Anyway, the echo of disappointment at cancelled flights will be heard for, well, for a long time. Maybe longer than radio insists on playing Billy Joel songs. It might just get to the point of consumer revolt, whereupon there are only two airlines left, having been replaced in the competitive marketplace by private jet, steamship, bamboo raft, pogo stick....When that day comes, let's hope one of the airlines is Swiss Air, if only for the in-flight menu options. On all international flights, here are the offerings (please don't miss the "bland menu" and extra credit for the long-haul crowd pleaser, chicken nuggets for kids):

The planned protest taps a growing unease over the full-body scans. Privacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center are seeking a court order to halt the use of invasive scanners, saying the scanners are illegal and violate passenger privacy. They also say the government has done little to ensure that images taken by the devices are not saved. (The Transportation Security Administration has asserted that the machines cannot store pictures, but security personnel at a courthouse in Florida were found to not only have saved images but shared them among colleagues in order to humiliate one of their co-workers.)

Scientists have also expressed concern that radiation from the devices could have long-term health effects on travelers. 

Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University's center for radiological research, has said that although the danger posed to the individual passenger is very low, he is urging researchers to carry out more tests on the device to look at the way it affects specific groups who could be more sensitive to radiation. Brenner said children and passengers with gene mutations - around one in 20 of the population - are more at risk as they are less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA. 

"The individual risks associated with X-ray backscatter scanners are probably extremely small," he told the UK's Daily Mail last winter. "If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with X-rays then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk. The population risk has the potential to be significant."

Although passengers have the right to opt out of going through a scanner, the TSA recently announced that passengers who opt out of body scanners at airport security checkpoints would be required to undergo an enhanced physical pat-down that would include agents using open hands and fingers to touch and press chest and groin areas of passengers. In the past, agents were instructed to use the backs of their hands for pat-downs.

This is an iPhone sleeve, not an actual Pop Tart.

Read a news report in The Washington Post

The Bedbug Registry's logo.

"The Bedbug Registry is a free, public database of bedbug sightings in the U.S. and Canada. We have about 20,000 bedbug reports dating back to 2006.

[The] site is administered by Maciej Cegłowski, a writer and computer programmer, as a way of getting vengeance against bedbugs after a traumatic experience in a San Francisco hotel."

The registry even offers alerts, which are emails sent when someone within a mile of you reports bedbugs. For people living in New York City, that could become burdensome for the inbox.

The mayor of Naples, a southern Italian beach town, has ordered police officers to fine women who wear short miniskirts or show too much cleavage, as part of a battle to raise what he describes as the level of public decorum.Twiggy, not to be confused with Snooki, thank you

At a council meeting on Monday, Luigi Bobbio, who was elected on Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party ticket, won a vote to ban clothing considered "very short" from the town of Castellammare di Stabia, south of Naples. Police will get the power to hand out €300 ($420) fines to offenders.

Explaining what he meant by "very short", Bobbio said officers would target women wearing miniskirts that did not fully cover their underwear. "The display of too much cleavage will also earn a fine," added a spokesman.

(Snooki, please rearrange vacation plans accordingly.)

Bobbio said he had faith in officers to make snap decisions. "They won't need to carry out checks up close," he told Corriere del Mezzogiorno. "One glance will be enough to judge."

The new rules, which were approved by the town council yesterday, drew outrage from local centre-left politicians, who mounted a sit-in outside the town hall. "The Bobbio administration is male chauvinist," the organisers of the protest said in a statement. "This town does need decorum, but not the decorum that is measured by a tape measure held against women's clothing."

"By equating women's clothing with urban decorum, this measure implies women are no more than benches or hedges," said councillor Angela Cortese.

Cabin air is refreshed about 15 times an hour, compared with less than 12 an hour in an office building, Dr. Mark Gendreau, an emergency and aviation medicine expert at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass. told the New York Times recently. On most full-size jets, the air is also circulated through hospital-grade HEPA filters, which are supposed to remove 99.97 percent of bacteria and the minuscule particles that carry viruses. The cabin air is also divided into separate ventilation systems covering every seven rows or so, limiting the ability of germs to travel from one end of the plane to the other.

Perhaps we can breathe a bit easier when forced to ride with the great unwashed. Just don't touch anything! Many frequent fliers, including Dr. Gendreau, take some precautionary measures to reduce the risk of contact with infectious germs once onboard. They wipe down the unstowed tray table, the handle on the overhead bin, and other hard surfaces with alcohol-based hand sanitizer. A handy thing to have--if you can get it past security--since some doctors say it's unwise to use the water in an airplane bathroom even to wash your hands. Bon voyage.

Dr. Merrell's Tip: