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.