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Liddle America

Are biscuits a terrorist threat?

19 August 2006

Why can’t you take biscuits on board at JFK, when computer games are fine at La Guardia? Rod Liddle, in the US, is mystified

Aurora, Illinois

I’m here to look at a particle accelerator. They’ve got a big one in Aurora, Illinois, all these neutrinos whizzing round and round, wishing they were anywhere but here — and with some justification. Aurora is too distant to properly associate itself with Chicago, 40 miles to the east, but sufficiently attached to the city to not exist in its own right. A desolate concrete ‘hi-tech’ suburb, a hastily tarmac-adamed prairie festooned with Taco Bells, pay-day loan outlets and anti-matter. A sort of endless Slough, except without the charm.

Here’s a guess, though: particle accelerators are one of those things which you’re still not allowed to take as hand baggage on flights out of British airports. I think we can be pretty sure about that. It may be the only thing we can be sure about. When I flew out last Saturday you could take absolutely nothing as hand luggage, not even the huge

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