Salon :: Tech & Business

Ask the pilot: Do airplanes make you fart more? What happened to the dog hair on my suitcase? The pilot lets us in on readers' probing questions

Some serious aviation stories have been making the rounds this week. The controversy over NASA's pilot survey, for example. And how about the Department of Homeland Security's latest "Secure Flight" proposal, asking that foreign governments hand over a docket of personal data on all airline passengers bound for the United States. That data can include, among other things, a flier's reading preferences and -- I am not making this up -- sexual habits. We'll get to this stuff next week; that last one is so nutty that it will take a few days for my head to stop spinning. Until then, some refreshment. <P>The early days of this column -- it's now in its sixth year -- followed a pretty standard format. I'd begin with a brief intro, then segue into a series of questions and answers. Hence the title, "Ask the Pilot." The Q&A structure was eventually outgrown, but I still go back to it now and again -- most recently <a href="http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2007/10/19/askthepilot250/">a week ago.</a> I have always used actual, reader-submitted questions, edited for clarity as need be. The first-ever question, I remember, came from <a href="http://www.carol-steinfeld.com">Carol Steinfeld,</a> a woman in Boston who once wrote a guide to using human urine as fertilizer. "How the heck do planes fly in the first place?" she wanted to know. "How can something that big and heavy stay aloft?" It was at once a sophomoric and profoundly sensible question. It later became the opening question in my book as well. <p>...</p><img src="http://feeds.salon.com/~r/salon/tech/~4/175132428" height="1" width="1"/>

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