Grech. Grech had previously worked with Traffic singer/multi-instrumentalist Steve Winwood in the short-lived supergroup Blind Faith. This is the only Traffic album to feature two lead vocals by Jim Capaldi ("Light Up or Leave Me Alone" and "Rock & Roll Stew"). His only other lead vocal on a Traffic album was "Dealer" from "Mr. Fantasy" (1967).


title: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

text: As with other Traffic albums, "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" featured varied influences, including jazz, folk music and Classical. The name of the album's title track was suggested by the actor Michael J. Pollard.


title: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

text: The LP's front cover is notable for its top right and bottom left corners being clipped, giving the illusion of a three-dimensional cube. This effect would repeated on their next album, "Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory". On original pressings of the UK and some European versions, the title of both the album and song are shown as 'The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys' (with a hyphen) on the record labels.


title: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

text: Critical retrospectives on the album are generally positive. AllMusic was overwhelmingly approving in its assessment, praising the variety brought by the non-Winwood/Capaldi compositions and the power of the lengthy title track, and claiming the album "marked the commercial and artistic apex of the second coming of Traffic". In addition, Robert Christgau commented on the band's growth from previous efforts, stating that while the group is "devoid of intellectual thrust," they're "onto something," and "when it works, it suggests a nice paradox—relaxed and exciting at the same time." Pop Matters offered yet another viewpoint, calling it "an album that's easy to listen to over and over, but one that seldom shows up on 'best of' lists." It commented that most of the songs are highly underrated and require multiple listens to appreciate. It was voted number 625 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums 3rd Edition (2000).


title: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

text: The album was certified gold less than a year after its release in the United States, and eventually certified platinum in 1996. It was remastered and reissued with one bonus track on 19 March 2002.


title: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

text: The first six songs as listed here are the track order as originally released on LP in the US and many parts of the world. Both LP and CD pressings exist with “Light Up Or Leave Me Alone” as the fifth track of the album instead of the third. (Awaiting confirmation of when the alternate track order first appeared in these formats.)


title: The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

text: "Note: This is different from the "Rock & Roll Stew Part 1" and "Part 2" recordings on the single. It is a previously unreleased version which is the most complete studio performance of the song. The album version fades earlier than this version. Part 1 on the single is an edit (with shortened instrumental break) of the album version. Part 2 (side B of the single) fades in at a point past the album version's fadeout. This is also the version of "Rock & Roll Stew" that appears on the Gold compilation."