Today’s Obsession

Colbert interviews Sendak.

With all the singing I have to do for my daughter, May has been the most musical month in…well…months. Here’s a YouTube Playlist of what I am listening to:

We’re also listening to a lot of Kora music from Mali since it’s the only music that will calm my daughter and put her to sleep.

Another brilliant TED talk by Hans Rosling!

An aside: Our family was also an early adopter of the washing machine in India. We bought among the first front loading machines ever sold by a company called Savior. (IFB Bosch had a better one, but it was way too expensive) But unlike Hans’ mother, my mom really likes supervising how the washing machine washes our clothes. Never trusted the soak cycle. Also because of the plumbing in our apartment or maybe just the tap the machine is hooked up to, we have turn the tap on and off to fill the machine. In fact during my last visit the only time my mother and I butted heads was how she chose to wash her clothes!!!

This afternoon someone at work used the word “Obamacare” during a meeting.  I was taken aback for a second because I have always felt that it’s a partisan word, and using it kind of makes it clear that you’re opposed to the legislation (or Obama, or possibly both). We know who popularized the word (Fox News, Limbaugh…), but I was curious to find who coined it. So I did a quick Google search for “Obamacare” and got 6,280,000 results (0.21 seconds). Interestingly enough; the first sponsored link for the search is www.healthcare.gov. I guess the Obama Administration is smart enough to try to get their message across to folks who are opposed to the Health Care reform bill. Expectedly, the other sponsored links were from Anthem, an insurance company (factual) and American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank (They had the byline: ObamaCare’s aim is to take over the market for medical care).

I did realize that the better search string to find the origin of the word was “who coined obamacare.”  One of the results took me to a discussion string on this site that said: Wayne Madsen of the Progressive Online Journal was the first to use the phrase “Obamacare” in a pro-Obamacare article titled Obama’s well-crafted plan offers Americans full coverage without emptying the Treasury, on April 4, 2008 in the Salt Lake Tribune.
“Obama’s national health insurance program, let’s call it “ObamaCare,” provides Americans with affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles.”

So what’s your take on the word “Obamacare”?

Thanks to my wife we watched “A Raisin in the Sun” last night. I just loved this bit of dialogue from the film:

“Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning-because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”

This is a screengrab from Google Reader. I am quite sure my friend, whose post this is, doesnt want you to go to the GOP site or oust Barbara Boxer. This kind of matching of ads makes me nervous about using Adwords for a ’serious’ website. Or maybe I don’t know enough and once you place them on your site you can you tweak matches? This is a followup to my recent tweet about HuffPost placing ads on a suicide note they published.

This from the AT&T Wireless Boards about iPhone insurance:

Blond37
its my understanding that ATT does not provide insurance on the iphones.. why is that and what - if anything - have others done to insurance such a beautiful and valuable device?

youngjm
It is not uncommon for the insurance company that ATT uses to not insure phones that are extremely popular and could be manipulated for Fraud reasons. There are some third party companies that may offer insurance. A Google search may reveal some. Apple does offer Apple Care but that just extends your warranty coverage for an extra year. This is not necessarily a bad thing because it covers your battery and other issues. The genius bar does seam to be fairly liberal with their exchanges. Warranty coverage does not include loss, theft or other accident related damages.

Blond37
yea thats true about the apple genius bar… i had to have my phone switched out once…
i’m more concerned about loss/theft

Athena
Do you have a homeowner insurance policy? If so, see if you can schedule your IPhone on your policy under a “Personal articles Floater”, generally the deductibles on a personal articles floater are relatively low (anywhere from$0 to $150.00), and not very expensive to add to your policy. If you were to do something like that, then use the non-discounted price of the phone as the value, vs the discounted price.

Blond37
i’m sleeping on my mom’s couch - technically i’m homeless lol

A number of us who live in the US with folks in other countries obsess over saving money on calls back home. A friend of mine was recently trying to find out if the new Vonage World plan was all that it was advertised to be. He found a post by someone who got closer than any one of us has ever been in bringing down the cost to call. Enjoy! (And please note the number of technologies, devices and plans he uses to get to this solution…and mind you he’s still not done)

Ash said…
I use IndiaLD for India calling - $20 a month. I have Magicjack that I recently extended for 5 years at $60. I bought a Thin Client off eBay for $80 so that I save money on power consumption for Magicjack. So that takes care of one home phone.

I am letting my Family Plan on VerizonWireless expire next month - bought a couple of unlocked phones in India this month(LG Cookie looks hot, sleek and light-weight as a Touch phone! and another Samsung normal phone). Will get into a GoPhone(AT&T) for my son, add a $20 a month for texting for him,. For my wife I plan to put in $100 into a new TMobile account for her valid for a year and that should suffice. I reckon we will save $850 a year off our Verizon family pkan each year!

Going back to home phone with India calling, now that I have a Magic Jack firmly set, the qustion is what do I do to retain my current home phone number and deal with sizable India calling. If I simply disconnect my CableVision home phone, I save another $450 a year. Bringing my annual savings to a total or $1300 a year!

But I still pay $20 a month for IndiaLD and then the problem of retaining my old home phone number remains. One option is pay $200 and get a Ooma phone and continue using IndiaLD. If I spread the cost over 2 years, this option costs me $29 a month. Alternately Vonage costs me $33.50 a month for unlimited India calling.

Can some one advise me if Vonage World Plan covers all of Andhra, TamilNadu and Karnataka? The list of India numbers mentioned seems a little confusing.

Ash: Tussi great ho!

This is a truly today’s obsession post. I have listened to this song by Phoenix about 20 times this weekend. And watched this awesome mashup video on YouTube about 5 times.

phoenix - lisztomania *brat pack mashup*

I was taking the transbay bus back last evening and listening to the Dark was the night compilation (thanks Randy). Sufjan Stevens’ “You Are The blood” just blew me away. The orchestration, a mix of electronic and sufjan baroque. The lyrics brilliant. And those amazing rich vocals. When I googled the song, I found out that it was a cover version of a Castanets song, a band I had never heard of. So here I present the complete You Are The Blood experience:

The Original Castanets version

The Dark Was The Night Sufjan Stevens Version

The Lyrics:

You are the blood flowing through my fingers
all through the soil and up in those trees

You are electricity and you’re light
You are sound itself and you are flight

You are the blood flowing through my fingers
All through the soil and up in those trees
You are electricity and you’re light
You are sound itself and you are flight
You are the blood flowing through my fingers
All through the soil and up in those trees
You are the blood flowing through my finger ……

You are the blood that I may see you that I may see you
You are the blood in me

You are the earth on which I travel on which I travel
You are the earth under my feet
That I may travel that I may travel with you
you are the earth on which I write the circumstances
you say what you want from me
you are the solitude that goes against me that goes against me
you are the choir in which I dream
in which I sleep in which I wander

I dedicate this song and post to my long suffering, beloved and often amusing wife Aditi.