Hasta La Gadget!

Copenhagen wasn’t even on our top 10-bucket list of places to visit, but our oversight quickly became apparent within a short time of touch down in traveler-friendly Kastrup Airport right outside the city. For years Copenhagen has ranked at the top of the heap in international surveys for its quality of life and yes we had heard that in 2013 the city had been voted #1 in an international “most-liveable city” contest but spending time there made us glad that we stepped outside our previous priorities and demonstrated just why Copenhagen does so well in these comparisons. Where else can one meet so many calm and pleasant people and, for that matter, good-looking as well?!

Where else can one explore the city and not have to drive or taxi or even take public transportation for that matter? We walked everywhere, but if walking isn’t your thing, the Danish capital is also known as perhaps the most bicycle-friendly city in the world, yes, actually they have more bikes than people with some 36 percent of those who work or study, cycling to and from work and school regularly. We’re talking seemingly everybody; the young of course, but commuters, pensioners, moms with kids as well. Bicycles riders everywhere; bikes first, cars second, got to love it!

Copenhagen is replete with historic and interesting sites. We visited a bunch of them: the beautiful Nyhavn waterfront area, that cute Little Mermaid girl from the Hans Christian Anderson story out in the harbor, the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479, and ranked as one of the best universities in Europe and of course Tivoli Gardens, the grand Amusement Park from 1843 in town center. Denmark is a land of tolerance and we visited a testament to it, the Danish Jewish Museum which commemorates Danish heroism in organizing the escape of virtually all Denmark’s 13,000 strong Jewish population to neighboring Sweden during the darkest days of World War 2.

The Museum is housed inside the 17th century Danish Royal Boathouse as redesigned by Daniel Libeskind, surprisingly, a Polish American, from New York City, who also has designed museums around the world as well as participating in the redesign of the World Trade Center site. Another interesting stop is the Amalienborg Castle, which was first constructed in the 1670s and houses royal and state apartments. Consisting of four separate buildings, Amalienborg is the current home of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe and Crown Prince Frederik and family.

If history isn’t your thing, and you tend toward wanting “hip” experiences, Copenhagen also provides! Copenhagen has its own “Meatpacking District”- Vesterbro. Just in the last decade it has gone from gritty to cutting-edge, not dissimilar to the one in Manhattan, but unlike its counterpart in New York, much of the area still retains its rough, craggy charm. Vesterbro originally was an area of prostitution, transience and grit, but now embraces the newest restaurants, ad agencies, bars, and nightclubs, providing a myriad of experiences. Did we expect to encounter a restaurant in Copenhagen that served Naples style pizza, thin and crispy, cooked to perfection in wood burning stone ovens, owned by an Italian and a Brit, called “Mother,” that is overbooked every night, don’t think so?

This whole area is so accessible. We arrived in Kastrup from New York, took a quick commuter train to Copenhagen Central Station, 200 meters later, we were at our lovely hotel, the Andersen Boutique Hotel, at 12 Helgolandsgade Street, at the edge of Vesterbro. The hotel managed to combine colorful and trend décor with warm and welcoming service. On each stair landing there were huge containers of cookies, fruit and water, all for the taking. The late afternoon wine sips and the delicious morning breakfasts and coffee were our favorites. We have to say, the Danes serve very good coffee, personal priorities. We didn’t know that good “Danish pastries” originated in Denmark, honestly never understood the association, it’s almost an art form here.
Copenhagen, should be put on your list as a must visit, a place filled with lovely, friendly and engaging people; great food and an accessible place of interesting sites and unexpected delight.

JAKARTA, Jan 29 (Reuters) – The French first officer of an AirAsia passenger jet that crashed into the sea last month was at the controls at the time of the accident, Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) said on Thursday.

Mardjono Siswosuwarno, head investigator for the NTSC, told reporters the flight data recorder recovered from the bottom of the Java Sea provided a “pretty clear picture” of what happened in the last moments of AirAsia Flight QZ8501. But he did not give details.

The Airbus A320 vanished from radar screens in bad weather on Dec. 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. All 162 people on board were killed.

“The second-in-command, popularly known as the co-pilot, who usually sits to the right of the cockpit. At the time, he was flying the plane,” Mardjono said. “The captain, sitting to the left, was the pilot monitoring.”

Mardjono said the cockpit voice and flight data recorders showed that the plane had been cruising at a stable altitude before the crash. The aircraft was in sound condition when it took off, and all crew members were properly certified, he said.

“The plane was flying before the incident within the limits of weight and balance envelope,” Mardjono said. “While flight crew had valid licenses and medical certificates.”

NTSC chief Tatang Kurniadi told the same Jakarta news conference that Indonesia had submitted its preliminary report on the crash to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on Wednesday, as required under global aviation rules.

The report, which has not been made public, was purely factual and contained no analysis, he said, adding that the full, final report would take at least 6-7 months to complete.

Indonesia has previously said the aircraft climbed abruptly from its cruising height and then stalled, or lost lift, before plunging out of control into the Java Sea.

On Wednesday Indonesia said the search for dozens of victims still unaccounted for could end within days if no more bodies were found.

A multinational search and recovery operation has found 70 bodies in the Java Sea and had hoped to find more after finding the fuselage of the plane. But days of rough weather and poor underwater visibility hampered navy divers’ efforts.

(Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor, Fergus Jensen and Fransiska Nangoy; Writing by Randy Fabi; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Super Bowl Sunday is only a few days away and all anyone really wants to talk about is deflated footballs. We don’t care about any of that. We just like to see how things get made. Here’s a NY Times video that shows you the inside of a Wilson Football Factory. They get sewed together, flipped inside out, stitched, shaped and pumped.

Read more…

The National Center for Education Statistics on Thursday released its latest data on how much money states are investing in public school students.

NCES, an arm of the Department of Education, looked at each state’s revenues and expenditures per pupil in public elementary and secondary schools during the 2011-2012 school year. The agency also presented data on school spending and revenues at the level of individual school districts. School revenue is defined as funds from “local, intermediate, state, and federal sources,” while school expenditure refers to “all amounts of money paid out by a school system.”

The graphics below outline some of the data’s highlights. The first map shows which states spent the most per pupil in 2012. The District of Columbia and New York took the top spots, spending over $19,000 per student. Utah and Idaho spent the least per student, around $6,500.

The data also showed that between fiscal years 2011 and 2012, most states’ spending on education decreased.

Indeed, previous research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that since 2008, spending on education has decreased in most states in the wake of the Great Recession.

Finally, NCES looked at how much the country’s largest school districts are spending on students. Districts in the South and West tended to spend less than their counterparts in the Northeast, which is consistent with the state-level findings. New York City public schools spent the most on their students — $20,226 per pupil — while Alpine School District in Utah spent a low of $5,412 per pupil.

The data was compiled based on responses to the School District Finance Survey, which collected information from individual districts, and the National Public Education Finance Survey, which gathered information from state education agencies.

One of the rarest mammals in North America, the Sierra Nevada red fox, was recently caught on camera twice inside Yosemite National Park.

The two sightings on remote wildlife cameras, on Dec. 13, 2014 and Jan. 4 of this year, mark the first time the Vulpes vulpes necator has been seen inside the park in nearly a century, the National Park Service said in a news release.

The animal, a subspecies of the red fox that’s native to the Sierra Nevada mountains, is so rare that no one is certain just how many are left. They are solitary creatures, nocturnal, do not travel in groups and avoid people, making them even harder to track and study. However, it’s believed the total population is less than 50.

“We are thrilled to hear about the sighting of the Sierra Nevada red fox, one of the most rare and elusive animals in the Sierra Nevada,” Yosemite National Park superintendent Don Neubacher said in a news release. “National parks like Yosemite provide habitat for all wildlife and it is encouraging to see that the red fox was sighted in the park.”

Here’s a closer look at the animal that has conservationists so excited:

The cameras that caught the fox are part of a larger study funded by the Yosemite Conservancy to detect rare carnivores within the park.

“Confirmation of the Sierra Nevada red fox in Yosemite National Park’s vast alpine wilderness provides an opportunity to join research partners in helping to protect this imperiled animal,” Yosemite wildlife biologist Sarah Stock said in a news release. “We’re excited to work across our boundary to join efforts with other researchers that will ultimately give these foxes the best chances for recovery.”

Until recently, the Sierra Nevada red fox was thought to be nearly extinct from the Sierra Nevada mountains, with just one small group left in the Lassen Peak area in Northern California.

In 2010, one was spotted in the Sierras for the first time in nearly two decades. The animal was seen on a wildlife camera at Sonora Pass, north of Yosemite, snacking on a bait bag full of chicken scraps, according to National Geographic.

A DNA analysis of saliva in the bag confirmed that it was indeed the elusive mammal.

“We thought they were gone,” Ben Sacks, director of the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at UC Davis told NatGeo. “We were wrong.”

Sacks said having two separate populations means there’s more reason to hope that the subspecies may yet survive.

Yosemite said that if “hair snares” set up near its cameras get a sample, they would be able to determine whether the fox seen in the park is related to the ones spotted at Sonora Pass.

Here’s a 2010 image, also taken by a wilderness camera, from the Sonora Pass sighting:

A Sierra Nevada red fox was seen again in 2011, when it was caught on night-vision video in the Sonora Pass area:

The fox’s population has been shrinking since the 1930s, although it’s not clear why. The Sierra Nevada Red Fox Interagency Working Group said habitat destruction and fragmentation, diseases from domestic dogs and competition with other species such as coyotes could all be playing a role.

Travelers in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges are encouraged to report red fox sightings to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife via this website, which also shows the difference between the red fox and similar animals.