Image credit: Pascal Pochard-Casabianca/AFP/Getty Images

Airbus is trying to make the friendly skies a bit more comfortable for large — an encumbered — people , and more profitable for  U.S. airlines.

The main subsidiary of European aerospace giant Eads is now offering extra-wide seats on its new A320 passenger aircraft, according to Agence-France Presse.

Each A320 jet will now offer two 20-inch-wide seats on each side of the aisle, rather than three of  its standard 18-inch-wide seats. Boeing, Airbus’ U.S. rival, has 17-inch-wide seats on its 737s.

Airbus said that if U.S. airlines charged extra for the roomier seats, they could make as much as $3 million extra during a 15-year period.

On Thursday, Zuzana Hrnkova, Airbus’ aircraft interiors director, told the media that the new seats were not just for overweight fliers.

“Mothers with children may be ready to pay a little more in order to be able to keep their babies in their laps,” Hrnkova said, according to AFP. “Large football players may be interested.”

Airbus’ announcement is timely. Obesity rates are on the rise. About 34 percent of adults are currently obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and that number is expected to hit 42 percent by 2030.

And this month an overweight passenger who said in May 2011 a Southwest gate agent had told her she was “too fat to fly” is now suing the company for discrimination.

Brandon Macsata, an advocate for passengers’ rights and a leader in the “fat acceptance” movement, told ABC News earlier this month that his group had proposed airlines providing a row of extra-wide eats for larger passengers at a higher price, which they could buy voluntarily.

Credit: Jemal Countess/Getty Images

Nothing scared author Joel Stein more than the idea of  having a son.

“When I found out we were having a boy, I freaked out when I saw the penis on the sonogram,” he said.

He says he was worried because he is not what you would call a “manly man.” He’s proudly progressive, emphatically non violent and partial to chick flicks.  Not exactly Earnest Hemingway.

Frankly, he was worried whether he was up to the job of raising a son.

“I grew up in the ’70s with a feminist mom, listening to ‘Free to Be You and Me,’” Stein said. “My mom thought the Boy Scouts are a fascist organization, so I was not allowed to join, which was fine by me because I heard that a lot of the stuff they did was outdoors. Not comfortable with that.”

And so Stein embarked on a journey to change that and try to tackle all the “guy things” his own childhood lacked, including hanging out with firefighters, doing basic training with the Army, learning to drink Scotch and talk sports, and even learning how to handle himself in a fight.

“It was not very Mr. Miyagi,” Stein said. “The first thing [the instructor] did was he got the Muay Thai guy, the Thai kick boxing guy, to kick me in the leg very hard, so I knew what that felt like. It feels awful, and then he got the jiu-jitsu guy to choke me up.”

But that was just the beginning. Mixed-martial arts hall-of-famer Randy Couture then gave him a sustained pounding.

“Randy Couture wanted me to feel what it’s like to be in a real fight,” Stein said. ”So, he made me suffer for five minutes.  Every time things were getting dark for me he would just walk away then I would get back up and then beat me up again and then walk away, he’d beat me up again. It’s awful to watch.”

Stein’s trials and tribulations are documented in his new book, “Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity,” in stores now. In the end, Stein said all he went through did make him feel “maniler.”

“I now think we’re the sum of our experiences and that there is some genetic personality that we have, but the most stuff you do, the more you change,” he said.

“I feel like I’m better prepared to be his dad because I will introduce him to thinks that I would not have introduced him to,” Stein added. “Even if he thinks the book is stupid, I think he will appreciate the fact that I’m now going to take him camping.”

Tune into “Nightline” tonight to watch ABC’s David Wright’s full interview with Joel Stein, and see what happens when they fight in a cage match, and then get pedicures together.

                                                (Image credit: Brian Killian/WireImage/Getty Imaages)

We’d like to think that the Cookie Monster celebrates his birthday by blowing out the candles on one giant cookie.  Although this character celebrates his birthday on November 2, it is also celebrated today in honor of the birthday of Muppet puppeteer, Frank Oz.

RECIPE: Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Here are some of the best cookie spots around the country that would make Cookie Monster proud:

1.  Insomnia Cookies  Try flavors like white chocolate macadamia, snickerdoodle and double chocolate mint for $1.25/each or opt for the jumbo deluxe cookies in flavors like s’mores or triple chocolate for $2.50/each.

2.  Pokey O’s  Pick your cookie and then your ice cream for the ultimate sandwich.  Cappuccino chocolate chunk, maple pecan and coconut chocolate chip are a few of the options that can be paired with over 15 choices of ice cream for $3.39.

3.  Batter Bakery  Chocolate espresso, oatmeal cherry and chocolate peanut butter cup are some of the options along with other classic flavors.  The double chocolate sandwich cookies are hard to resist at $1.50.

4.  Milk & Cookies Bakery    The new bacon smack cookie has maple syrup, cherry wood smoked bacon, dried cranberries, toffee pieces, graham cracker pieces and dark chocolate chunks.  Need we say more? ($2.25)

5.  Firehook Bakery  Try the sweet dreams cookie: a chocolate chip cookie with ginger, cinnamon, walnuts and confectioner’s sugar glaze. ($1.70)

The Pet Collective wanted to kick of its new YouTube series, “Pet Sense,” with a bang — not a full-blown explosion. But that’s what happened when producers went to visit Yogi, a corgi, who likes to attack household cleaning supplies.

The web show sends animal communicators to pets who need help working through their odd issues. Yogi’s owner Hali Hudson showed producers what happens when she opens the cupboard under the sink where the cleaning products are stored. As soon as she opened the doors, Yogi charged into the cabinet and grabbed a can of spray paint.

Yogi punctured the can and paint started spraying everywhere, covering Yogi and the white kitchen.

Hudson rushed the dog to the bathroom to wash him off and just as she thought things couldn’t get any worse, the pilot light on the stove ignited the fumes from the spray paint and the can exploded, setting the kitchen on fire.

“I heard the explosion and I felt it. It was like an earthquake and a bomb,” Hudson said in another video on the Pet Collective’s YouTube channel.  ”If Yogi was still standing in that kitchen when that bomb exploded, he would have gone up in flames because he was covered in that paint.”

Thankfully, the fire was contained and everyone, including Yogi, emerged unharmed.

“I don’t even think [Yogi] was aware that he set my kitchen on fire,” Hudson said.

Hudson learned her lesson. She doesn’t keep spray paint – or even cleaning supplies – under the sink anymore at all. Yogi still dives into the cabinet every time its opened. Old habits die hard.

(Courtesy Ian Simpson)

Plymouth airport opened for business in the 1930s, and was shut down last December after its lease-holders, a property development company called Sutton Harbour Group, said the airport was not economically viable. As advertised on the website of the auctioneers handling the sales, everything from flying school portacabins and runway vehicles to glass partitioning is up for grabs. Sutton Harbour Group will take 25 percent of all auction profits.

Plymouth is a city of 250,000 about three hours southwest of London by car. According to a local group of business owners and residents called VIABLE, the airport served about 125,000 people every year.

“It’s a niche airport, but fit for its purpose,” Plymouth-native and VIABLE CEO Raoul Witherall said. “We believe that in five, ten years we can quadruple the traffic. The traffic exists, but the routes have not.”

“It’s a conflict of interest,” said Witherall, “slow patient build-up of such a business isn’t a property company’s thing.”

VIABLE collected 20,000-odd signatures on a petition, but it appears the auction will still happen.

“For the enthusiast like myself, you may find some bidding for memorabilia as a keepsake of the airport,” said Piran Smith, who spent many years flying and taking pictures at the airport.  ”You might find private investors bidding for the sole purpose of returning it to the airport.”

The days of tirelessly smacking the ketchup bottle, only to have it explode on your plate, are finally over.   Dave Smith, a Ph.D. candidate at MIT, has spent the last two months at the Varanasi Research Group developing a slippery non-toxic coating that will end all of your ketchup frustrations.

The coating, named LiquiGlide, keeps condiments like mayo or mustard from sticking to the inside of the container, so that they smoothly slide onto your plate.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

LiquiGlide is a “kind of a structured liquid — it’s rigid like a solid, but it’s lubricated like a liquid,” Smith told Fast Company.

“It’s funny: Everyone is always like, ‘Why bottles? What’s the big deal?’ But then you tell them the market for bottles — just the sauces alone is a $17 billion market,” he said, “And if all those bottles had our coating, we estimate that we could save about one million tons of food from being thrown out every year.”

The LiquiGlide group came in second at MIT’s $100k Entrepreneurship Competition.

Take a look at the product in action:

Hundreds of Hot Dogs Fell From the Detroit Sky (David Coates/The Detroit News)

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…a hot dog? Yes, 955 of them of them to be exact. In honor of the landmark American Coney Island restaurant’s 95th anniversary, the restaurant teamed up with Detroit station 95.5 to host a hot-dog hoarding contest at Detroit’s Hype Athletics Facility Wednesday morning.

According to American Coney Island Restaurant owner Grace Keros, 955 hot dogs weigh about 140 lbs. That’s 140 lbs of  processed meat. Or as Seros affectionately corrects, “hundreds of specialty seasoned Coney Dogs.”

Who couldn’t pass that up?

About 100 Coney-aficionados flocked to the open field that the restaurant had rented to participate in a stuffing contest. Twenty-five of them then rushed around the field trying to stuff as many of the hot dogs on their person as they could in 95 seconds, stuffing them in their pockets, shirts, and who knows what other orifices.

The winner carried away $1,000 and American Coneys for a year.

“It was certainly a sight to see, ” said Keros.

Keros is a third-generation owner and the first woman to ever own the popular restaurant. It was opened by her grandfather, Gus “Constantine” Keros, a Greek immigrant, in 1917. The chain sells thousands of hot dogs each year, according to Keros.

As part of the 95th anniversary, customers can buy their Coneys at a discounted price, for only 95 cents from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

And as for all those dropped Coneys, never fear. All the hot dogs will go to the Detroit Dog Rescue Organization.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.

                                                                            (Image Credit: law-order-food.tumblr.com)

“Law & Order,” the classic TV show, is known for its catchy theme song, ripped-from-the-headlines stories and now “it’s right to remain delicious.”

A new Tumbler blog called Law and Order and Food launched about two weeks ago and highlights some of the best culinary moments on the show.  No, the blog is not for the gourmet elite but really just a chance for you to see Sam Waterson and Jerry Orbach take an enormous bite out of a burger or lick of an ice cream cone.  Nothing softens up a hard-nosed detective like a New York-style pretzel or a slice of pizza.

                                                                                                     (Image credit: Getty Images)

According to the National Confectioner’s Association, sticky saltwater taffy is believed to have originated in Atlantic City, N.J., in the 1800′s.  Shop-owner David Bradley’s stock of taffy was flooded with saltwater during a storm.  A girl walked in to buy the taffy, Bradley jokingly nicknamed it “salt water taffy” and the name stuck.  Surprisingly, very few saltwater taffy recipes actually call for salt.

RECIPE: Saltwater Taffy

Here are some of the best places to get the sweet confections:

1.  Sweet Candy Company’s Gourmet Taffy $4.99/box  Flavors like buttered popcorn, cotton candy and red licorice are included in their State Fair box.

2. Fralinger’s Original Saltwater Taffy $8.99/box This company is credited with being one of the original companies that started selling saltwater taffy in Atlantic City.

3. James’ Beach Bucket of Saltwater Taffy $12.49/bucket  This Atlantic City company features flavors like coconut, lime and peanut in a signature beach bucket.

4.  Trolley Taffy Station $9.25/pound Each piece of this Salt Lake City, Utah taffy is wrapped by hand.  Flavors include pina colada, chocolate moose and yummy rum.

5.  Haven’s Maine Salt Water Taffy $7.95/box Flavors like molasses peanut butter, butterscotch and strawberry cheesecake make this Maine taffy difficult to resist.

For 20 seasons Junior Seau fist pumped the crowds and held the line on the football field. The NFL superstar wore the jersey for New England, Miami and perhaps closest to his heart, his hometown of San Diego. Chargers fans and fellow footballers were stunned when news broke on May 2, 2012 that Seau had committed suicide.

The 43-year-old’s mother was understandably shaken when she talked to reporters outside Seau’s California home. It was visible heartache for a woman whose son escaped death in 2010, when Seau survived a car crash off a cliff. He later told police he’d fallen asleep at the wheel.

Seau’s death is adding pressure to the NFL to study the effects of concussions on player’s brains. In 2011, Dave Duerson of the Chicago Bears committed suicide after making a heart-wrenching request to have his brain donated for injury research.

While experts are exploring any links to injuries on the field to long-term mental damage, fans are grieving the loss of these gridiron greats.