Feed the bears.

"Among Derocher's scenarios is using helicopters to airdrop food on polar bears as their icy habitat continues to melt — at a cost of $32,000 per day for the 'most accessible' bears."

"We were in this town in northern Manitoba where polar bears literally will walk down Main Street."

"There are polar bears in this town. People will leave their cars and houses unlocked, and it's perfectly good form just to duck into any open door you can find when there's a polar bear chasing you."

"I've been there. Drunk, looking for a snack, couldn't get the pickle jar open."

Top comment at the YouTube video "Incredible footage of BBC cameraman and hungry polar bear."

"Boyfriend Bears is a non-profit organization that encourages pre-teen and teenage girls to live a life of purity."

"Our bears serve as a reminder that we promote purity to be a lifestyle. Boyfriend Bears provides the opportunity for girls to make a stand for what they believe in and to stay strong in their morals."

Via Metafilter. Sample comments from there:

"It's like Japanese body pillow girlfriends, but not as creepy, because it's pure."

"This is what killed Timothy Treadwell."

"Wow, that part about writing letters to your future husband, tucking it into a special pocket in the teddy bear and then giving them to him on your wedding day...that squicked me out."

"Does this mean the purity rings are not working?"

"There is now a live stream of bears gathering to eat salmon at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park."

Lovely! It's not dark yet in Alaska, so you can see the bears right now.

Hands and heads, positioned by Drudge.

Let's analyze this. (Click to enlarge.)



In the first column, we see Barack Obama holding his head, as if he's got a headache.

The middle column shows 2 politicians, both governors, gesturing outward, not holding anything.

The third column shows a bear holding a slice of watermelon and George Bush holding a little African orphan, grasping his/her head.

That is to say, the outer columns feature hands (or paws) holding something, and in 2 of the 3 pictures, what is held is a black person's head, and in the other what is held is watermelon.

Analyze the Drudgetaposition.
	Drudge was intentionally joking about race, though of course it's deniable.
	Drudge should have noticed this accidental allusion and avoided it.
	Althouse is seeing something that isn't there and should have refrained from talking about race.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED:

.@annalthouse You forgot to mention that the governors are pointing up, which is code for "uppity." althouse.blogspot.com/2012/07/hands-…
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) July 7, 2012

Polar bear flees its zoo pen in Duluth, escaping the flood.

There was some heavy rain up at Lake Superior today.

“Even though it’s a large white object, it’s pretty nerve racking,” police spokesman Jim Hansen said of the chase for Berlin [the polar bear]. Zoo officials said she was tranquilized by the zoo’s vet and placed in quarantine....

Two seals managed to swim out of the zoo but were quickly recaptured just outside. Wolniakowski said no dangerous animals left the zoo grounds and that all have been secured.

Polar bears on a rampage!

Look out!

"Hey, I heard that there was a Supweem Court Justice on 'Sesame Street.'"

"There is, Baby Bear. There is."/"Hi, Baby Bear. I am Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, but you can call me 'Justice."



"Wow! Impwessive!"

ADDED: Let's talk about the particular legal problem the "Sesame Street" folks used to teach kids law. Baby Bear has a complaint against Goldilocks, who entered his house and sat in his chair, breaking it. Justice Sotomayor, after listening to Goldilocks, notes that Goldilocks didn't intentionally break the chair, and the dispute is resolved by having Goldilocks help Baby Bear glue the chair back together. "And the 2 of you can live happily ever after." Baby Bear says "I can live with that," so we could view Sotomayor as proposing a settlement — Baby Bear agrees to it — rather than issuing a legal decision.

Notice the emphasis on conflict resolution and building community. Fine. But I'm not satisfied with the observation that Goldilocks didn't intentionally break the chair. Goldilocks intentionally broke into a private home. Why is there no attention to that? If somebody broke into my house when I was away, I would be outraged, even if nothing were broken. I would also not accept a glued-together chair as an adequate replacement for an unbroken chair.

So "Sesame Street," in classic left-wing fashion, pays no attention to property rights. Also, consider the gender dimension of this problem. If a male had intruded into the home of a female, I don't think "Sesame Street" would focus on how nice it would be if the 2 could now become friends.

Cityscapes.

"Mature, very big, aggressive" lions, bears, and wolves are on the loose in Ohio.

"Schools closed and motorists were warned to stay in their vehicles as officers with assault rifles patrolled a rural area in eastern Ohio Wednesday, a day after police killed dozens of escaped animals from a wild-animal preserve, where the owner was found dead."

Tuesday night, more than 50 law enforcement officials... patrolled the 40-acre (16-hectare) farm and the surrounding areas in cars and trucks, often in rainy downpours. [Muskingum County Sheriff Matt] Lutz said they were concerned about big cats and bears hiding in the dark and in trees.

Here's some video.

Yellowstone Park couple "provoked" the grizzly bear that killed the man..

It seems.

Park authorities decided to let the animal remain free as its reaction was deemed normal for a surprise encounter.

Park authorities had previously thought the couple reacted correctly...

But after an investigation, bear researchers and wildlife agents say the pair's running and screaming helped spur the bear into "a sustained pursuit of them as they fled".

If you run and scream... you're asking for it. Remember: The bear is a bear.

"I stand quietly, but with arms out, hoping that I seem big to the bear even if he could nicely tear me up with one swipe of his paw."

"But he doesn't do that. He looks at us, hesitates, turns around and goes back, veering off the path into the thicket of flowers, with one last soulful look in our direction. The Ferdinand of bears, lost in his world of flowers and berries."

Nina encounters a bear on the International Appalachian Trial. Very sweet. Cool pic. But I was traumatized yesterday reading this bear story:

Olga Moskalyova, 19, gave an horrific hour-long running commentary on her own death in three separate calls as the wild animals killed her.

She screamed: “Mum, the bear is eating me! Mum, it’s such agony. Mum, help!’”

Her mother Tatiana said that at first thought she was joking. “But then I heard the real horror and pain in Olga’s voice, and the sounds of a bear growling and chewing.”

"A Mendocino County woman who transformed her home into a bear bohemia with wading pools and specially prepared banquets..."

"... of corn meal and peanut butter sandwiches will not do jail time for doting on her hairy friends, but she will remain exiled from her property."

[Lynne Gravier, 77], known to almost everyone as the "Bear Woman," has been feeding bruins and other animals for decades, but nobody realized the extent of her devotion until neighbors began complaining. Last Aug. 24, seven fish and game wardens raided Gravier's home. They stumbled on what was essentially an animal hippie commune and shack-out pad.

In all 15 loafing black bears hung out with Gravier inside the house and on her deck, and lumbered around the compound like kings at a feast. Gravier named her oafish friends things like Smiley, Goofy, Connie, Biggie and Wombat. She admitted setting up a kiddie pool for wallowing. She fixed peanut butter sandwiches for her guests, sometimes mixing in glucosamine to ease the arthritis pain in older bears.

Some 6,000 pounds of rolled and cracked corn was delivered every month from a ranch supply house. Gravier stored the food in a 40-foot-long shipping container that she used as an ursine food dispensary.

Knight-errantry was not in evidence among the hulking chowhounds, who turned Gravier's home into a reeking outhouse. The cabin-style home was piled high with filth by the time of the raid and immediately condemned by county authorities.

Gravier also fed 18 cats, three dogs, 40 peacocks and a steady stream of visiting turkeys and deer.

And yet it took decades for the neighbors to begin complaining? And then, in the end, she gets no real punishment, after animal lovers protest the prosecution on behalf of the well-meaning lady. According to the neighbors, her loving ministrations were turning bears into problem bears that break into houses, chase sheep, and end up needing to get killed.

Bothersome bears are a particularly volatile issue in this cattle- and pot-growing town of 1,300 near the South Fork of the Eel River, in the heart of redwood country.

Pot-growing, eh? Seems like you can get away with breaking all kinds of laws these days... at least if your criminality has enough of a hippie vibe.

The global warming "consensus" is cracking up.

2 stories on Drudge right now:



1. "Alaska researcher who documented polar bears demise in Arctic placed on leave..."

Just five years ago, Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement.

Now, the wildlife biologist is on administrative leave and facing accusations of scientific misconduct.

The federal agency where he works told him he's being investigated for "integrity issues," but a watchdog group believes it has to do with the 2006 journal article about the bear....

The article and presentations drew national attention and helped make the polar bear a symbol for the global warming movement. Former vice president and climate change activist Al Gore mentioned the animal in his Oscar-winning global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Monnett said that alleging scientific misconduct "suggests that we did something deliberately to deceive or to, to change it. Um, I sure don't see any indication of that in what you're asking me about."

2. "New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In 'Global Warming' Alarmism..."

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed....

"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."

[T]he central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth's atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth's atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

Grizzly bear kills a man in Yellowstone Park.

The description comes out:

Marylyn Matayoshi told park officials that she and her husband were hiking back to their car along the Wapiti Lake Trail about 11 a.m. when they saw the bear and two cubs about 100 yards away. [Yellowstone Supt. Dan] Wenk said the couple had just emerged from a dense area of lodgepole pines into a broad meadow where the bears were.

The couple backed away, and then turned in the direction they had come. When they looked back, the grizzly was charging them, Wenk said. Matayoshi yelled to his wife to run, and she took shelter behind a fallen tree at the side of the trail, according to officials.

Wenk said the sow reached Brian Matayoshi first, fatally biting and clawing him. The bear then approached Marylyn Matayoshi, and picked her up. Wenk said it is likely that because she was playing dead, the bear moved on.

It was the first killing by a bear in Yellowstone since 1986, and the bear was protecting her cubs.

As long as we're talking about Yellowstone, here are some lush photographs of Yellowstone. I especially like the ones of Grand Prismatic Spring. Generally, I prefer landscape photographs to photographs of animals. People get strangely excited about seeing animals in Yellowstone. I mean, a chipmunk begging for food? A coyote running through grass? You probably have these things in your home town. As for the bigger creatures... I'd leave them alone.

"The family of an 11-year-old boy killed by a bear in Utah in 2007 was awarded nearly $2 million in damages...."

"Judge Dale Kimball... ruled that the federal government was 65 percent responsible for Samuel's death, the state government 25 percent responsible, and the boy's family 10 percent responsible."

"'Bear-Wolf' Stalks Southern Wisconsin."

Aw, come on. We've got enough problems without Bear-Wolf.

"All I saw was the creature. One paw -- or whatever was on it -- reaching over to grab the deer. The head looked like a cross between a bear and a wolf... It had big pointy ears like a wolf. It scared the living heck out of me. I threw it into drive and off I went."

He said the creature was the color of a bear and had a snout like a bear.

Can we agree it was a bear? Now, settle down.

"And that was when he discovered he had a special kinda way with animals."

"They just come right up to him like he was a natural part of the wilderness."



Have you been living free in harmony and majesty like we did back in the 1970s?

***

Charles Sellier Jr., the man who created "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” has died at the age of 67.

Loosely based on an actual person who escaped into the wilderness in 1853 after being accused of a murder he didn’t commit, Grizzly Adams is a bearded, barrel-chested man (played by Dan Haggerty) who counts among his friends raccoons, skunks, ferrets, deer, coyotes, porcupines, an eagle and, of course, the abandoned grizzly bear cub who matures into a powerful companion named Ben.

ADDED: Did you have the same question I had?: Is Ben the same Ben as "Gentle Ben"? The answer is no: "there is no connection between the bears."



Wow! The 60s were so different from the 70s. The 60s had a lot of 50s in them, and the 70s had a lot of 60s, but not the part of the 60s that was leftover from the 50s. If you're not old like me, maybe those distinctions sound meaningless, but if you are, I bet you know exactly what I mean.

Why won't the Obama say that polar bears are endangered and thus make it possible to use the Endangered Species Act to deal with global warming?

"U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan sent the [Bush administration's] controversial listing decision back to the Obama administration in October, asking officials to clarify the language the agency used when it determined that polar bears aren’t 'endangered' under federal law. Environmentalists ... had hoped that Obama administration officials would ... protections to the species."

I'm guessing that wasn't changed because polar bears aren't endangered and because using the Endangered Species Act to fight global warming is a bad idea.