Off the News

Dunham: More than Obama's mom

The late Stanley Ann Dunham has been described by her son President Barack Obama as a shy and small-town Caucasian from Kansas, an idealist who became a struggling single mother, notes Janny Scott, on leave from The to write "A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother."

An article to appear in this coming Sunday's Magazine adapted from Scott's book and appearing on the Times' Web site, characterized the view from the other side of the political spectrum: "… In the fevered imaginings of supermarket tabloids and the Internet, she is the atheist, the Marxist, the flower child, the mother who abandoned her son or duped the newspapers of Hawaii into printing a birth announcement of her Kenyan-born baby, on the off chance that he might want to be president someday."

First pay phones, then 411

The news that a Pennsylvania directory-assistance company is shuttering its Hawaii call center is another sign — particularly distressing to its employees — that technological changes can be brutal.

In fact, as more and more people buy smartphones that are Web-enabled, fewer and fewer will need to dial 411 at all. They can just use some app or other to get the number. Directory assistance may go the way of the pay phone. See many of those around anymore?