Well bully for London. Have any skyscrappers blown up of late have you?

Hang on... This is like the underwear gnomes isn't it?

Step 1) Terrorists crash planes in to buildings.
Step 2) ???
Step 3) Cops pushing people from their bikes on to the road falls under reasonable force.

Jim Henson should be, umm, sainted one day for being totally awesome.

This memorial statue for him gets me every time:

http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/images/Dedication/pages/16.Close%20up.htm

As the saying goes: An eye for an eye leaves everyone standing on a box in a robe with a sack on their head and their hands wired up to something.

How completely random... I leave the UK for a year, stop paying attention, and Stephen Fry - the same Stephen Fry who's an actor with a lovely speaking voice who described doing the Harry Potter audio books as "swimming in chocolate" - becomes an open source advocate extoiling the virtues of solid state storage?

How very random.

I used to get this when I was a kid (I dunno - under 8 perhaps) when I was falling asleep.

I seem to recall that it's not uncommon in children.

I think there's a typo in the above. You meant "LolcatNews8", right?

It wasn't until I was in the plane and waiting for takeoff did I realize the TSA guy had asked me why I was going to Boston when he was staring at my driver's license which clearly states my Boston address. I figured either I was being tested

I had US immigration do that to me.

"So this is your first time in this city?"

"Yes."

"Ahh! Welcome! Where are you staying?"

"Hotel Blah"

"And that's where you usually stay when you come to this city?"

"Ummm... No. It's my first time here."

He made two further mentions of what I usually did when I visited that city, despite me telling him it was my first time there. It's quite disorientating have weird conversations like that - particularly when you add some jetlag to the mix - I guess that's what they do it.

Does anyone know how good Heathrow is at catching people going through the 'Nothing to declare' customs line which is unstaffed except for unseen people behind two-way mirrors?

Last time I was going through there, they'd stopped two guys with large suitcases. The suitcases were open on some tables, and they were absolutely stuffed full of cigarettes and nothing else.

So it would seem they get at least some people just by reading their expressions...

I can't find a reference to it now, but apparently those mirrors are slightly distorted, like in a house of mirrors funhouse sort of thing, so that they make you look a little taller. Apparently seeing yourself looking taller makes you think you look good and you let your guard down and they can read your expression and come out and ask to have a chat.

Or maybe they just stop the people who jump in the air, click their heels and yell "Haha! I'm totally getting away with smuggling this contraband!"

Other fun Heathrow stories: first time I ever went to the UK and was going through immigration they sent me to a door off the side where they had a bunch of x-ray machines. Apparently they were looking for TB. Apparently only long-haired backpacker hippy types get TB, based on the people I saw waiting to get x-rayed. This was at 5am or something in the morning.

Also my traveling companion was stopped from reentering the UK at immigration, being told she'd worked illegally on her last visit and they were going to deny her entry and things were looking real bad and to sit down and wait for 45 minutes while they figured out what to do. While she had been working, it was within the limits of her visa, and we knew this. I'm sure they were just making us sweat it out to see if we burst in to tears and asked for mercy. In the end they just came back and told us to continue on - no other explanation or apology was offered.

From the article: "In the SPOT program, we have a conversation with (passengers) and we ask them about their trip," said Maccario from his office in Boston. "When someone lies or tries to be deceptive, ... there are behavior cues that show it. ... A brief flash of fear."

Oh, i've totally had this happen to me at Logan.

The airline gate agents had just swiped my boarding pass at the top of the jet bridge and someone grabbed my shoulder and asked me to step aside.

Two TSA people took me out of the line, a meter or two away, and proceeded to have a nice little chat to me about my trip for 5 minutes.

"Why were you here? Who were you visiting? What is your job?"... the usual sort of stuff. Towards the end it got weird... "What did you do for fun? Yeah, 'fun', you must have done something for fun? Did you eat out? What sort of restaurant is that? What topping did you have on your pizza? Was it any good?"

He completely lost interest and told me to go when I was in the middle of my endorsement for Santarpio's pepperoni pizza.

But, yeah. A series of rapid-fire questions, seemingly unrelated, and nothing to do with security, and then they get bored and walk away. Sheesh, if you're going to ask a question, at least wait to hear the answer.

Eeep - someone create a torrent of those zip files before their server melts!