Actually, you described it pretty well. What you don't get is something for nothing. The intakes that work well do the following, get cooler air from outside the engine compartment whether through the hood, from a wheel well, through the grill (not behind the radiator), or at the base of the windshield. Flow that air unimpeded to the carb/throttle body etc, to be mixed with fuel and then distributed to the cylinders. In a naturally aspirated engine, this all takes place at ONE ATMOSPHERE, the tornado thing is a restriction, air cleaners are a restriction throttle bodies/carbs are all restrictions to the incoming air. They are therefore parisitic devices in that they are limiting flow. There are things on the exhaust side that actually influence what happens on the intake side, for example a well desiged tuned header will get its exhaust pulses to the collecter at different times which creats a vacuum in the collector which causes a vacuum to be siting outside the next exhaust valve so that when it opens that vacuum pulse helps pull the burnt mixture out of the cyclinder. Because of overlap (the intake opens before the exhaust closes ) this vacuum pulse helps pull the fresh charge into the cyclinder helping fill it. Soooooo when you put headers on a NAE you need to do something on the intake side to help. Larger carb, bigger jets, better flow, less restrictions. This is where your K&N filters actually do something. The problem I have with saskins design, is that besides hyping them so much is that he's pulling underhood air. He has put a larger diameter pipe from a box on top the throttle body and run it to two air cleaners hanging in the engine compartment. I'm sure he thinks that by putting them right behind where the normal intake openings are, that he will get outside air. He won't, and you know that, because you descibed it yourself. Hot air is less dense and everything works as the path of least resistance. Because it is less dense, it will flow faster, cooler denser air is slower, the hotter air wins every time. He's actually pulling hotter air than the stock arrangement. The stock arrangement on our cars is actually pretty good. It ducts outside air direct to the throttle body. If he knew what he was doing or was smart enough to ask, he could do as someone else suggested and hang his air cleaners in the wheel wells and he might get somewhere.. OH WELL Hope this helps you make up your mind. Bill
By the way, you mentioned creating lift on the wing of an airplane, negative pressure on top of a wing isn't what causes an airplane to fly, its angle of attack with enough thrust, and anything (see the f-117) will fly.