I and the Bird #31 is online for your birding and bird watching pleasure.

Tangled Bank #61 has the best science writing from across a broad spectrum of disciplines.

The 42nd Skeptics’ Circle is available.

I’ve not shopped at Radio Shack in many years.  Given recent events, I will never shop there again.  Their approach to laying off about 400 employees were as dehumanizing as they were offensive.  What did they do?  They sent e-mails to all those being laid off to tell them they were fired immediately.  The messages began with the following: “The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated.”  After that, it was essentially “pack your things and get the hell out, and don’t forget to drop your security badge off on your way to your car”.  Any company that would act so callously toward its own employees deserves no business from me.  Let them fail, I say, and let their executives burn in the court of public opinion for being such assholes who couldn’t take a few minutes per employee to let them know in person they were being let go.  Pathetic.

This is absolutely hysterical.  What a great way to describe friendship.

Surprise!  The DOJ admits it’s been ignoring domestic law enforcement in favor of the War on Terror™ — and we know how well that’s been working.  “‘I’m well aware that there are many needs and desires on the part of law enforcement that we have not been able to serve well,’ [Deputy Attorney General Paul J.] McNulty said at the national crime summit organized by the Police Executive Research Forum.”  Considering violent crime is increasing dramatically across the US, and many local law enforcement agencies and organizations blatantly declare the federal government has ignored their needs and requests for help, it utterly shocks me to hear this administration admit it long ago stopped caring about domestic issues so it could divert its resources to international disputes while our country falls apart.

I wish our president cared as much.  “Like heads of state everywhere, [Uruguay President] Tabaré Vázquez spends most of his workday in meetings at the presidential offices, reading reports or making speeches. But one morning each week, in a luxury perhaps available only to the president of a country of 3.3 million people, he reverts to his original career and heads off to a clinic to practice medicine.”  He’s an oncologist who specializes in breast cancer.  And what does Dubya do?  Vacation.  A lot.  Especially when natural disasters and other critical events are taking place.  He could learn a great deal from President Vázquez.

This is when elephants weep: African Elephants Slaughtered in Herds Near Chad Wildlife Park.  “Poachers hack off the animal’s face to remove its ivory tusks—which are all the illegal hunters value—and leave the massive carcass where it lies. Herds of such kills are piling up on the borders of one of the elephants’ last central African strongholds, Chad’s Zakouma National Park, according to a disturbing new report.”  More than a hundred recent kills have been discovered in the last year alone.  There is a short gallery of photos related to the report; look at them despite how disturbing they are.

Self-Criticism, American and otherwise, from Scott Adams of The Dilbert Blog (and cartoon).  I strenuously suggest you read it.

Why do I need an ad campaign to remind me about September 11?  I agree with the answer John provides.

Yet another reason you should do whatever it takes to reduce stress in your life.  We already know it kills, maims, greatly diminishes life’s pleasures, and otherwise disrupts normalcy and contentment.  Now we know it “rapidly [exacerbates] the formation of brain lesions that are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease”.

Get your invertebrate on at Circus of the Spineless #12.

With me, there is no love lost with Wal-Mart.  That should be clear by now.  Here’s something along those lines: Wal-Mart censors the books it carries so they don’t end up with anything on the shelves that might offend the WASP and conservative majority of their clientele.  Thanks to PZ, we now have a way to help them further this goal of editorializing everything ever written so people aren’t subjected to contrary opinions: the Wal-Mart bible letter.  Among a great many other incitements to violence and hatred and other very bad things, the bible endorses and recommends people “murder hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees” since they work on the sabbath, “demands that readers discriminate against women”, “fully endorses slavery” and even promotes “the beating of slaves”, requires that everyone “murder homosexual men” and commit “hate crimes against innocent citizens”, and orders followers of the ‘good book’ to “murder those who do not believe in the ‘god’ of the Bible”.  It’s obvious this book is yet another text the Wal-Mart employees missed in their determination of what is right and what is wrong, and therefore it should not be available to the stores’ customers.  Go sign the petition today.  Either Wal-Mart supports this declaration of and demand for evil, or it agrees any such material must be removed immediately from store shelves.  Let’s not forget it’s a crime to incite some of these activities.