"Although people had been instructed to leave the animal alone, 'some members of the public continued to stop next to the power pole to film and take pictures of the bear, so the bear remained at the top of the pole'..."

"... the department said in a statement. If animals touch two wires simultaneously, they can be electrocuted, so small birds are usually unharmed, said James Dwyer, a wildlife biologist at EDM International, a consulting firm that works with electric companies. Larger animals like hawks and bears are at greater risk, he said."

From "'Heartbreaking' Video Shows Bear Before It Was Electrocuted Atop Utility Pole/The animal’s plight alarmed onlookers and highlighted the drought conditions that are forcing wild bears closer to where people live in search of food" (NYT gift link).

People need to stop rubbernecking. That link goes to Wikipedia where we learn:

H. L. Mencken said the word rubberneck is "almost a complete treatise on American psychology" and "one of the best words ever coined."

By 1909, rubbernecking was used to describe the wagons, automobiles and buses used in tours around American cities, and through their Chinatowns. The tours included a megaphone-wielding individual offering commentary on the urban landscape. Chinese Rubbernecks was the title of a 1903 film....

I looked for that old film, but didn't find it at YouTube, where I did find this: 

And, via Wikipedia, here's Čumil, a popular sculpture of a rubbernecker that you can pose with if you go to Bratislava:

What is it about us humans, stopping to stare? It's not just that one bear has died because of our rubbernecking. Many have died. And some of us have lived because others refrained from rubbernecking. I count myself in that group.

"Angela Chao, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law, spent her last minutes alive frantically calling her friends for help as her Tesla slowly sank in a pond..."

"... on a remote Texas ranch, according to a report.... Chao invited several of her girlfriends from Harvard Business School to spend the weekend on a gorgeous, sprawling 900-acre private property in Texas’ Hill Country.... While making a K-turn, she put the car in reverse instead of drive, she told them. While going backwards, the car went over an embankment and into a pond — and was sinking fast.... Blanco County emergency units finally arrived at 12:28 a.m. — a full 24 minutes after they received the call.... One responder described the Tesla as completely submerged. Sheriff’s deputies even stood on top of it during the rescue efforts, trying to bust open a window.... A tow truck arrived to pull the car out of the pond but it didn’t have a cable long enough to reach the vehicle.... A longer cable was finally retrieved. At least one tow truck driver, however, said he was afraid of being electrocuted by the electric vehicle...."

The NY Post reports.

Do electric cars threaten electrocution when submerged? If Chao had been able to get out of the car, would she have been electrocuted? And why was the window so hard to break? Was there a special problem with Tesla, where there's no way to open the door if the electronics fail? Did Chao believe help was on the way and decide to remain in the car? 

ADDED: Here's a Heatmap article from last October: "Help! Will My Electric Boat or Car Electrocute Me If It Sinks? Fact-checking a Trump-inspired fear."

"Benjamin Franklin, who is often inaccurately said to have discovered electricity, once shocked himself while trying to electrocute a turkey."

"Franklin believed that 'birds kill’d in this manner eat uncommonly tender,' although modern poultry research... appears to indicate that the flesh of birds killed by electricity might actually be tougher. Franklin’s testimony is one of the earliest accounts of what it feels like to touch the wrong wire. 'I have lately made an experiment in electricity that I desire never to repeat,' he wrote to his brother. Witnesses told him that 'the flash was very great, and the crack as loud as a pistol; yet, my senses being instantly gone, I neither saw the one nor heard the other.' Of the shock itself, he wrote that he felt 'what I know not how to describe—a universal blow through my whole body from my head to my foot, which seemed within as well as without; after which the first thing I took note of was a violent, quick shaking of my body.' As a boy I once shocked myself severely by plugging in a light for my fish tank while my hands were wet. The current that traveled up my arm seemed to make its own path. When it was over, I thought, I’m still here."

That's the second-to-last paragraph of "Illuminating the Brain’s ‘Utter Darkness'/A new biography considers the peculiar life of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, whose discovery that nerve cells are individual completely overthrew the existing theory of the brain" (NYRB).

"Many people say I want to kill myself because I do this."

"People can say what they want. I do it because I want to be cured."

Electric therapy, via lying on railroad tracks, in Indonesia, where "many practice a form of Islam that is mixed with superstition and traditional beliefs, including voodoo-like treatments to ward off spells and illnesses." So... it's not New Age. It's Old Age.

"Earth Hour"... and other revealing "climate change" hypocrisies.

"Some of the lights the state Capitol were turned off Saturday night as part of Earth Hour a worldwide effort to get people, institutions and governments to shut off their lights for an hour to bring awareness to climate change."

Oh, I'm getting some awareness out of this, all right. This is heightening my awareness that the people who do stunts like this do not actually believe in the "climate change" emergency. Anyone who actually believed would oppose — among many, many other things — all the decorative illumination of the exteriors of public buildings. Just turning it off for an hour? Do you think we are idiots?

***

This reminds me of those churchgoers who pray for an hour a week — in public — and spend the rest of their time engaging in whatever nasty behavior they please. Why do they do this? Do they think they'll get absolution? Eh. You have to actually believe to think there's absolution. If they really believed, they wouldn't behave like that.  I think they, in their selfish interest, hope to gain favor and to prompt other people to believe and behave virtuously.

***

Some illumination of public buildings is required by the FAA, as noted in the linked article. But that reminds me: Why are people flying all over the place anyway? If we really believed in the touted emergency, we would limit flying to the truly essential. And what would be truly essential?

Business and government meetings can be done by video conference. Close down that that government building altogether! Think of all the carbon emissions that would save. (I will concede that in a representative democracy, officials really may need to mingle together in the flesh)

Recreational travel is a monument to disbelief in the seriousness of the climate change alarm. How can you go jaunting about to Europe or wherever and turn around and expect other people to buy tiny tin-can cars?

***

How about if everyone stays home and reads. Read until you figure out how to write English (or whatever language you think you know). The Wisconsin State Journal writes "to bring awareness to climate change." Like "climate change" is an entity that could be jolted into conscious thought.

"Democrats are bailing out on the word 'stimulus.'"

Writes Carl Hulse.

In a notable shift, Congressional leaders and officials of the incoming Obama administration are actively trying to retire that term and use the more marketable “economic recovery program” as the descriptor for the multibillion-dollar economic initiative to be considered early next year.

Is this just label-changing? "Recovery" -- is the result you want, the end as opposed to the means. No, no, no, it's a recovery program. The means is a program.

The change in emphasis reflects a realization that words matter. Architects of the $700 billion Treasury Department program concluded too late that something unabashedly promoted as a Wall Street “bailout” conjured images of well-heeled suspects sprung from jail or water feverishly tossed from a rapidly filling boat.

And it made everyone want one.

And “stimulus” — a buzzword from earlier this year — combines bureaucratic wonkiness with the concept of shock therapy, Democrats worried....

Combining bureaucratic wonkiness with the concept of shock therapy... hmmm....