It's been a crazy couple of weeks, bear-wise.

After giving the owner of a book containing $20,000 five months to claim his treasure, the Massachusetts man who found it in the trash says he's willing to wait one more month.

The New York Post—the fascist barrel-scraping newspaper with its finger placed closest to the vibrant pulse of young, "hip" Brooklynites—has unearthed a new, hip trend, which is occurring among hipsters—in Brooklyn, of course. The hip, fashionmongering young people are diving into dumpsters to extract food, completely without care for the inherent wackiness of such a stunt, their eyes focused on only on nutrition—and hipness. Who ever heard of such a thing?

What is our nation's very serious opposition party up to, these days? Oh, just staging mock trials in Congress using "evidence" they found in ACORN's trash!

The internet's been buzzing over a Brooklyn company's plan to convert discarded dumpsters into swimming pools, and now that they've successfully conned doltish hipsters into swimming inside of dumpsters, the owners want to expand their evil empire into suburbia.

Are you a newly unemployed Wall Streeter looking to keep up your expensive eating habits? College kid looking to save a few bucks? Good news! The economic downturn seems to have inspired renewed interest in dumpster diving (well, with the media at least), which, in case you're unfamiliar with the practice, involves scrounging through giant trash receptacles outside grocery stores and restaurants in search of still-fresh food to eat. (There's no actual "diving" involved, at least as far as we can tell.) We know what you're thinking. Yes, it's horrifying and disgusting. And yet who knew the activity had so many accomplished alumni? (Including the Times's former dining critic Ruth Reichl, no less, although she also explains it was about three decades ago.) There's a whole political context to being a "freegan"; something about evil corporations, the Man, and saving the planet. Or something. But just think of the cash you'll save! How many gourmet food shops toss out perfectly good cuts of Wagyu beef, just because they're four hours past an arbitrary expiration date? But where do you start if you're a novice with a sophisticated palette? There are so many dumpsters around the city. And some of then have, like, dead bodies in them, not tasty Asian pears!

Mark Bittman, the rich cookbook author who writes a column and the "Bitten" blog for the New York Times, appears to have ripped off his blog's logo from Food Not Bombs, the hippie/ punk/ anarchist/ lefty activist group dedicated to feeding the homeless for free and rescuing food from dumpsters. Evidence that Bittman is not in fact a dedicated member of FNB: his latest blog entry bemoans the ordeal of his recent trip to Paris, where he was forced to eat at a "sad" Vietnamese restaurant that pre-made its crepes. Quel horreur! FNB's style would be to pull the leftover crepes out of the garbage and mix them up into some sort of vegan stew, served in a park while yelling at the police. Photographic evidence of the logos after the jump.