You know, it's not entirely unreasonable that someone could package a bomb to look like a gift-wrapped paperback. So if their technology can't distinguish your book from a potential explosive via X-rays alone, it may have to get opened. Explosives detection results in false alarms, unfortunately, but as far as I know most countries do it and it rarely results in such inconvenience to passengers.
The rifle cartridge is obviously on their contraband list, so it should have been caught. Someone probably brought it through accidentally. .22 LR?
This is an exciting idea, but I think the home page focuses far too much on these hypothesized advantages of a dynamic VM. Not only are the advantages unproven, it's hard to see how this project represents anything novel in that aspect given that ClojureScript already exists.
The things that come to my mind are things like Numpy, Scipy, PySide, boost.python and all other sorts of Python bindings to C, C++ and Fortran code that aren't readily available on the JVM. Also, the startup time that the JVM can't match, the Python standard library and the other random bits people have developed that make Python such a wonderfully flexible scripting environment.
If you have excellent interop, there will be plenty of interest in this project regardless of how fast or slow it is. If it's fast, all the better.
Currently deployed scanners operate in the 24-30 GHz range. Generally, microwave radiation is considered safe as long as it's not intense enough to cause burns.
The rifle cartridge is obviously on their contraband list, so it should have been caught. Someone probably brought it through accidentally. .22 LR?