Democracy is a form of government in which the people exercise the authority of government. Who people are and how authority is shared among them are core issues for democratic development and constitution; some cornerstones of these issues are freedom of assembly and speech and equality, consent, right to life and minority rights. There are two types of democracy: direct and representative. In a direct democracy, the people directly decide on legislature. In a representative democracy the people elect representatives to deliberate and decide on legislature, such as in parliamentary or presidential democracy. Liquid democracy combines elements of these two basic types; the most common decision making approach of democracies has been the majority rule. Others are consensus. In the common variant of liberal democracy the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but the constitution limits the majority and protects the minority through the enjoyment by all of certain individual rights, e.g. freedom of speech, or freedom of association.

Besides these general types of democracy, there have been a wealth of further types. Republics, though associated with democracy because of the shared principle of rule by consent of the governed, are not democracies, as republicanism does not specify how the people are to rule. Democracy is a system of processing conflicts in which outcomes depend on what participants do, but no single force controls what occurs and its outcomes; the uncertainty of outcomes is inherent in democracy. Democracy makes all forces struggle to realize their interests and devolves power from groups of people to sets of rules. Western democracy, as distinct from that which existed in pre-modern societies, is considered to have originated in city-states such as Classical Athens and the Roman Republic, where various schemes and degrees of enfranchisement of the free male population were observed before the form disappeared in the West at the beginning of late antiquity; the English word dates back to the 16th century, from the older Middle French and Middle Latin equivalents.

According to American political scientist Larry Diamond, democracy consists of four key elements: a political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections. Todd Landman draws our attention to the fact that democracy and human rights are two different concepts and that "there must be greater specificity in the conceptualisation and operationalisation of democracy and human rights"; the term appeared in the 5th century BC to denote the political systems existing in Greek city-states, notably Athens, to mean "rule of the people", in contrast to aristocracy, meaning "rule of an elite". While theoretically, these definitions are in opposition, in practice the distinction has been blurred historically; the political system of Classical Athens, for example, granted democratic citizenship to free men and excluded slaves and women from political participation. In all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, democratic citizenship consisted of an elite class, until full enfranchisement was won for all adult citizens in most modern democracies through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Democracy contrasts with forms of government where power is either held by an individual, as in an absolute monarchy, or where power is held by a small number of individuals, as in an oligarchy. These oppositions, inherited from Greek philosophy, are now ambiguous because contemporary governments have mixed democratic and monarchic elements. Karl Popper defined democracy in contrast to dictatorship or tyranny, thus focusing on opportunities for the people to control their leaders and to oust them without the need for a revolution. No consensus exists on how to define democracy, but legal equality, political freedom and rule of law have been identified as important characteristics; these principles are reflected in all eligible citizens being equal before the law and having equal access to legislative processes. For example, in a representative democracy, every vote has equal weight, no unreasonable restrictions can apply to anyone seeking to become a representative, the freedom of its eligible citizens is secured by legitimised rights and liberties which are protected by a constitution.

Other uses of "democracy" include that of direct democracy. One theory holds that democracy requires three fundamental principles: upward control, political equality, social norms by which individuals and institutions only consider acceptable acts that reflect the first two principles of upward control and political equality; the term "democracy" is sometimes used as shorthand for liberal democracy, a variant of representative democracy that may include elements such as political pluralism. Roger Scruton argues that democracy alone cannot provide personal and political freedom unless the institutions of civil society are present. In some countries, notably in the United Kingdom which originated the Westminster system, the dominant principle is that of parliamentary sovereignty, while maint

Shackleton is an impact crater that lies at the south pole of the Moon. The peaks along the crater's rim are exposed to continual sunlight, while the interior is perpetually in shadow; the low-temperature interior of this crater functions as a cold trap that may capture and freeze volatiles shed during comet impacts on the Moon. Measurements by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft showed higher than normal amounts of hydrogen within the crater, which may indicate the presence of water ice; the crater is named after Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. The rotational axis of the Moon lies within only a few kilometers from its center; the crater is 21 km in 4.2 km deep. From the Earth, it is viewed edge-on in a region of cratered terrain, it is located within the South Pole-Aitken basin on a massif. The rim is raised about the surrounding surface and it has an outer rampart, only impacted. No significant craters intersect the rim, it is sloped about 1.5° toward the direction 50–90° from the Earth. The age of the crater is about 3.6 billion years and it has been in the proximity of the south lunar pole for at least the last two billion years.

Because the orbit of the Moon is tilted only 5° from the ecliptic, the interior of this crater lies in perpetual darkness. Estimates of the area in permanent shadow were obtained from Earth-based radar studies. Peaks along the rim of the crater are continually illuminated by sunlight, spending about 80–90% of each lunar orbit exposed to the Sun. Continuously illuminated mountains have been termed peaks of eternal light and have been predicted to exist since the 1900s; the shadowed portion of the crater was imaged with the Terrain Camera of the Japanese SELENE spacecraft using the illumination of sunlight reflected off the rim. The interior of the crater consists of a symmetrical 30° slope that leads down to a 6.6 km diameter floor. The handful of craters along the interior span no more than a few hundred meters; the bottom is covered by an uneven mound-like feature, 300 to 400 m thick. The central peak is about 200 m in height; the continuous shadows in the south polar craters cause the floors of these formations to maintain a temperature that never exceeds about 100 K.

For Shackleton, the average temperature was determined to be about 90 K, reaching 88 K at the crater floor. Under these conditions, the estimated rate of loss from any ice in the interior would be 10−26 to 10−27 m/s. Any water vapor that arrives here following a cometary impact on the Moon would lie permanently frozen on or below the surface. However, the surface albedo of the crater floor matches the lunar far-side, suggesting that there is no exposed surface ice; this crater was named after Ernest Henry Shackleton, an Anglo-Irish explorer of Antarctica from 1901 until his death in 1922. The name was adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1994. Nearby craters of note include Shoemaker, Haworth, de Gerlache, Sverdrup and Faustini. Somewhat farther away, on the eastern hemisphere of the lunar near side, are the larger craters Amundsen and Scott, named after two other early explorers of the Antarctic continent. From the perspective of the Earth, this crater lies along the southern limb of the Moon, making observation difficult.

Detailed mapping of the polar regions and farside of the Moon did not occur until the advent of orbiting spacecraft. Shackleton lies within the rim of the immense South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the largest known impact formations in the Solar System; this basin is over 12 kilometers deep, an exploration of its properties could provide useful information about the lunar interior. A neutron spectrometer on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft detected enhanced concentrations of hydrogen close to the northern and southern lunar poles, including the crater Shackleton. At the end of this mission in July 1999, the spacecraft was crashed into the nearby crater Shoemaker in the hope of detecting from Earth-based telescopes an impact-generated plume containing water vapor; the impact event did not produce any detectable water vapor, this may be an indication that the hydrogen is not in the form of hydrated minerals, or that the impact site did not contain any ice. Alternatively, it is possible that the crash did not excavate enough into the regolith to liberate significant quantities of water vapor.

From Earth-based radar and spacecraft images of the crater edge, Shackleton appears to be intact. This may mean that the inner sides are steep, which may make traversing the sides difficult for a robotic vehicle. In addition, it is possible that the interior floor might not have collected a significant quantity of volatiles since its formation; however other craters in the vicinity are older, may contain significant deposits of hydrogen in the form of water ice. Radar studies preceding and following the Lunar Prospector mission demonstrate that the inner walls of Shackleton are similar in reflective characteristics to those of some sunlit craters. In particular, the surroundings appear to contain a significant number of blocks in its ejecta blanket, suggesting that its radar properties are a result of surface roughness, not ice deposits, as was suggested from a radar experiment involving the Clementine mission; this interpretation, however, is not universally agreed upon within the scientific community.

Radar images of the crater at a wavelength of 13 cm show no evidence for water ice deposits. Optical imaging inside the crater was done for the first time by the Japanese lunar orbiter spacecraft Kaguy

Thomas Fred "Puny" Wilson was an American football player and coach. He was an All-American at Texas A&M University in the early 1920s, playing for coach Dana X. Bible. Wilson graduated from Texas A&M in 1924 and was inducted into school's hall of fame. Puny and his brother, are the only two brothers in the Texas A&M football Hall of Fame. Mule was the first Aggie to play in the National Football League, he won three NFL championships, one on the New York Giants and two with the Green Bay Packers In 1938, Wilson became head football coach at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. He compiled a 50–49–6 overall record in 11 seasons, he briefly coached Dan Rather. Wilson died after a cerebral hemorrhage in 1969, he was buried at Tyler Memorial Park in Texas. In his life he worked as a real estate agent. Carter, Bo. Tales from Aggieland: Home of the Twelfth Man. Sports Publishing. ISBN 1-58261-331-1. Puny Wilson at Find a Grave