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Monday, February 26, 2018

Atheists Are Putzes Too: Lawrence Krauss's Teachable Moment


Miracle GirlAtheists Are Putzes Too: Lawrence Krauss's Teachable Moment

I've recently been shown that atheists have their fair share of illusions. Atheists can be idiots, too.
I should know.
The hardest illusions to leave behind are those held about your own beliefs. #MeToo is for atheists, too. And so is white nationalism. 


Friday, February 23, 2018

Gun Control: The Times are A-Changin' as the Young Say Never Again


Miracle GirlGun Control: The Times are A-Changin' as the Young Say Never Again

The times they are a-changin' for gun control, as high schoolers across the land take to the streets. Now it's the NRA and their GOP lackies ducking for cover.
They that they are running for their lives.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

America Wins the Diversity Olympics: The Future of the US is Bronzed


Miracle Girl: America Wins the Diversity Olympics: The Future of the US is Bronzed

Our Olympic Asian-American ladies figure skaters are judged foreigners while competing for the country in which they were born. Meanwhile, the world moves past the culture wars Trump continues to stoke and the press clamors to report every quip by a gay skater, revelling in his outrĂ© outness. 

Friday, February 16, 2018

After Darwin Day: Vestiges of the Unnatural History of Creationists


Miracle GirlAfter Darwin Day: Vestiges of the Unnatural History of Creationists

Why would God create non-functional eyes in cave-dwellers? It's almost as if these cave animals evolved from sighted ancestors who once dwelled above ground....

Creationists accept as fact a book in which God orders the slaughter of unicorns, but spares not a word for dinosaurs. They thrive in the darkness of ignorance, blinded to insight.

Monday, February 12, 2018

Darwin Day: 4 Snapshots from the Evolution of Evolution


Miracle GirlDarwin Day: 4 Snapshots from the Evolution of Evolution

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!
Take a Darwin Day trip through the evolution of evolutionary thought, as you tour four key moments on the journey to a biological Theory of Everything.
Many who paved the way of evolutionary thought clung to the holy writ their theories undermined. Not so, Charles Darwin. 

Friday, February 9, 2018

Evolution Caught in the Act: A Darwin Day Sampler Pack


Miracle GirlEvolution Caught in the Act: A Darwin Day Sampler Pack

Just in time for Darwin Day, new research has revealed evolution -- and even speciation -- in real time. And in one case an instant.
Wanna see Ken Ham's head explode?

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Nunes Memo Memes: From Watergate to Nunes Nonsense


Miracle GirlNunes Memo Memes: From Watergate to Nunes Nonsense

If history repeats as farce, Trump and his GOP stooges have turned the Nunes memo into a slapstick routine. 
This "Nunesense" has left us laughing through our fears.

Friday, February 2, 2018

Reddit Rants and Rages: Oh, DO Tell Me About My Life


Miracle GirlReddit Rants and Rages: Oh, DO Tell Me About My Life

A recent tribalistic, Reddit rake across the coals reminded me why I'm glad I'm part of the Patheos family instead.

On what planet is it okay to tell my mom that she overeats -- especially when I stated that she doesn't?

Oh, Planet Reddit.

You do realize that you're talking to actual people, right? 

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

SOTU Satire: The State of the Union is…Stupefied


Miracle GirlSOTU Satire: The State of the Union is…Stupefied

You sat through the words written by Stephen Miller for President Trump's first State of the Union address. But listen to the satirical SOTU speech of Miller's dreams. 
Was your ticket to Davos lost in the mail? Here's a peek into Trump's thought bubble as he delivered his "look at me, I'm so presidential speech" to the global elites who once shunned him. 
Where satire meets sorrow...

Friday, January 26, 2018

I was a Jewish Hitler in the Fifth Grade


Miracle GirlI was a Jewish Hitler in the Fifth Grade

If there were a hell, I would surely burn in it. In my ignorance, this girl of Jewish heritage stood in front of class and pretended I was Adolf Hitler.
Secular parents, look to my story and beware.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Trump's First Year Down, Three More to Go (Better Stock Up on Antacids)


Miracle Girl: Trump's First Year Down, Three More to Go (Better Stock Up on Antacids)

Has it only been a year since Trump's inauguration? It's felt like a decade in Trump time.
While America survived Trump's first year in office (barely), there aren't enough antacids in the world to cope with the backwash of bile to come.

Friday, January 19, 2018

Open Letter to Fellow Progressives: Enough Already with the Purity Politics


Miracle GirlOpen Letter to Fellow Progressives: Enough Already with the Purity Politics

A politician walks away from politics to stand on principle. Now that's a movie Frank Capra could've written.

Mr. Flake goes from Washington for all the right, principled reasons. Can't we progressives at least agree on that?

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Jeff Flake: A Wingnut Fortified with High Moral Fiber


Miracle GirlJeff Flake: A Wingnut Fortified with High Moral Fiber
'Country over party' tweets GOP Trump critic Jeff Flake. C'mon, ya gonna let a rightwinger claim the moral high ground over you?
Repeat after me, fellow progressives: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Friday, January 12, 2018

The Big Sick: A Must-See for Secularists and the Formerly Sick Alike


Miracle GirlThe Big Sick: A Must-See for Secularists and the Formerly Sick Alike

There's a reason why "The Big Sick" won the Critics' Choice Award for Best Comedy. It gets my Coma Choice Award, too. 
It doesn't take a VERY big sick to love the hilarious and deep comedy, "The Big Sick." But it doesn't hurt, either.

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Music Therapy: Revealing Awareness and Awakening It in Doctors Too


Miracle GirlMusic Therapy: Revealing Awareness and Awakening It in Doctors Too

Music therapy reveals misdiagnosed 'vegetative' patients, reaching the supposedly unreachable. And it could stimulate improved awareness. 
But what can raise the consciousness of their blindfolded doctors? Can it teach a lesson to those that wrote them off as hopeless?

Friday, January 5, 2018

My Top Ten Posts of 2017: Good Posts for a Bad Year


Miracle Girl: My Top Ten Posts of 2017: Good Posts for a Bad Year

Goodbye and good riddance to 2017. It was a difficult decade. At least, that's how long it felt like in Trump years.


But along the way, my ten most popular posts of the year provided context and comic relief in a trying year.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Unpresidential Parallel Universe: Would I Be as Hypocritical as the GOP?


Miracle GirlUnpresidential Parallel Universe: Would I Be as Hypocritical as the GOP?

When politics runs off the rails, it shouldn't matter if the blame falls on the right or the left. An unpresidential president represents us all.
Presidents are rubber and Americans are glue. Whatever they say sticks to YOU.

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Coma Girl

Coma Girl

Not a miracle recovery, but a miracle of modern medicine

In 2013 I fell into a six-week coma and nearly died after I contracted legionella. The Legionnaire's disease was in turn triggered by immunosuppression caused by the prednisone I was taking for my rare autoimmune disease, dermatomyositis.

I suffered a series of strokes on both sides of my brain when the sepsis caused my blood pressure to plummet. I fell into a deep coma. My kidneys and lungs began to fail, as my body was began dying one organ at a time. My doctors told my loved ones to give up hope for my full recovery. They expected me to die, and even if I somehow lived, I would remain a vegetable or at best left so hopelessly brain-damaged that I would never be same. But unbeknownst to them, while they were shining lights in my eyes and shaking their heads, I was telling them in my coma-dream--my secular version of a near-death experience--to leave me alone because I was trying to get back to sleep. I was experiencing what is known as covert cognition, the subject of my Skeptical Inquirer article "Covert Cognition: My So-Called Near-Death Experience," which appeared in their July/August issue.

But it wasn't a miracle--despite what so many continue to believe--that I recovered so fully. I owe my life not to God, but the miracles of modern medicine, as well as the nature of the watershed-area brain damage I suffered, as I detailed in my article and in this blog.