From spider sex to political tyranny!

Dear Readers:

I briefly touched on the subject of spider sex yesterday, (And NO, I'm not talking abut Peter Parker's love life!) but didn't want to get too descriptive because I hate spiders!

But! I just can't stay away from this information.

Spiders are known for getting pretty wild in the bedroom. They’re famous for twerking around to attract the opposite sex, binding their mates up with silk, or even eating them after sex. But now scientists have found a species that adds oral sex — and lots of it — to the routine. Their findings were published last week in Scientific Reports.

That's not all kids, oh no! Seems that some species tie up the females because they're twenty times bigger and usually eat the poor male, OR, after sex the male spider will rip out its own genitals!

Cute, eh?

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In March, the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council opened a poll recently which asked the people of the internet to name its new $300 million boat.

Predictably some proposals were quite silly, but the suggested monicker Boaty McBoatface gained traction and eventually won the poll with 124,109 votes—four times more than the second placed name RRS Poppy-Mai.

This morning, however, the UK’s science minister, Jo Johnson, tweeted to say that the boat will in fact be called RRS Sir David Attenborough, “in tribute to a great broadcaster and natural scientist.” (Seeing as you ask, the name RRS David Attenborough actually came fifth in the public poll, with just 10,284 votes.)

(Who's going to get re-named next, folks? Thomas the Tank Engine?) 

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Toronto had a big publicity campaign last week where they introduced "racoon proof" garbage bins.

Let's repeat that kids: "RACOON PROOF!"

Well, your ever reliable reporter had a "war" with a tribe of racoons for the whole summer about eight years ago ......................., AND I LOST!

Toronto's fancy new green bins might not be as raccoon-proof as they've been advertised. Photos posted to Twitter show the tops of the city-issued organic waste bins chewed straight through by pesky urban wildlife shortly after delivery to residents in Scarborough.
The user who posted the photos claims that the new bins use thinner plastic than the prior version, which makes them susceptible to persistent pests looking for a food supply. Should this prove a trend, it would be quite embarrassing for the city, who awarded a $31 million contract to a California firm to redesign the green bin to be more raccoon-proof.

http://www.blogto.com/city/2016/05/new_green_bins_in_toronto_arent_raccoon_proof_after_all/

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And on the political scene: HEY FOLKS, DO YA WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT'S REALLY ALL ABOUT? (And it's not the Hokey Pokey!)

A prominent publication came up with the following headline: "Democracies end when they become too democratic. (And right now America is a breeding ground for tyranny!)"

This rainbow-flag polity, according to Plato, is, for many people, the fairest of regimes. The freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed — with shame and privilege in particular emerging over time as anathema. 
But it is inherently unstable. As the authority of elites fades, as Establishment values cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse as to be mutually uncomprehending. And when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are despised and full license is established to do “whatever one wants,” you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy. There is no kowtowing to authority here, let alone to political experience or expertise.
The very rich come under attack, as inequality becomes increasingly intolerable. Patriarchy is also dismantled: “We almost forgot to mention the extent of the law of equality and of freedom in the relations of women with men and men with women.” Family hierarchies are inverted: “A father habituates himself to be like his child and fear his sons, and a son habituates himself to be like his father and to have no shame before or fear of his parents.” In classrooms, “as the teacher ... is frightened of the pupils and fawns on them, so the students make light of their teachers.” Animals are regarded as equal to humans; the rich mingle freely with the poor in the streets and try to blend in. The foreigner is equal to the citizen.
And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.
He is usually of the elite but has a nature in tune with the time — given over to random pleasures and whims, feasting on plenty of food and sex, and reveling in the nonjudgment that is democracy’s civil religion. He makes his move by “taking over a particularly obedient mob” and attacking his wealthy peers as corrupt. If not stopped quickly, his appetite for attacking the rich on behalf of the people swells further. He is a traitor to his class — and soon, his elite enemies, shorn of popular legitimacy, find a way to appease him or are forced to flee. Eventually, he stands alone, promising to cut through the paralysis of democratic incoherence. It’s as if he were offering the addled, distracted, and self-indulgent citizens a kind of relief from democracy’s endless choices and insecurities. He rides a backlash to excess—“too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery” — and offers himself as the personified answer to the internal conflicts of the democratic mess. He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites. And as the people thrill to him as a kind of solution, a democracy willingly, even impetuously, repeals itself.
And so, as I chitchatted over cocktails at a Washington office Christmas party in December, and saw, looming above our heads, the pulsating, angry televised face of Donald Trump on Fox News, I couldn’t help but feel a little nausea permeate my stomach. And as I watched frenzied Trump rallies on C-SPAN in the spring, and saw him lay waste to far more qualified political peers in the debates by simply calling them names, the nausea turned to dread. And when he seemed to condone physical violence as a response to political disagreement, alarm bells started to ring in my head. Plato had planted a gnawing worry in my mind a few decades ago about the intrinsic danger of late-democratic life. It was increasingly hard not to see in Plato’s vision a murky reflection of our own hyperdemocratic times and in Trump a demagogic, tyrannical character plucked directly out of one of the first books about politics ever written.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html