Sep 16
QUETTA, Pakistan — The telephone call to local journalists generally comes in the late evening. The voice on the other end is harsh. He has a statement he wants printed, and he prefaces it with a terse order: “Report our messages without making any changes or we will kill you.”
The messages they deliver warn of upcoming violence or assassinations, sometimes naming an intended victim, or claim responsibility for atrocities already committed. The calls come from Sunni militants notorious for violence against minority Shiites or members of secessionist groups that routinely blow up police stations and attack government facilities in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan.
Are there moments in time when you were using your smartphone, and it goes all wonky on you that you have half a mind to just bang it on the table out of sheer frustration? The only thing that stopped you was the fact that replacing the shiny device in your hand is going to burn another hole in your pocket that you cannot afford. Well, if you have answered in the affirmative, perhaps you might be interested in Microsoft’s latest patent that, to put it less mildly, bitch-slap your handset in order to keep it quiet. This is a legitimate way of releasing your frustrations on your handset without damaging it.
It goes without saying that reading between the lines is a skill that most folks should pick up in order to be more sensitive to people around us when communicating. Having said that, when we heard that 
