Puppet

A puppet is an inanimate object animated or manipulated by a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, which is a very ancient form of theatre.

There are many different varieties of puppets, and they are made of a wide range of materials, depending on their form and intended use. They can be extremely complex or very simple in their construction.

Origins

Puppetry was practiced in Ancient Greece and the oldest written records of puppetry can be found in the works of Herodotus and Xenophon, dating from the 5th century BC. The Greek word translated as "puppet" is "νευρόσπαστος" (nevrospastos), which literally means "drawn by strings, string-pulling", from "νεῦρον" (nevron), meaning either "sinew, tendon, muscle, string", or "wire", and "σπάω" (spaō), meaning "draw, pull".

Aristotle (384–322 BC) discusses puppets in his work On the Motion of Animals.

In India puppetry was practiced from ancient times and is known by different names in different parts of the country. Excavation of clay dolls from Indus valley sites serve as an indication. The art of puppetry called Bommalattam is mentioned in Tamil literature Silappadikaram, which is written around 2nd century B.C.

Big Brother (U.S. TV series)

Big Brother is a television reality game show based on an originally Dutch TV series of the same name created by producer John de Mol in 1997. The series follows a group of contestants, known as HouseGuests, who are living together in a custom-built home under constant surveillance. The HouseGuests are completely isolated from the outside world, and can have no communication with those not in the house. The contestants are competing for a $500,000 grand prize, with weekly competitions and evictions determining who will win the show. The series takes its name from the character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). The series launched on July 5, 2000 to a successful start, though ratings and critical reaction continued to grow increasingly negative. This led to the second season being a revamp of the show, featuring a more competition-based challenge. The series has since continued to be a hit for CBS, and is the second longest-running adaptation of the series to date, after the Spanish adaptation.

Big Brother

Big Brother may refer to:

Music

Theatre

Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe").

Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from ancient Greek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts in general.

Post-office box

A post-office box or post office box (commonly referred to as a PO box or a postal box) is a uniquely addressable lockable box located on the premises of a post office station.

In many regions, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, there is no 'door to door' delivery of mail. For example, should one post mail to a street address in Namibia, it will be returned to sender as undeliverable. Consequently, renting a PO box has traditionally been the only way to receive mail in such countries, although some, like Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon, do have mail home delivery.

Generally, post office boxes are rented from the post office either by individuals or by businesses on a basis ranging from monthly to annual, and the cost of rent varies depending on the box size. Central business district (CBD) PO boxes are usually more expensive than rural PO boxes.

In the United States, the rental rate used to be uniform across the country. Now, however, a postal facility can be in any of seven fee groups by location; in addition, certain customers qualify for free box rental.