"Cui bono?" is a phrase you'll often see used on conspiracy-minded Youtube videos and discussion forums. It's Latin for "Who benefits?", and it refers to a perspective in legal analysis that the one who stands most to gain from a crime is often the perpetrator. It's the "motive" part of "means, motive and opportunity".

The term comes up in conspiracy circles a lot because motive is often the biggest plot hole in the official story promoted by the authorized narrative managers of the political/media class about a given event. The alleged Douma chemical attack last year, for example, had no discernible benefit to the Assad government whatsoever, but would have benefited the cornered Al-Qaeda affiliates in the city by provoking air strikes from the west, so there remains a lot of skepticism from those who don't automatically believe their government and the plutocratic media when they say that Damascus was responsible. Such skepticism is dismissively branded "conspiracy theory" by the establishment narrative managers, but it is fully justified.

So it's a useful concept for analyzing world events in a way that punches through the fog of imperial propaganda. But the question "Who benefits from this?" can, and should, be taken much further.

We humans are rather curious creatures, I'll admit. So many sides to our nature, so many colours to our emotions, so many journeys of our imaginations. But the question must arise, do we learn any more about these traits by making ourselves the perpetual object of our own fascination?

One would certainly assume so based upon the cult of the 'selfie' which rages around the world at this particular juncture of human evolution. I am tempted to say 'devolution', but going backwards would at least stand the chance of putting us in touch with something tangible, earthy even - whereas to live life as a virtual reality experience with one's own photographic image as the central point of attraction - fails to provoke my sense of admiration for the human race.

Children as young as two are developing mental health problems because of smartphones and tablets, scientists warn.

Just an hour a day staring at a screen can be enough to make children more likely to be anxious or depressed.

This could be making them less curious, less able to finish tasks, less emotionally stable and lowering their self-control, the DailyMail reports.

On June 28, the morning after her eyebrow-raising theatrics at the second Democratic debate, New Age high priestess-cum-presidential aspirant Marianne Williamson retweeted this:


While Williamson's candidacy is itself certain to disperse into nothingness, legible between the lines of the guru's flakiness is a profound insight about the most misunderstood and misguided totem in American life: the idea that positive and/or happy thoughts foster positive and/or happy outcomes. The same belief in "mind power" that elicits groans and derision when rendered in 280 characters is woven through the fabric of American life. American culture has evolved a unique view of the mind's relationship to the external world; not in the sense of an esoteric disquisition on the nature of consciousness, but rather in the sense of spoon-bending — a view of life wherein positive thinking enables us to bend life to our respective desires. Ergo:

• The attitude is the action.
• The belief is the behavior.
• A happy outlook begets happiness.

A New York Times article from 2016, "A New Vision for Dreams of the Dying," came to my attention recently through a Facebook post. It details the research into deathbed visions (primarily dreams) conducted at Hospice Buffalo under the direction of Dr. Christopher Kerr. (It appears that Hospice Buffalo is now known as the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care.)

The article is long and includes quite a few interesting stories. As they say, "read the whole thing." I'll just offer a couple of excerpts.

I was laying in bed and people were walking very slowly by me. The right-hand side I didn't know, but they were all very friendly and they touched my arm and my hand as they went by. But the other side were people that I knew — my mom and dad were there, my uncle. Everybody I knew that was dead was there. The only thing was, my husband wasn't there, nor was my dog, and I knew that I would be seeing them. — Jeanne Faber, 75, months before her death from ovarian cancer.

Another article offers a fuller version of this story:

"It was a good dream," she told the researcher ... "I know that was my mom and dad and uncle and my brother-in-law." Seeing her mother in that and other recent dreams was "wonderful," she said.

"I can't say that my mother and I got along all those years," Jeanne said, tearing up in a video recording. "But we made up for it at the end."

While science and religion are considered to be conflicting subjects by most Americans, a new study from Arizona State University (ASU) suggests that an understanding of science can actually promote faith and religion. The researchers found that scientific facts can create a feeling of awe, which leads to belief in more abstract views of God.

"There are many ways of thinking about God. Some see God in DNA, some think of God as the universe, and others think of God in Biblical, personified terms," said study lead author Professor Kathryn Johnson. "We wanted to know if scientific engagement influenced beliefs about the existence or nature of God."


Study co-author and graduate student Jordan Moon explained that, even though science is often thought of in terms of data and experiments, it may mean more to some people.

The research team examined two types of scientific engagement - logical thinking or experiencing the feeling of awe - to get a better understanding of how they may affect an individual's religious beliefs.

The best therapists for silly human problems don't say a word.

Even without a psychology degree, Bella's natural talents made her an excellent therapist: She is calm and accommodating of a range of personalities, with the patience to listen to endless problems without so much as a judgmental moo.

From a lush, secluded pasture on the Mountain Horse Farm, a 33-acre bed-and-breakfast in the Finger Lakes region of New York, 3-year-old Bella and 2-year-old Bonnie are the highlander-angus crossbred cows that provide animal-based therapy.

Cow cuddling, as the practice is called, invites interaction with the farm animals via brushing, petting or heartfelt chats with the bovines. The experience is similar to equine therapy, with one game-changing difference: Horses tend to stand, but cows spontaneously lie down in the grass while chewing their cud, allowing humans to get even more up close and personal by joining on the ground and offering a warm embrace.

As more people are turning to a variety of animals — dogs, ducks, alligators — for their mental health, states are cracking down on how and when therapy animals can be used. But cows? You can't take them with you.

We all need a little peace, stillness, and balance to get us through life. Sadly, this doesn't jive with the social mold we're supposed to fit into. We're supposed to be good workers who value productivity above all else. This makes us incessantly tired, stressed, and anxious as we try to get through each day.

We have no time for rest, but deep down, most of us want nothing more than to stop and relax. We'd be happy to take a break even for just a day. Most of us can't, but we can all retreat into a calm inner space - one in which our thoughts, fears, and stresses fade away - whenever we want.

Meditation can be our vacation from everything in life that drains us. We can't pin it down to any specific practice; there are so many forms that it's best to find one that works for you. Whether traditional or new and radical, a meditation practice will leave you feeling like life doesn't have to be so harsh.

Mindfulness meditation programs have shown promise for the treatment of anxiety. Now, new research may help explain why. According to a study published in Biological Psychiatry, mindfulness meditation appears to help extinguish fearful associations.

"Mindfulness interventions have been shown to reduce stress and improve emotion regulation skills in numerous studies, however the neural mechanisms are still largely unknown," said study author Gunes Sevinc, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

"One of the proposed mechanisms is based on the idea that mindfulness meditation provides a context similar to exposure therapy. During exposure therapy, individuals are exposed to otherwise avoided stimuli in a safe environment and gradually learn that these stimuli are no longer threatening."

"Trigger warnings just don't help," Payton Jones, a clinical psychology doctoral student at Harvard, tweeted alongside a preprint of his new paper. He further explained that the paper actually suggests that trigger warnings might even be harmful.

When I saw the tweet, my gut reaction was that Jones was wrong. I have been for trigger warnings even before the Year of the Trigger Warning, which according to Slate, was 2013. Opponents of trigger warnings tend to argue that they are an unnecessary concession that only serves to further coddle already sheltered college students. I figure they might be a good way to help people with mental injuries such as post-traumatic stress disorder stay safer as they move around the world, the same way that a person with a broken leg uses crutches. But after considering Jones' paper, and chatting with him, I've been convinced that we'd do better to save the minimal effort it takes to affix trigger warnings to college reading assignments or put up signs outside of theater productions and apply it to more effective efforts to care for one another.

Research that trigger warnings might not be all that helpful has been mounting over a few studies, including the one that Jones and his colleagues published last year titled "Trigger Warning: Empirical Evidence Ahead." Yes, that title is trollish, but here is what they did: They had a few hundred participants read several passages, some of which were potentially disturbing. Half received no heads up before the passages, and half got a label ahead of the iffy ones that read: "TRIGGER WARNING: The passage you are about to read contains disturbing content and may trigger an anxiety response, especially in those who have a history of trauma." The results suggested that trigger warnings could actually help generate anxiety, thus making them counterproductive. But there was a major limitation in that study: It didn't focus on people who had experienced trauma. Two studies written up in the New York Times in March had similar limitations (those both concluded that trigger warnings didn't do anything, good or bad).