Magic Statistics

It has emerged that Shehzad Tanweer, one of the 7 July 2005 London bombers, left an estate with a net value of over £120,000. Mr Tanweer detonated a bomb at Aldgate Underground station that killed eight people. The closest thing to a steady job the 22-year-old man ever held was working part-time at his father's fish and chip shop. He became a student shortly before he blew himself up.

The officials investigating the 7/7 bombings say they are baffled as to where he acquired his wealth. Giraldus Cambrensis at Western Resistance suggests that it may have been a financial inducement from the masterminds who organised the bombings. An attempt to trace the money back to its source would be seem to be in order.

Tanweer is known to have visted Pakistan at least twice in the two years before the bombings, where he is believed to have attended an Islamist training camp.

Two of the most important harbours of the ancient world now lie under the urban centres of present-day Tyre and Sidon.

By drilling out cores of sediment from the modern urban centres of these cities, geologists have mapped out the former coastlines that the sediments have long since buried. From this they have pinpointed the likely sites of the old harbours, and have marked out locations that, they say, are in dire need of exploration and conservation.

The modern cities of Tyre and Sidon on the Lebanese coast were once the major launching points of the seafaring Phoenicians.
. . .
Both cities still carry the same name, but the coastlines on which they sit have been reshaped by silting since the time of the Phoenicians, about 3,000 years ago. Sidon has extended out to sea through the build-up of silt. And Tyre, which was once an island, has been joined up to the mainland by silting, while much of the old land has sunk beneath the waves.

Tyre and Sidon are both growing rapidly today, and archaeological sites could be lost if urban development is not properly managed.

via Bourque.

So say the growing numbers who choose not to have babies.

It's not that they don't like kids; they just want to be "childfree".
. . .
And actively deciding to be childfree is not unusual: 28% of degree educated women currently end their reproductive lives childless. Birth rates are declining across Europe and a 2003 survey found almost 25% of people in their late 30s did not have children. But those who choose not to have children are becoming more and more exercised about the benefits those with families can accrue.

Jerry Steinberg, advocate for childless adults, thinks they're suffering discrimination.

"People shouldn't be bribed to create more consuming polluters, and compensation should be based on qualifications and job performance, not on the number of children one has produced."

Here's a news flash for ya, Jerry: The problem is that Western societies are not creating enough "consuming polluters", as you so charmingly put it, to ensure their own survival.

Those who count themselves as childfree - and happy about it - are united in claiming they are not child haters.

No, we don't hate them but, as far as we're concerned, they're just "consuming polluters".