DailyDirt: Eating Like A King...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people eat to live. Others live to eat. Since there's a pretty wide range between those two extremes, here are just a few quick links to some examples of interesting eating habits.

• The National Archives has a historical record of, among other things, the favorite foods of many US Presidents. Richard Nixon's last meal at the White House was some pineapple slices with cottage cheese and a glass of milk..? [url]
• Airlines have tried to offer healthier food options for travelers, but a lot of flyers are sticking to salty snacks and comfort foods. Alaska Airlines' best-selling meal is a quarter-pound cheeseburger. [url]
• Texas has recently ended its tradition of offering a "last request" meal to inmates on death row after a state lawmaker complained about a meal request that seemed excessive. The last meal that did it: two chicken-fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions; a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger; a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapenos; a bowl of fried okra with ketchup; one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread; three fajitas; a meat-lover’s pizza; one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream; a slab of peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts; and three root beers. (The meal wasn't eaten.) [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's cooking at StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: airline food, death row, food, last meals, presidents
Companies: alaska airlines

Automatic Airport Check-In Is Patented?

from the but-why? dept

I've been flying a lot over the past few years, and it's become pretty standard for airlines to now have self-serve kiosks where you can check in and print out a boarding pass. If you have a bag to check, you then take it to a "bag drop" station. There are fewer and fewer places where this isn't the norm -- but apparently Alaska Airlines owns a patent on the process. The company says it got the patent to "reward the employees" who came up with the idea, but that doesn't make much sense. As William Stepp points out in the link above, wouldn't Alaska Airlines have been better off not spending all that money filing a patent. In fact, if they wanted to reward the employees who came up with the idea, why not just give the money wasted on the patent filing to the employees?

Filed Under: airports, bag drop, check-in, patents
Companies: alaska airlines