Boxing Day

Boxing Day is a public holiday observed in many Commonwealth countries on 26 December. In many European countries it is also a holiday, called St. Stephen's Day or the Second Day of Christmas. Depending on its origin, it may have traditionally been strictly defined as the first weekday after Christmas [1]. However, in recent years Boxing Day has been almost universally accepted as 26 December [2], although its associated public holiday may fall on a different day.
Boxing Day is often celebrated by giving gifts and donations to the poor and needy.
In some Commonwealth countries, fixed-date holidays falling on Saturday or Sunday are often observed on the next weekday, so if Boxing Day falls on a Saturday then Monday 28 December is a public holiday; while, if Christmas Day is a Saturday then both Monday 27 December and Tuesday 28 December will be public holidays.

There is great dispute over the true origins of Boxing Day. The more common stories include:
Centuries ago, merchants would present their servants food and fruits as a form of Yuletide tip. Naturally, the gifts of food and fruit were packed in boxes, hence the term "Boxing Day".
In feudal times, Christmas was a reason for a gathering of extended families. All the serfs would gather their families in the manor of their lord, which made it easier for the lord of the estate to hand out annual stipends to the serfs. After all the Christmas parties on December 26, the lord of the estate would give practical goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land. Each family would get a box full of such goods the day after Christmas. Under this explanation, there was nothing voluntary about this transaction; the lord of the manor was obliged to supply these goods. Because of the boxes being given out, the day was called Boxing Day.
In Britain many years ago, it was common practice for the servants to carry boxes to their employers when they arrived for their day's work on the day after Christmas (December 25). Their employers would then put coins in the boxes as special end-of-year gifts. This can be compared with the modern day concept of Christmas bonuses. The servants carried boxes for the coins, hence the name Boxing Day.
In churches, it was traditional to open the church's donation box on Christmas day, and the money in the donation box was to be distributed to the poorer or lower class citizens on the next day. In this case, the "box" in "Boxing Day" comes from that one gigantic lockbox in which the donations were left.
In Britain because many servants had to work for their employers on Christmas day they would instead open their presents (i.e., boxes) the next day, which therefore became known as Boxing Day.

Boxing Day in the UK is traditionally a day for sporting activity, originally fox hunting, but in modern times football and horseracing.
In Canada, and indeed any other country that celebrates it, Boxing Day is also observed as a public holiday, and is a day when stores sell their excess Christmas inventory at significantly reduced prices. Boxing Day has become so important for retailers that they often extend it into a "Boxing Week". This occurs similarly in Australia and New Zealand.
In Australia, a test match starting on December 26 is called the Boxing Day Test Match, and is played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground before the largest crowd of the summer.

The Cuban Missle Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis involved the Soviet Union and the United States regarding the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The period of greatest danger started on October 16, 1962, when U.S. reconnaissance was shown to U.S. President John F. Kennedy which revealed evidence for Soviet nuclear missile installations on the island, and lasted for 13 days until October 28, 1962, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced that the installations would be dismantled. The Cuban Missile Crisis is regarded as the one moment when the Cold War came closest to escalating into a nuclear war. Russians refer to the event as the "Caribbean Crisis," while Cubans refer to it as the "October Crisis."

In 1961, the U.S. started deploying 15 Jupiter IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missiles) nuclear missiles near İzmir, Turkey, which directly threatened cities in the western sections of the Soviet Union.Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had publicly expressed his anger at the Turkish deployment, and regarded the missiles as a personal affront. The deployment of missiles in Cuba — the first time Soviet missiles were moved outside the USSR — is commonly seen as Khrushchev's direct response to the Turkish missiles.

Soviet Medium-Range Ballistic Missiles on Cuban soil, with a range of 2,000 km (1,200 statute miles), could threaten Washington, DC and around half of the U.S.'s SAC bases (of nuclear-armed bombers), with a flight time of under twenty minutes. In addition, the U.S.'s radar warning systems oriented toward the USSR would have provided little warning of a launch from Cuba.

Khrushchev devised the deployment plan in May of 1962, and by late July over sixty Soviet ships were en route to Cuba, some of them already carrying military material. John McCone, director of the CIA, warned President Kennedy that some of the ships were probably carrying missiles; however, John and Robert Kennedy, Dean Rusk, and Robert McNamara concluded that the Soviets would not try such a thing.

With the news of the confirmed photographic evidence of Soviet missile bases in Cuba, President Kennedy convened a special group of senior advisers to meet secretly at the White House. This group later became known as the ExComm, or Executive Committee of the National Security Council. From the morning of October 16 this group met frequently to devise a response to the threat. An immediate bombing strike was dismissed early on, as was a potentially time-consuming appeal to the United Nations. They were eventually able to put out the possibility of diplomacy, narrowing the choice down to a naval blockade and an ultimatum, or full-scale invasion. A blockade was finally chosen, although there were a number of hawks (notably Paul Nitze, and Generals Curtis LeMay and Maxwell Taylor) who kept pushing for tougher action. An invasion was planned, and troops were assembled in Florida.

However US intelligence was flawed: they believed Soviet and Cuban troop numbers on Cuba to be around 10,000 and 100,000, when they were in fact around 43,000 and 270,000 respectively [3]. Also, they were unaware that 12 kiloton-range nuclear warheads had already been delivered to the island and mounted on FROG-3 "Luna" short-range artillery rockets, which could be launched on the authority of the Soviet commander on the island, General Pliyev, [4] in the event of an invasion. Though they posed no threat to the continental US, an invasion would probably have invoked a nuclear strike against the invading force, with catastrophic results.

There were a number of issues with the naval blockade. There was legality - as Fidel Castro noted, there was nothing illegal about the missile installations; they were certainly a threat to the U.S., but similar missiles aimed at the U.S.S.R. were in place in Europe (sixty Thor IRBMs in four squadrons near Nottingham, in the United Kingdom; thirty Jupiter IRBMs in two squadrons near Gioia del Colle, Italy; and fifteen Jupiter IRBMs in one squadron near İzmir, Turkey). There was concern of the Soviet's reaction to the blockade; it might turn into escalating retaliation.

Kennedy spoke to the American public, and to the Soviet government, in a televised address on October 22. He confirmed the presence of the missiles in Cuba and announced the naval blockade as a quarantine zone of 500 nautical miles (926 km) around the Cuban coast. He warned that the military was "prepared for any eventualities", and condemned the Soviet Union for "secrecy and deception". The U.S. was surprised at the solid support from its European allies, particularly from the notoriously difficult President Charles de Gaulle of France. Nevertheless, Britain's prime minister Macmillan, as well as much of the international community, did not understand why a diplomatic solution was not considered.The case was conclusively proved on October 25 at an emergency session of the UN Security Council. U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson attempted to force an answer from Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin as to the existence of the weapons, famously demanding, "Don't wait for the translation!" Upon Zorin's refusal, Stevenson produced photographs taken by U.S. surveillance aircraft showing the missile installations in Cuba.

Khrushchev sent letters to Kennedy on October 23 and 24 claiming the deterrent nature of the missiles in Cuba and the peaceful intentions of the Soviet Union; however, the Soviets had delivered two different deals to the United States government. On October 26, they offered to withdraw the missiles in return for a U.S. guarantee not to invade Cuba or support any invasion. The second deal was broadcast on public radio on October 27, calling for the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey in addition to the demands of the 26th. The crisis peaked on October 27, when a U-2 (piloted by Rudolph Anderson) was shot down over Cuba and another U-2 flight over Russia was almost intercepted when it strayed over Siberia, after Curtis LeMay (U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff) had neglected to enforce Presidential orders to suspend all overflights. At the same time, Soviet merchant ships were nearing the quarantine zone. Kennedy responded by publicly accepting the first deal and sending Robert Kennedy to the Soviet embassy to accept the second in private that the fifteen Jupiter missiles near İzmir, Turkey would be removed. The Soviet ships turned back and on October 28, Khrushchev announced that he had ordered the removal of the Soviet missiles in Cuba. The decision prompted then Secretary of State Dean Rusk to comment, "We are eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked."

The Power of Attorney

Power of attorney

A power of attorney or letter of attorney in common law systems or mandate in civil law systems is an authorization to act on someone else's behalf in a legal or business matter. The person authorizing the other to act is the "principal" or "grantor (of the power)", and the one authorized to act is the "agent" or "attorney-in-fact" [AIF]. The attorney-in-fact acts "in the principal's name" -- for example, by signing the principal's name to documents.

Attorney-in-fact

As one kind of agent, an attorney-in-fact is a fiduciary for the principal, so the law requires an attorney-in-fact to be completely honest with and loyal to the principal in their dealings with each other. If the attorney-in-fact is being paid to act for the principal, the contract is a separate matter from the power of attorney itself, so if that contract is in writing, it is a separate document, kept private between them, whereas the power of attorney is intended to be shown to various other people. The term "attorney-in-fact" should not be confused with the term "Attorney at law." An attorney-at-law is a lawyer -- someone licensed to practice law in a particular jurisdiction.

Oral and written powers of attorney

The power of attorney (often called "POA" for short) may be verbal—such as asking someone else to sign your name on a cheque because your arm is broken—or may be in writing. Many institutions, such as hospitals, banks and, in the United States, the Internal Revenue Service, require a power of attorney to be in writing before they will honor it, and they usually want to keep an original for their records.

Kinds of power of attorney

A power of attorney may be "special" or "limited" to one specified act or type of act, or it may be "general," and whatever it defines as its scope is what a court will enforce as being its scope. (It may also be limited as to time.) Under the common law, a power of attorney becomes ineffective if its grantor dies or becomes "incapacitated," meaning unable to grant such a power, because of physical injury or mental illness, for example unless the grantor (or principal) specifies that the power of attorney will continue to be effective even if the grantor becomes incapacitated (but any such power ends when the grantor dies). This type of power of attorney is called a "durable power of attorney".

In some jurisdictions such a durable power of attorney can also function as a "living will", which can be used to appoint someone to make health-care decisions for the grantor, up to and including "pulling the plug" on machines keeping them clinically alive. New York State has enacted a "Health Care Proxy" law that requires a separate document be prepared appointing one as your health care agent. In some U.S. states and other jurisdictions it is possible to enact a springing power of attorney; i.e., a power that only takes effect after incapacitation of the grantor or some other definite future act or circumstance. After such incapacitation the power is identical to a durable power, but, unlike a durable power, cannot be invoked before the incapacity.

This is often used to allow a spouse or family member to manage the grantor's affairs in case illness or injury makes him unable to act, while retaining the power for himself before the incapacity occurs. Unless the power of attorney has been made "irrevocable" (by its own terms or by some legal principle), the grantor may revoke the power of attorney by telling the attorney in fact it is revoked; however, if the principal does not inform third parties and it is reasonable that the third parties could rely upon the power of attorney being in force, the principal may still be bound by the acts of the agent, though the agent may also be liable for such unauthorized acts.

Many standardized forms are available (usually for free) for various kinds of powers of attorney, and many organizations provide them for their clients, customers, patients, employees, or members. In some states statutory power of attorney forms are available as some individuals have used powers of attorney to unscrupulously waste the assets of vulnerable individuals such as the elderly.

Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian trader and explorer who, together with his father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo, was one of the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China (which he called Cathay) and visited the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan). His travels are written down in Il Milione ("The Million" or The Travels of Marco Polo).

In 1264, Nicolò and Maffio joined up with an embassy sent by the Ilkhan Hulagu to his brother, the Grand Khan Kublai. In 1266, they reached the seat of the Grand Khan in the Mongol capital Khanbaliq, now known as Beijing, China.

In his book, Il Milione, Marco explains how Kublai officially received the Polos and sent them back — with a Mongol named Koeketei as an ambassador to the Pope.Maffeo and Niccolò Polo set out on a second journey with the Pope's response to Kublai Khan, in 1271. This time Niccolò took his son Marco.

When Marco Polo arrived at Kublai Khan's court he became a favorite of the Khan and was employed for 17 years.

On their return from China in 1295, the family settled in Venice where they became a sensation and attracted crowds of listeners who had difficulties in believing their reports of distant China. According to a late tradition, since they did not believe him, Marco Polo invited them all to dinner one night during which the Polos dressed in the simple clothes of a peasant in China. Shortly before the crowds ate, the Polos opened their pockets to reveal hundreds of rubies and other jewels which they had received in Asia. Though they were much impressed, the people of Venice still doubted the Polos.

His book, Il Milione (the title comes from either "The Million", then considered a gigantic number, or from Polo's family nickname Emilione), was written in Old French and entitled Le divisament dou monde ("The description of the world"). The book was soon translated into many European languages and is known in English as The Travels of Marco Polo. The original is lost and there are now several often-conflicting versions of the translations. The book became an instant success — quite an achievement in a time when printing was not known in Europe.

In recent times, while most historians believe Marco Polo did reach China, some have proposed he did not get that far and only retold information he had heard from others. Those skeptics point out that among other omissions, his account fails to mention Chinese writing, chopsticks, tea, foot binding or the Great Wall (although in the last case this should not be surprising given that the wall was not built at its present location until the Ming Dynasty).

On the other hand, Marco describes other aspects of Far Eastern life in much detail: paper money, the Grand Canal, the structure of a Mongol army, tigers, the Imperial postal system. He also refers to Japan by its Chinese name "Zipang" or Cipangu. This is usually considered the first mention of Japan in Western literature. However, it is possible that Marco heard of these things from Arab silk road traders.

Don Quixote

is a novel by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in 1605, it is one of the earliest written novels in a modern European language and is considered by some to be the finest book in the Spanish language. Don Quixote is almost universally accepted to be the emblematic work of Spanish literature.
The adjective "quixotic", at present meaning "idealistic and impractical", derives from the protagonist's name, and the expressions "tilting at windmills" and "fighting windmills" come from this story.
The novel actually consists of two parts: the first, titled El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, was published in 1605 (off Juan de la Cuesta's printing press in Madrid on December 20, 1604, and made available to the public on January 16, 1605) and the second, Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero Don Quixote de la Mancha, in 1615 (a year before the author's death). In 1614, between the first and second parts, a fake Don Quixote sequel was published by somebody using the pen name Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. French Don Quixote specialist Dominique Aubier suspects seriously Lope de Vega of being the author of that literary jest. For this reason, Part II contains several references to an imposter, whom Quixote rails against and Part II ends with the death of Don Quixote (so no imposter could experiment again with Cervantes's character).
The plot covers the journeys and adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Alonso Quijano is an ordinary Spaniard (a hidalgo, the lowest rank of the Spanish nobility) who is obsessed with stories of knights errant (libros de caballerías), especially those written by Feliciano de Silva. His friends and family think he is crazy when he decides to take the name of Don Quixote de la Mancha and become a knight errant himself.
Don Quixote is visibly crazy. He believes ordinary inns to be enchanted castles, and their peasant girls to be beautiful princesses. He mistakes windmills for oppressive giants sent by evil enchanters. He imagines a neighboring peasant, famous for her skill at salting pork, to be Dulcinea del Toboso, the beautiful maiden to whom he has pledged love and fidelity.
Sancho Panza, his simple squire, believes his master to be a bit crazy. In particular, he knows that there is "really" no Dulcinea, but he plays along, hoping to get rich. He and Quixote agree for instance that because Dulcinea is not as pretty nor does she smell as good as she should, she "must have been enchanted", and from that point on the mission is to disenchant her.

Both master and squire undergo complex change and development throughout the story, and each character takes on attributes of the other as the novel goes on. At the end of the second book, Quixote decides on his deathbed that his actions have been madness. Sancho begs him not to give up, but to no avail. He burns all of his books of knight-errantry save for a few.

Don Quixote is often nominated as the world's greatest work of fiction. It stands in a unique position between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. The former consist of disconnected stories with little exploration of the inner life of even the main character. The latter are usually focused on the psychological evolution of their characters.

Different ages have tended to read different things into the novel. When it was first published, it was usually interpreted as a comic novel. After the French Revolution it was popular in part due to its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and disenchanting—not comic at all. In the 19th century it was seen as a social commentary, but no one could easily tell "whose side Cervantes was on." By the 20th century it became clear that it was not simply a unique and great moral work, but the first true modern novel.

The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice is one of William Shakespeare's best-known plays, written at an uncertain date between 1594 and 1597. It is a comedy
and is best known for its portrayal of the Jew Shylock, which has raised questions of anti-semitism. Shylock is a tormented character but is also a tormenter, so whether he is to be viewed with disdain
or sympathy is up to the reader.

A Shakespearean comedy had two very notable points.

1. A happy ending, usually involving marriage for all the unmarried characters, and
2. A tone and style that is more lighthearted than Shakespeare's other plays.

Shakespearean comedies also tend to have:

* A struggle of young lovers to overcome difficulty that is often presented by elders
* Separation and unification
* Mistaken identities
* A clever servant
* Heightened tensions, often within a family
* Multiple plots

The story weaves around two young men Antonio and Bassanio and their deep friendship.
Antonio gives Bassanio 3000 ducats to travel to Belmont and try to woo his lady love Portia. Since all his ships are tied at sea, he borrows the sum from a jew Shylock.

The main story revolves around how Bassanio cleverly wins Portia's hand by solving a puzzle set by her father. It then goes on to tell how Antonio loses all his cargo in sea-storm and has to give in to Shylock's contract of paying the debt with a pound of flesh.

Portia disguised as a judge displays uncanny wit and brillience when she tells Shylock that he may take his pound of flesh but without shedding a single drop of blood. This saves Antonio and Portia and Bassanio are happily married.

Other characters in the play include Shylock's daughter Jessica who elopes with a Christian named Lorenzo, Bassanio's friend Gratiano who falls for Portia's handmaiden Nerissa. Launcelot and Gobbo add some humor to the play.

The art of Ballet Dancing


Dance has long been the art form to express human emotions in their purest form. Dance has been used to show grace and agility, as a mark of devotion in palces of worship and even as a form of entertainment at a time when there were no electronic gadgets.

Ballet (pronounced Balle with t silent) first originated in the Renaissance period as the dance of the nobility. Under the reign of Louis XIV ballet developed as an art form that incorporated music, speech, verse, song, pageant, decor and costume. The 18th century was a period of vast advancement in the technical standards of ballet and the period when ballet became a serious dramatic art form on par with the Opera.

Today Ballet ceases to be just a pleasant past time for the nobility. It has become a form of exercise for those burdened with the humdrum of modern life. It reflects grace and tranquility as opposed to the western dances like the Jitterbug which emphasize on loud and fast music.

Surprisingly Ballet has been a favourite of classical physics because its movements closely use the principles of inertia, moment of inertia and rotation revolution that Newtonian physics predicts.

All in all Ballet carries something for everyone who show an interest in it and wish to know more about it. So put on your dancing shoes and happy ballet dancing!

The prisoner's dilemma

In game theory, the prisoner's dilemma is a type of non-zero-sum game in which two players try to get rewards from a banker by cooperating with or betraying the other player. In this game, as in many others, it is assumed that the primary concern of each individual player ("prisoner") is self-regarding; i.e., trying to maximise his own advantage, with less concern for the well-being of the other players.
In the prisoner's dilemma, cooperating is strictly dominated by defecting (i.e., betraying one's partner), so that the only possible equilibrium for the game is for all players to defect. In simpler terms, no matter what the other player does, one player will always gain a greater payoff by playing defect. Since in any situation playing defect is more beneficial than cooperating, all rational players will play defect.
The unique equilibrium for this game does not lead to a Pareto-optimal solution—that is, two rational players will both play defect even though the total reward (the sum of the reward received by the two players) would be greater if they both played cooperate. In equilibrium, each prisoner chooses to defect even though both would be better off by cooperating, hence the dilemma.

The classical prisoner's dilemma (PD) is as follows:
Two suspects, A and B, are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both stay silent, the police can sentence both prisoners to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each will receive a two-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent. However, neither prisoner knows for sure what choice the other prisoner will make. So the question this dilemma poses is: What will happen? How will the prisoners act?

The dilemma arises when one assumes that both prisoners only care about minimising their own jail terms. Each prisoner has two options: to cooperate with his accomplice and stay quiet, or to betray his accomplice and give evidence. The outcome of each choice depends on the choice of the accomplice. However, neither prisoner knows the choice of his accomplice. Even if they were able to talk to each other, neither could be sure that he could trust the other.
Let's assume the protagonist prisoner is working out his best move. If his partner stays quiet, his best move is to betray as he then walks free instead of receiving the minor sentence. If his partner betrays, his best move is still to betray, as by doing it he receives a relatively lesser sentence than staying silent. At the same time, the other prisoner's thinking would also have arrived at the same conclusion and would therefore also betray.
If reasoned from the perspective of the optimal outcome for the group (of two prisoners), the correct choice would be for both prisoners to cooperate with each other, as this would reduce the total jail time served by the group to one year total. Any other decision would be worse for the two prisoners considered together. When the prisoners both betray each other, each prisoner achieves a worse outcome than if they had cooperated.