That Bloke In The Big Smoke

I travelled through this station for only the second time since its significant rebuild a few years ago, and it's got the best view from a railway station platform. The platform spans the length of the bridge. St Paul's Cathedral can also be seen from this spot, but just missed out to the left of this panorama. However I did manage to capture: Tower 42, the Cheesegrater, the Walkie Talkie, Cannon Street station, the Canary Wharf skyscrapers, Tower Bridge, the Millennium "Wobbly" Bridge, the Shard and the former Bankside power station that now houses the Tate Modern art gallery. The station itself is a block of concrete.

Brilliant: London's Central Line turned into a line graph of house prices. Taken from http://t.co/luGS0bahMN pic.twitter.com/xeOcuqQr76

— Andrew Losowsky (@losowsky) November 12, 2014

A new collection of data maps of London reveals a city heaving with information.

(via Going Underground's Blog)

A Nigerian-American man was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport last Wednesday because he was allegedly attempting to travel with a boarding pass that was "issued in another person's name and for a flight that had departed a day earlier." Worryingly for you and me, this was apparently not the first time he had travelled this way with his most recent such trip earlier in the week. But on Wednesday he forgot to take a shower.

There's some fascinating additional stuff in a blog post by Gulliver on The Economist. It includes an explanation given by security guru Bruce Schneier in 2008 about how a terrorist might exploit loopholes in airport security:

"To slip through the only check against the no-fly list, the terrorist uses a stolen credit card to buy a ticket under a fake name. "Then you print a fake boarding pass with your real name on it and go to the airport. You give your real ID, and the fake boarding pass with your real name on it, to security. They’re checking the documents against each other. They’re not checking your name against the no-fly list—that was done on the airline's computers. Once you're through security, you rip up the fake boarding pass, and use the real boarding pass that has the name from the stolen credit card. Then you board the plane, because they’re not checking your name against your ID at boarding."

Fills you with confidence, innit?

Maybe you've seen this before but I just came across it. The passengers don't look too impressed.

You know you live in this country when the station master announces the passing through of a steam train. I only wish I had a camera to capture the beauty. There were at least two dozen enthusiasts/hobbyist photographers who arrived at the station just to snap a shot. I got chatting with the chap next to me and he said there's at least one special service every month. The carriages reminded me of the ones still used in India and I was surprised how many were sat inside. This particular beast was built in 1937 and had an Art Deco style to it. Nearly four years in this country and the first time I've seen a steam train in service. The only time I've travelled by one is in India, the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, an UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was built by the British in 1908 and is by a long distance the most picturesque railway journey I've ever completed in my life. My dad was lucky because he travelled by it for nearly a decade while at boarding school. The train I saw today was on its way to Edinburgh, a mere eleven hour journey. Apparently there was another one that left Euston earlier in the day for Chester. The chap next to me got a tip off for both. He was surprised there was only one other person at Euston and he was kind enough to point out the optimal vantage point from which to photograph it. And I've looked the site up where all these services are listed and turns out they're a lot more frequent than I expected. There's several travelling every week. Needless to say, the bucket list just got bigger!

WORLD:
The death of climate legislation [5 Oct]
US midterms set to be most expensive [4 Oct]
Commonwealth Games: are opening ceremonies worth it? [4 Oct]
Park51 drawings prove how far 'Ground Zero mosque' claims are from truth [3 Oct]
Over 100,000 Irish workers expected to leave country before 2012 [30 Sep]

TEA PARTY:
How the Tea Party movement began [5 Oct]
Tea Party activists invoke spirit of 1773 [5 Oct]
Profile: the main Tea Party groups [4 Oct]
The Tea Party: five to watch [4 Oct]

UK:
Liverpool board agree sale to Boston Red Sox owners [6 Oct]
Ken Clarke to unveil plans for prisoners to work 40-hour week [5 Oct]
How benefit cuts could affect you [5 Oct]
Can Britain ever be a fair society? [3 Oct]
Britons robbed of £1.7bn in last five years while on holidays abroad [3 Oct]
Could Dundee be the new Bilbao? [3 Oct]
Ed Miliband gets lukewarm welcome from north of England Jews [30 Sep]

MISC:
Are guidebooks facing extinction? [3 Oct]
Are the best pictures on Facebook or Flickr? [3 Oct]
Twitter and Facebook cannot change the real world, says Malcolm Gladwell [3 Oct]

IRONY:
Martin McGuinness condemns Real IRA's Derry bomb [5 Oct]

Some sound advice on a forum: why not obtain the ESTA even if you are not planning a trip to America? It saves you $14 once the charge kicks in, the authorization is valid for 2 years and it allows multiple-entries. It will save you the trouble of applying for one if you do visit and will save you the hassle of obtaining it in case of an emergency visit. The authorization is usually provided immediately, but can take up to 72 hours. And considering its says they won't let you into the country without it, why take a risk? It takes less than five minutes to fill in the form and besides, the flight and address information is optional. You can leave it blank and fill it in at a later date if necessary. Even if you already have a valid ESTA, you could apply for a new one to avoid paying the $14 fee. Who knows, they might increase it by the time your free one expires. Apparently $4 goes to admin, $10 to a US tourism fund. Of course, this only applies to citizens eligible under the VWP.

--ESTA FORM LINK