Wise Words for You

The Wikipedia article of the day for November 1, 2017 is Super Mario Galaxy . Super Mario Galaxy is a platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii console, first released on 1 November 2007. In this third 3D-graphics game in the Super Mario series, Mario is on a quest to rescue Princess Peach while saving the universe from Bowser. A central element of gameplay is the way gravitational forces change as Mario navigates galaxies filled with minor planets and worlds. The spherical platforms used in the game first appeared in Super Mario 128, a technology demonstration shown at Nintendo Space World in 2000. Development of Super Mario Galaxy began after the release of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat in late 2004, when Shigeru Miyamoto suggested that Nintendo should commission a large-scale Mario game. The game was a critical and commercial success, hailed as one of the greatest video games of all time. It won multiple Game of the Year titles, and became the first Nintendo tit...

iPhone X vs iPhone 8: Which is Apple’s best flagship? Apple recently took the wraps off of no less than three new phones, but which one should you buy? Or is better just to skip them all? Yes, that’s right. Apple ditched the iPhone 7S and jumped straight to the  iPhone 8 , which is unusual in itself – but the surprises don’t stop there. The iPhone X (or iPhone 10) is a special celebratory device designed to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the iPhone line, and it’s a radical departure from previous models. Read on to learn how the new handsets differ. The biggest difference between the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X is the industrial design. Apple’s lack of real advancement in design dampened the iPhone 7 and left us with a phone that felt the same as the iPhone 6. Thankfully, things are slightly different this year, but mostly just for the iPhone X. Apple’s most ‘out-there’ phone design yet instantly makes the X stand out, even though it’s been leak...

The past is history, so let it go. The future is a mystery, so let it come. The present is a gift – be truly in the present today and release all your fears (based on the past) and your worries (imagined futures) – this is the work of someone who truly wants to awaken, and break free from the anchors and burdens of dead yesterdays and speculative tomorrows. Be here now they say, easier said than done, I hear you say. But no one can stop us, except for ourselves. There is only now – everything else is avoidance.

The Wikipedia article of the day for October 31, 2017 is Ninety-five Theses . The Ninety-five Theses are a list of propositions written by Martin Luther that started the Protestant Reformation, a schism in the Catholic Church. Luther, a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, enclosed them in a letter to the Archbishop of Mainz on 31 October 1517, a date now commemorated annually as Reformation Day. They advance Luther's positions against the selling of plenary indulgences, certificates that were said to reduce the punishment for sins in purgatory. Luther claimed that his positions accorded with those of the pope, but the Theses contradict a 14th-century papal bull. Luther's ecclesiastical superiors had him tried for heresy, which culminated in his excommunication in 1521. Though the Theses mark the start of the Reformation, Luther did not consider indulgences to be as important as other theological matters which would divide the church, such as j...

Four The winter, cold and bitter, passed once again, just as it always had. Snow covered the ground around Tom’s home, providing a place to hide. Safe. Silent. After a brief period of mourning, his meetings with the literary elite resumed, taking on more life as they began to consider what kind of death soliloquy William Shakespeare would have written for Franz Kafka’s cockroach. And Tom had begun to prepare a full series of paintings for a new edition of  Jane Eyre.  Indeed, Tom was almost happy—almost. One day, as he was grinding the last store of winter wheat into flour when there came a knock at the door. Tom started, then turned his head to stare darkly at whoever stood behind it. “No one’s knocked on that door in years,” he whispered. Tom grunted and considered simply hiding out just as he had done in the early years when religious evangelists and sales people could still find the road. He would let them knock until the futility of their effort sent them back ...

In this short ghost story with a twist ending, a man, haunted by dark memories, spends forty years living alone on an isolated farm. One autumn day, he discovers another presence in his home that forces him to face the secrets of his past. One Night. Thick and black, as if the earth had banished the moon forever. Breathing in the darkness, a solitary man knelt in the dust. Around him, the charred remains of a roofless barn stood grim and silent. Once again, he has returned to the place where she fell. On this day, her birthday, an icy November wind cut through his worn and faded flannel shirt, chilling him to the core. Shivering, he closed his eyes, inviting the cold to engulf him while the muscles in his face strained with the intensity of his thoughts. This was fitting—that he should feel in his skin and his bones what he felt in the darkness of his soul. Tears fell, freezing like rivers of ice intothe cracked lines of a wizened face. Frozen like his spirit so many ...