Newspapers and magazines would load their graphics, and you could doodle as on the Sony Reader Daily Edition.

A sudden disconnection cut me off in mid-phrase.

As he walks down the hall to meet a group of businessmen, this corporate secret service uses code ling and the phones' two-way radio feature to head off potential snafus, such as toilet paper trailing from his wing tips and snow on the mountains (a shoulderful of dandruff), while he's unaware in a Mr. Magoo sort of way of the action surrounding him.

When the government realised that a new virus was circulating, Chinese officials didn’t advise hand washing, a better cough etiquette and disposing of tissues. They quarantined entire cities and shut down the economy. As one former secretary of state for health in England put it to me, our scientists suffered from a “cognitive bias” towards the milder threat of influenza.