The mediocre aviation magazine Plane & Pilot seems to have something offensive in every issue. Not rude, or opinionated, or controversial, but simply absurd.

I am talking about a series of ads they publish, from some retailer named “Checkmate Aviation”, which amongst other legitimate materials, sells pseudoscientific garbage. Consider their “Aviation Energy Enhancer Patch” (see 3/4 down this page). I quote:

The Energizer
The Energy Enhancer Patch gives you stamina and joie de vivre, perfect for those long cross-country flights. The company claims it uses a science called nanotechnology, which communicates with the body’s electromagnetic field and signals it to produce energy from fat cells.

Can anyone with even a modicum of science awareness fail to recognize that this is an April Fools trinket like magnets for making wine taste better, crystals to heal your dog, rocks to improve CD audio quality, homeopathic concoctions, and a whole army of other charlatan products? And yet, Plane & Pilot, a magazine dealing with a technical field, continues spreading its legs, err, pages, for little scraps of money, thereby pushing expensive trash to what they hope is a stupid readership.

(By the way, the magazine was never invited into our home. It was an undesired gift subscription that better not be renewed.)