Remember the hope and joy of the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama, the historic first Hawiian to become president of the mainland United States? People were so excited—especially black people, who seemed to see something special about the Harvard law school graduate's move to national politics. (White conservatives were, in turn, very suspicious about African-Americans managing to travel to D.C. for the 2009 ceremony, while other blacks trapped in flooded New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina only managed to lose their homes, drown or get shot down by white cops.)

Anyway, things will be a lot smoother this year, in Washington. For one thing, hardly anybody wants to go [...]

For the latest example of Americans' growing inability manage their own lives without the help of a trendy technological device, let's meet Doug Wilson of Arkansas.

During the day, he tends to carry the iPhone 4 in his hand. Putting it in his pocket would be too risky, he said, because he might miss a photo opportunity — like that crazy "rat tail" hairdo he saw at a fast-food spot recently. ("I was like, 'I've GOT to take a picture of this!'") And at night, access to this on-all-the-time gizmo is arguably more important than ever. First, there's the dog. Wilson uses his phone's LED camera flash [...]

This one's from the Sun, so take its origin story with a grain of salt, but anyway:"A WOMAN desperate to get her lazy boyfriend to exercise has invented an iPhone app that measures how many calories you burn off having sex. The 59p download, called the Bedometer, analyses the time and intensity of each romp…. The gizmo is put on the bed and measures raunchy activity using the iPhone or iPod Touch's motion sensor before adding up the calories." Listen, ladies, I don't care how badly you want your boyfriend to exercise: If he's only willing to have sex with you when there's an iPhone alongside you in [...]

Here is where you can go to find an app for your iPhone that features boobies. For other images of boobies, use your iPhone to search the Internet.

Yeah, uh, pass, thanks: "You won't get a chance to poke him, but a new Vatican website is offering a Facebook application to 'meet the Pope'. The Roman Catholic church is keen to use the networking site to woo young people back and its www.pope2you.net site has has gone live. Another application allows the faithful to see the pontiff's speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods."

Hey, look, it's an app for your iPhone that will help you track swine flu! Maybe next they can come up with an app which reveals how absolutely germ-ridden your iPhone is just from everyday use.

"Computer giant Apple could face legal action in France over an iPhone app which tells users whether thousands of celebrities are Jewish or not. The application’s designer, who is Jewish himself, says he invented it for entertainment not racial profiling."

"Osaka-based game software and graphics developer Proge Inc. has created a free software application to help smokers roughly determine how many years they have left on this planet based on their age, the number of cigarettes they smoke each day and how many years they have been slaves to nicotine. Users input the data into the 'Death Meter' and a countdown until their likely demise appears on the screen over the image of mocking Grim Reaper with a cigarette between his boney fingers." -Or you could just look at the phlegm you cough up each morning and figure it out that way. I mean that's how I do [...]