We Don't Always See What We Think We See

Rotating Illusion — Pink Eye Trick

Are you sure you really see it disappear?

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, the dots will remain only one color: pink. However if you stare at the black “+” in the center, the moving dot turns to green.

Now, concentrate on the black “+” in the center of the picture. After a short period, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see only a single green dot rotating.

It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. Proof enough that we don't always see what we think we see . . .

(source)

Muslim History, Muslim-Style

It's a long but interesting and well-done depiction of what Muslims claim happened in the aftermath of the murder of Imam Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the founder of the Muslim religion. 

Something Lutheran Happened on the Way to Rome

You know me, I love conversion stories, and right now I'm enjoying part 2 of my friend Karen William's serialized account of her journey to the Catholic Church. Check it out!

At the same time, one of my girlfriends, Wendy, invited me to her church - St. Paul Lutheran. I took her up on it one fateful Sunday and was immediately taken with the whole church concept and started attending on a regular basis. It was as though someone turned on the God faucet and my mind was opened to the constant stream of His love and mercy. Pastor Mike told me to read a little book on the Gospels called "The Way" and I attended Pastors Class faithfully every Sunday. I was on the fast track. By April of that next year, I was to be baptized (yea!) and confirmed in the Lutheran Church.

St. Paul was a large Lutheran Church in Trenton Michigan. It belongs to the Missouri Synod which leans more conservative than the other branches. The church was traditional, baroque with a communion rail and a large glorified Jesus behind the high altar. It had one of those suspended ambos that was elevated from the rest of the sanctuary by stairs. Pastor Pohl (head hancho), had a beautiful sermon delivery and would always conclude his sermons with "And so far". I really don't know if that makes grammatical sense, but it sure sounded cool and everybody respected him. The music at St. Paul was a big deal. Every Easter we'd hire a local orchestra, mix in our own musicians and vocalists with them (I played first chair trumpet at that time) and go crazy on Handel etc. It was a blast. (no pun). The performance would always engender tears and ovations. I lasted at St. Paul until I went away to college. Pastor Pohl stayed on until retirement, Pastor Mike (the younger assoc who ran the Pastor's class) defected to the charismatics and was basically shunned. 

Something curious was happening in my soul. Something really glorious. Of the things I managed not to discard, I saved my senior year scrapbook which includes a page entitled "One Important Person". The page is not devoted to any one person, but to . . . (read more)

No Planet X

A friend sent me a link to an interesting article which rebuts the persistent and ubiquitous theory of an inbound rogue planet/star/object that will pass close to the earth in the next few years and will, the theory holds, wreak great damage on earth. The author of this article basically says, “Ain't gonna happen.”

I love getting good news!

My Face on FaceBook

I recently discovered (actually, someone from my parish whose initials are “Thomas Deliduka”) told me) that there's a new Patrick Madrid “fan page” on Facebook. 

Weird. Flattering, but weird.

And when, a couple of months ago, I discovered that I was the very last person on earth not to have a Facebook page of my own, I broke down and created one. No big whoop. Check it out if you're interested in that sort of thing.  I find that I am becoming increasingly interested in that sort of thing — not fan pages, but the ability to communicate widely and quickly and with many people through the medium of things like Twitter, FaceBook, and the rest of it. It's amazing and at times startling to realize just how interconnected we have become through this technology. Makes me wonder where it's all headed and how fast we'll get there.

Just imagine how utterly different the world would be now if the Internet and all its positive accouterments, such as e-mail, blogs, etc., had been available to the public back in the 60s and 70s, when I was growing up. That's a bit like trying to imagine what the world would have been like and how differently things would have turned out for, say, Japan and China, if only St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Xavier had had fax machines.

A Cartoon From Christianity Today

Update: WELCOME! all my new visitors who are coming here from Father Z's blog! I appreciate your taking a look here and I hope you'll come back. God bless you all, and thank you, Father Z, for the link. — Patrick Madrid