You can build a neighborhood from scratch, but that alone can’t give it heart. Luckily for Copenhagen, a flashy tilting hotel is transforming a day-stroll district to a destination with a pulse. Rising from the southern flatlands on land reclaimed by the sea, the 3XN-designed Bella Sky Comwell Hotel (doubles from $420) has fast become a centerpiece for Ørestad City, a master-planned enclave founded nearly two decades ago.

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We live in a daredevil age of architecture. Out of the fog of dreams rise colossal structures that twist, outsize, and undulate to the extreme. Among these freewheeling feats stands the tilting high-rise hotel—and its crowning glory opens this fall.

The silvery spire of Hyatt Capital Gate (doubles from $650) slices the sky above Abu Dhabi’s sultry cityscape at a sharp 18 degree angle—four times greater than Pisa’s slouching bell tower. “There was an opportunity to do something very powerful,” says Chris Jones, principal architect withRMJM, “to create a new gateway to the city.”

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Cheesy travel slogans are a dime a dozen. There’s something decidedly square in the art of selling destinations, and rightly so. Not only must you lure new travelers, you also have to represent the locals who live in these places—and you probably shouldn’t tick them off.

So, it’s all the more interesting to notice some chance-taking of late.  A few brave tourist boards—hoping to zap awake a sleepy economy, defibrillator-style—have unveiled a slew of over-the-top, playfully arm-twisting slogans.

Read more here.

No matter how miserable your shoveling chores were this morning, I bet you wouldn’t trade places with a stranded traveler during a snowstorm. Flight delays typically mean another day or five stuck in a strange city without an itinerary.

—That is, unless John Boris can help it.

Over the past year, when severe weather or natural disaster has trapped tourists at the airports, Lonely Planet Americas’s executive vice president and managing director has been making his popular city-guide apps (iPhone, iPod; iPad) completely FREE for download at iTunes for 72 hours. (Normally, they sell for as much as $5.99!)

Read more: http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-blog/carry-on/2011/1/12/lonely-planet-consoles-travelers-with-free-apps

Smart travel is all about consolidation. One of the best ways book-lugging adventurers can streamline is to invest in an e-reader that can store thousands of books—and other reading material—in a single lightweight device. But with so many e-readers on the market, choosing the right one can be maddening. Here’s your rope out of the consumer quicksand.

Continue reading: http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-blog/carry-on/2010/12/14/e-reader-showdown-kindle-vs-nook-vs-ipad

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On the warmest, sunniest day so far of spring, Coy Gordon, 42, sat in her West New York apartment with the doors locked and shades drawn. She lives in constant fear of unknown enemies who know where she lives, what she looks like and — should it provoke them — that she is a transgender woman.

Gordon is set for a court hearing today in West New York for a recent prostitution arrest, part of citywide crackdown on the local sex trade. But for many activists — and transgender women living private lives — this trial has become much larger than Gordon herself.

Gordon feels her safety has been jeopardized because of the way the arrest was covered by a Jersey City-based tabloid, the Jersey Journal. Questions meanwhile have resurfaced about the ethical limits of tabloid sensationalism in the coverage of transgender women and the real-world harm it can cause them.

Read more: http://pavementpieces.com/transgender-woman-reacts-to-tabloid-report/comment-page-1/#comment-3684

FRUSTRATED community leaders in Queens have a message for the U.S. Census Bureau — get your act together.

Typographical errors in foreign-language versions of the census form and poorly trained operators on the bureau’s phone hotline are throwing an unnecessary hurdle into the process of getting an accurate count, advocates and some elected officials said.

The language snafus will hit Queens especially hard, advocates said, because it is the nation’s most ethnically diverse county and has a very poor response rate so far.

Asian-language speakers are encountering problems with hotline operators who are reading from awkwardly phrased scripts. Their poor language skills might also be discouraging callers, advocates said.

James Hong, an outreach coordinator for the civic group MinKwon Center in Flushing, tested the hotline on Wednesday, just as he had done two weeks prior. He was unimpressed by the progress.

“This guy’s Korean is just as bad as the last guy I told you about,” Hong wrote surreptitiously so he wouldn’t alert the operator that this was a test.

The operator didn’t understand the Korean word for “form” and “document,” Hong said.

Hong also asked two different operators if anything was wrong with the form. They said they didn’t know what he was talking about though reports of typos first emerged three months ago — and not just in Korean.

In the Vietnamese-language form, “dieu tra” was used to mean “census.” But it translates as “government investigation,” and is negatively associated with the Communist Party, said John Park, census outreach coordinator of the Asian-American Federation.

In the Korean-language form, the word “country” was used instead of “county.” Also, in Question 5, pertaining to race and ethnicity, survey takers are instructed to mark one box only, instead of “one or more boxes.” That has outraged civil rights advocates, who use that data in employment discrimination litigation, said Jackson Chin, counseling attorney for LatinoJustice PRLDEF.

The Census Bureau first learned of the mistakes three months ago, said spokesperson Stephen Bucker. The bureau’s Web site materials were immediately corrected, he said. But the “Be Counted” forms were published once, and therefore still contain the translation mistakes.

Buckner said the bureau has made unprecedented efforts to cast the widest, most culturally sensitive net ever. Still, community organizations have begun telling people not to use the hotline, said Julia Yang, census coordinator at the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Assemblywoman Grace Meng (D-Flushing) wonders whether some funds in the almost $1 billion outreach campaign could have been better targeted.

“Handing out free mugs and T-shirts isn’t going to make someone fill out a census,” Meng said.

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