Now lets see if I've got this right...

Smart Bear = Dumb Ass Tourist

Lets correct the equation down to the most common denominator...

Bear = Dumb Ass

Now lets bring it into down to earth, easy to understand, un-adulterated language...

50 percent of world(Human) Population
is equal to - Dumb Ass

Other 50 Percent can be divided by 2 in equal shares to Super evil and Super Lazy, of which reminds me why I am a Conservative in the 1st place.

I create software for personal financial planners, who are, in general, smarter than the average person. I still have to spend a substantial minority of my time making sure that they don't provide absolutely absurd inputs. For example, I always use a combo box for the marginal federal tax rate, not so much to make sure that what they choose is one of the six actual tax brackets as to assure that their input isn't something like "Henry Aaron." In many ways, it would be easier to write software for bears.

That park ranger's in the wrong business. H.L. Mencken lives!!

Being a Wyoming native, I can swear that story is not only true, but it doesn't even stratch the moronic surface. What's funny is that the closer the license plate origin is to Mass., the dumber the tourist. Sad, but true.

"I don't know if this story is really true, but it sounds true, which is good enough for a blog."

Frank, I can always count on you for a chuckle :)

The modern corollary is airline security. As in: How do you make sure the terrorists aren't able to sneak their weapons on board an airplane, while also minimizing the delays and intrusive nature of the screening process? For all the justifiable complaints against the TSA (and they are legion), the TSA is facing an unwinnable mandate.

I've seen the "bear-proof" trash cans in Big Bend National Park, so I can buy the story. I haven't seen dumb-ass tourists who couldn't figure out how to open the cans, but that is only because I was there to see the bears.

"For all the justifiable complaints against the TSA (and they are legion), the TSA is facing an unwinnable mandate"

This is because they are fighting the wrong battle. Instead of looking for weapons (and with my ninja skills, anything can be a weapon...especially my lethal hands) they need to look for terrorist.

And trying to make them nervose while standing in line just isn't going to do it.

The obvious corollary to this is that it's impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.

...Instead of looking for weapons (and with my ninja skills, anything can be a weapon...especially my lethal hands) they need to look for terrorist....

I take it that you're advocating the use of profiling as a means to find the terrorists. I'm wondering just how this would work. I realize that most of the world's current-day terrorists are Arab Muslim males, but you'd miss John Walker Lindh, the Russian Black Widows (caucasian women), and the various Indonesian and other Asian Muslim terrorists. And setting aside the Muslim terrorist angle, a system relying on profiling would allow a Timothy McVeigh to get through.

Profiling can, at best, be only part of airline screening. The rest of us are going to have to put up with it.

And the really sad thing about these bear proof dumpsters in Yosemite is that it's not just the visitors (the official term we use for tourists) who can't seem to use these things correctly...the concessionaries can't either. It’s their job and responsibility to ensure the trash gets placed in the dumpsters where they belong and to lock it after themselves. It seems this is something they are incapable of doing (but then, what can you expect from a company that calls itself the DNC?) When giving campfire programs to visitors in Wawona about bears, I played a game, who is smarter the bears or the humans? Without any prompting, the visitors all unanimously declared BEARS! And they were, sadly, correct.