A bear can ride a bicycle.

A bear can ride a bicycle.

I once heard Daniel Dennett begin a philosophy lecture that way. It was a striking opening, but I would bastardize his subsequent point if I tried to summarize it. Now I'm only beginning my blog post this way in a transparent bid for Zemanta to find me a cool image of a bear on a bicycle with which to decorate this utterly fluffy and meaningless post. I mean, it's COOL that a bear can ride a bicycle... as long as people aren't, y'know, whipping bears into submission, or mistreating them, or forcing them to perform against their wills. But come to think of it, does a bear ever WANT to ride a bike? Who can say? Maybe animals should just be left alone.

The whole topic reminds me of a John Irving story embedded within his novel The World According to Garp, in which a bear rides a bicycle (if I recall correctly). That was an excellent novel. But, I'm sorry to say, after all of this writing about bears and bicycles, Zemanta has merely suggested some photos of bicycles (sans bears), and some images of teddy bears, but not a single photo of a bear on a bicycle. Aw well, it was an awfully specific request.

Ergo, I'm going to take matters into my own hands and Google image-search "bear" and "bicycle."



There ya go. You know, the more I think about it, the more *wrong* it somehow seems that anyone ever even tried to get a bear to ride a bicycle. I hope that the above-depicted bear had a good life, despite everything.