Trackpad gets stuck in select mode I'm experiencing the problems 
described here, basically the trackpad has spurts of spurious input, but the problems are fairly intermittent.  I've kept the system usable by deactivating many non-critical gestures, like zooming, three finger drag, etc. 

Are there any visualization or tuning tools for the Mac Book Air's trackpad?  It'd be useful to simply get a graphical record of the trackpad's input over a period when it was miss-behaving.

Are there any such tools under Linux if not under Mac OS X?
To be able to see what your trackpad "sees", you can use FingerMgmt. 

As for your problem, do you have tap-to-click on? If so, does turning it off solve the problem?