The Turn. “At the very heart of winged flight lies the banked

turn, a procedure that by now seems so routine and

familiar that airline passengers appreciate neither

its elegance and mystery nor its dangerously

delusive character. The author, a pilot, takes us up

into the subject.” One of the points in this essay is the way in which the aerodynamic forces in a turn can counteract the inner ear’s positional sense and contrary to common sense one may be unable to feel one’s position relative to the vertical, especially when flying without visual cues. A pilot friend of mine explained to me the way in which, if I understood it correctly, this can easily get inexperienced pilots in trouble and may have caused the fatal crash of JFK Jr’s plane. [Atlantic Monthly]