Donna Summer: 1948 - 2012

Donna Summer died today in Miami at age 63. Yes, she was the Queen of Disco, the First Lady of Love, the Voice of a Decade, all of that. She was also my sister's doppelganger, and a vehicle for Giorgio Moroder avant garde synthesized dance music.

Maybe the first time that I saw Donna Summer was 1974 when she performed "The Hostage" on the "Van Oekel's Discohoek" tv show. It's a classic. Watch as she's handed the telephone by Evert van der Pik: "Hier Donna, 't is voor jou!"

Halftime in America

It's been a month since the New York Giants won Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis. Just like in 2008, they beat the Patriots.

Of all Super Bowl commercials this year, the one that resonated the most was Chrysler's Halftime in America commercial. It was viewed by some as the first 2012 election ad for president Obama, even though Chrysler denied any political intentions. But Clint Eastwood's line "It's halftime in America, and the second half is about to begin" appeared to refer more to a second presidential term than to the Superbowl's second half. Obama of course saved the US car industry and made money in the process, while Republicans almost uniformly rejected the auto industry bail out.

Robots that fly ... and cooperate

I'm a big fan of TED talks. I subscribe to their podcasts and watch a few every time I travel. The variety of the talks, the creativity and originality of the ideas strikes me.

This week, TED published a talk by Vijay Kumar from the University of Pennsylvania. In his lab at Penn, Vijay Kumar and his team build flying quadrotors, small, agile robots that swarm, sense each other, and form ad hoc teams -- for construction, surveying disasters and far more.

They also produced a video of the flying robots performing the James Bond theme. Enjoy.

Einstein Bros. Bagels

When Greg or Sammy have an early morning soccer game, I usually go to a bagel place for a toasted bagel with a shmear and coffee. My favorite is this Einstein brothers store in Richardson. Set in a Spanish colonial strip mall, it's a good place sip some darn good coffee and read the morning papers.

The structure of the earth

School has started again. Sammy worked on a project to model the structure of the earth this week. We had to drive to a Walmart in Frisco to buy a styrofoam ball.  They were sold out at our local Walmart. That's what happens when  Now I know that there are four layers: crust, mantle, outer core and inner core.

Elevation 681 ft.

Dutch folks keep track of their elevation. Especially when below Normaal Amsterdams Peil - the normalized zero elevation level in Holland - we need to know.

Most floods in North Texas are caused by excessive rain. A rising sea level is less of a concern up here. Nevertheless someone placed an elevation marker at the pond down our street last month. It's good to know that we're at an elevation of 681 ft. And that Sammy's head is at least 684 ft above sea level.

Ugly Christmas Sweaters

Ever since I came to this country, I wondered why people would voluntary dress up in ugly sweaters during the holiday season. Elderly ladies would conquer the shopping malls and the workplace with blindingly extravagant designs with wildly mismatching colors.

More recently, ugly Christmas sweaters have become cool. Hip ugly Christmas sweater parties are being thrown all over the country. The parties are said to have started in 2001 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The market for ugly Christmas sweaters has picked up, leading to dedicated stores and even more stores.

New designs are created, staying faithful to the ugly sweater tradition, but touching on contemporary themes. The Occupy Wall Street movement inspired the creation of this sweater where baby Jesus is casually pepper sprayed by a police officer.