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.