For years, there have been two Holy Grails for mobile devices: (1) Beat the iPhone, and (2) Run Flash.  The first has proven to be surprisingly hard, even after years of innovation and millions (billions) invested by several competitors.  Personally I prefer my Droid because it has a physical keyboard (and other advantages), but the conventional wisdom still weights in favor of the iPhone.

But the second chalice is about to be seized.  By Google.

The New York Times is covering a bill introduced by two Republican senators to strip someone of their citizenship if they've aided terrorists.  Although I support the War on Terror, I can't get behind this.

Why?  It's not because of what the bill does, but what it allows.  It's also about our attitude as a nation toward our citizens.

The New York Times just published an article covering an experiment at a New York high school, in which half the student body stopped texting for two days.  The article lauded the results, which included students finishing homework faster, and having time to spend with their parents.  It also suggested that texting somehow gets in the way of normal social development, by making it too easy for students to communicate without having to actually face their peers.

I just found out that the caterer from our wedding is being prosecuted by the Federal government for hiring illegal aliens.  In response, I want to give this caterer my highest praise.  If you need any kind of event catered in the San Diego area, I highly recommend The French Gourmet.

In my ongoing quest to catch up with my photo backlog, here are the photos from when Yelena's best childhood friend and their mothers came to visit last year.

The New York Times published an op-ed by Gail Collins, complaining about the Governor of Alabama proclaiming April as Confederate History Month, and more generally about Southern revisionism.  I think Ms. Collins is slipping into the classic partisan mode of taking certain things for granted and being unable to fathom the possibility that the other side might see it differently.  True, I do believe the current socio-political chasm in this country is mostly the fault of the conservatives who hunt for wedge issues, but this type of myopia doesn't help.  The truth is, the state vs. federal debate was far from closed at the end of the Civil War, and legitimately lives on today.

Yelena & I left Nathan in San Diego with the grandparents for the week.  Yelena's got work to distract her, but I'm just sitting around the house all day.  (Job hunting doesn't take my mind off the missing kid.)  So I compensate by going through my photo backlog.  Here are two new Nathan galleries:

Back in time two years, that is.  I've finally finished my backlog of Civil War photos with my Knight's Ferry gallery from 2008:

Many years ago, my father in law and I bought several very old, cheap webcams so that our extended families could skype with each other.  Windows has long since stopped supporting this webcam, and the Taiwanese company that made the webcams have long since stopped supporting the driver.  Yelena's new MacBook has a gorgeous built-in webcam and I bought another new webcam for Nathan's Babycam, which I intend to set up again.  But I still have these old webcams and don't want to throw them away.  What to do?

As promised, here are the photos from KF.  Credit to Camp Mom Judy for actually taking the shots.  It's nice to be in some, for a change.