How best to protect America from the newly urgent threat of terrorists going the wrong way through airport security? Human tire spikes? Subway turnstiles? Boom Boom Room bouncers? Nothing. Nothing will ever completely stop idiots from wrong-waying airport security.

The Secret Service is investigating an effigy hung (hanged?) from a building in Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter's hometown. The doll was found hanging on Main St. along with a sign helpfully identifying it as Obama. Small town USA! [AP] [photo]

The New York Times has travel writing issues; specifically, the accepting of junkets by their writers, and then having to fire them to the public in Clark Hoyt's ombudsman column. It's come to a peak. Special appearance by Mike Albo!

The newest sweet, cracklike, habit-forming oversharing platform combines the powers of Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook, and mainlines them right to your face. It's called Formspring.Me, and like crack, it'll destroy your life. It's evil, fun, and addictive. And we have one.

He's a mainstay on NBC's The Office, a star of The Hangover, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that he's a skilled stand-up comic. Ed Helms played a virtuoso set at 2009's Telluride Comedy Festival complete with a baby grand piano.

While we debate the merits of intrusive screening methods, some guy at Newark International Airport foiled TSA with the ingenious plot of walking the wrong way through the exit of a terminal checkpoint. The terminal is on lock-down.

So! John Mayer's on a roll these days. The Celebrity-Industrial Complex investigative blogger and expert on date-rapey sounding quotes is now suggesting to his minions that they embark on a one-week digital cleanse. And we're here to help.

The issue people take with trend pieces is that [this thing] should be [that thing]. That's not the problem with the "People are Illegally Smoking in New York Bars" pieces, because breaking laws is always trendy! The problem is...

Sometimes, even Phyllis Nefler's gotta take a break, and she's gone skiing—skiing-skiing—this weekend. Taking her place to rock the NYT's Weddings & Celebrations is my bloggy colleague Lilit Marcus, the Nice Jewish Girl behind Save the Assistants. Lilit?

Long thing everyone's reading by person with funny last name about guys who write famous books, with pretty pink emasculating charts. Old ones=assholes. New ones=pussies. Only pointed conclusion is that John Updike's still a perv. And that's 40! [NYT]

Inevitable Things: Americans are literally living off of food stamps, more ( again) than ever.

Wow. So, Carles, our anonymous Hipster of the Decade winner, is being name-checked and referenced in the New York Times. Does this mean he's 'over' 4 all alt bros evrwhr? Proof, right here:

Rachel Sklar, Mediaite's executive editor and resident Lady Gaga Penis Conspiracy-debunker, might've found her Watergate. She's making unconfirmed, shaky, but fascinating arguments for Beyonce playing a New Year's Eve show for Lindsay Lohan AND Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi's kid.

Richard Pryor as a blind man, Gene Wilder as a deaf man, hijinx, bumbling, spills, chills and thrills? What more could you want in a comedy?

The New York Times reports today on colleges that are trying to make themselves less worthless when it comes to returns on the investment of one's higher education. How're they doing?

Charlie Sheen's kids: staying with their mom. Michael Jackson's estate: being collected on by people worse than Joe Jackson. Alicia Keys and Arianna Huffington want places in the city. Kristen Bell gets a BAAAAW. Presenting your Sunday Morning Gossip Roundup:

Say what you want about John Mayer, he's actually a decent stand-up comedian. In this clip, he riffs on masturbation and US Weekly on a boat full of people we're assuming are screaming girls.

"Another fucking Bono op-ed," a tipster astutely notes! The U2 frontman has Ten Ideas to Change the World, and they're in the Times' Op-Ed section "in the spirit of rock star excess." So how 'bout ten ideas to change Bono?

New York said goodbye to 2009 and kicked off the decade with a rough 48 hours that included a murder suicide, a crotch stabbing, and a teenage knife fight.

There are some issues people won't shut up about that aren't important. There are some issues people won't shut up about that are important. And then there's this heated issue, which falls squarely in the middle.