Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

It used to be rude not to answer the phone. Now you're rude if you do. Michael Gove is a difficult man to feel sorry for . It seems even his friends can't always manage it . David Cameron, for example - I think he's his friend . He'd definitely say he was Michael Gove's friend but then , politicians being what they are, the fact that he'd say it doesn't enormously increase the statistical chances of its being true . Anyway , they're certainly political allies - or at least were, before Gove made his ill-judged remark about the "preposterous" number of the prime minister's coterie who went to Eton , which ironically led Cameron to lose faith in about the only one who didn't, Gove himself . "That's what you get," the PM must have muttered to himself,"for trusting oiks." Since then Gove's slide down the greasy pole could hardly have been less dignified if he'd been wearing nipple tassels . Which, for all we know, he was . Like a former deputy headmaster who's been busted down to head prefect , Gove not only has to remain loyal to a government that has scorned him but, as chief whip, he must also enforce loyalty in others . But I didn't feel sorry for him until last week when I read that his mobile phone had gone off during a cabinet meeting . This is obviously bad form : for security reasons, you're not even supposed to bring phones into those gatherings . To make matters worse his ringtone is, according to someone who was there:"Jazz FM-style comedown music after a heavy night out" . I'm not entirely sure what that means , but it's clearly some sort of tune . I'm going to imagine it as the theme from Bod . So in the middle of some serious conversation about the Charlie Hebdo shootings or the economy or the NHS, while Vince Cable is expressing some "serious concerns" and everyone else is trying to make drooping eyelids look like they're concentrating hard , suddenly it's "Diddle-it-deduh-dede-duh-duh!" and Gove is jumping and wriggling like George Osborne's Tasered him again . Gove's seated twist having gone on "for quite a while", the PM intervened with what one witness described as "a public bollocking" . Even if Cameron could summon no compassion for his friend , I can . I sympathise with Michael Gove here, as a point of principle . I also sympathise with those people in West End theatres who are hit by a volley of rage and sarcasm from some knight of the stage when Nokia Tune has crashed in on his soliloquy . I sympathise whenever it happens at meetings, weddings, carol services or when someone's tearfully coming out . I sympathise because one day it will happen to me . However careful I am with my phone- and, as a slightly obsessive person, I'm pretty careful- there are times when I take it out, utterly convinced that it's been switched off for hours, and find five bars beaming back from my hand, as incriminating as a gory dagger . Most of the time, I check it every 30 seconds . But sometimes I just don't . My fastidious self-image deceives me into carelessness . At some point, I'm going to come a cropper . And when that shaming moment comes , as I fumble in my trousers by the heat of a hundred stares , I want to be surrounded by people who accept that this could happen to anyone, and might believe that this is an issue about which I'm at least averagely diligent . That's not how it'll be, though . Our attitudes to accidental phone rings are stuck in the 80s . Even though the mobile has long since ceased to be a cutting-edge gadget possessed only by the high-earning early-adopting few , when one goes off inappropriately, we still visualise a shameless yuppie in red braces, Aston Martin double-parked outside, closing deals - an offensive symbol of profligate and faddish modernity . This is hopelessly out of step with what these machines now mean to us . Research just published by a team at the University of Missouri shows that, when a sample of 40 people were temporarily deprived of their iPhones, their heart rate and blood pressure rose, and their ability to perform tasks suffered . Our mobiles, the paper suggests, are now "an extension of our physical selves, an umbilical cord, anchoring the information society's digital infrastructure to our very bodies" . We hate to be parted from them and we don't much like turning them off . Many will lament this , but it's not altogether bad . Our phones reassure us because they make us feel connected  - because if your mobile is turned on, in range and not ringing , it probably means that no work crisis has developed and no disaster has befallen a close friend or loved one . It's a constant everyone-in-your-life-is-more-or-less-OK monitor . Maybe we should learn to live without such reassurance , but it doesn't reflect entirely badly on us that we're comforted by it . People often criticise one another for talking or texting on their phones in preference to live interaction . "We met for a coffee but she spent the whole time on the phone!" "We were having lunch and his mobile rang- and he actually answered it!" Such critics forget that, in the heyday of the landline, a ringing telephone - the phone in the hall - was always answered . The notion of call screening is entirely modern . It never used to be rude to answer - it was rude not to . The onus of politeness, in those days, was on the caller . Except in an emergency, you didn't telephone someone at a mealtime, during their favourite television programme or after 10 o'clock . When you thought someone might not want to be disturbed, you didn't disturb them unless you had to . It's the passing of that etiquette, rather than the prevalence of mobile phones, that I think is a shame . Of course ,  in the age of the mobile, it's impossible to know whether the person you're calling will find it convenient to chat . You can't know if they're eating or in the cinema or reading the traffic news . So how about this : only call a mobile if you really need to . If you just want a chat, call a landline , and not during meals . So that , if "I Will Survive" starts blaring from your Android during an aunt's funeral , it's not you who's been rude . And the person who has isn't there . David Mitchell's new book, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse, is published by Guardian Faber (? 18.99) . To order a copy for ? 11.99 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846 .
It's the passing of that etiquette, rather than the prevalence of mobile phones, that I think is a shame Our attitudes to accidental phone rings are stuck in the 80s

What the Quran says about the mighty pen. Muslims - in theory - have traditions that value the power of the pen . Islam was revealed to save people from bloodshed and misuse of the sword . That is a paraphrasing of the cardinal's line in one of the Acts of Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1839 play "Richelieu" . The origin of the timeless adage is thought to have originated in Assyrian wisdom - like Islam, moral and value systems of Middle Eastern descent . However ,  the moral, intellectual and ethical systems of that region - including those carried through dialogue with Hellenic ideas in the first three centuries of Islam - have all been subjected to obscurantist and literalist interpretations of revelation . Islam's first command to the Prophet Muhammad was to "read" ; "Read in the name of thy Lord." Chapter 68 in the Quran is named "Al-Qalam" (the pen) . It opens up with the verse:"By the pen and what they inscribe." In Chapter 96 of the Quran one finds another reference to the high value placed on the might of the pen ; "Who taught by the pen. Taught mankind that which he knew not"(96:4-5) . So it should be natural for Muslims today to feel total empathy towards fellow writers and journalists and the families of other victims in France . Especially in solidarity against the cowardly slaying of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists . Reading and writing belong to the "genus" of cross-disciplinary activities Islam insists upon repeatedly . Reading, writing and reasoning are all part and parcel of the way of life Islam is all about . In Chapter 55 we find "Allah - Most Gracious! It is He Who has taught the Quran. He has created man. He has taught him eloquence [intelligence]" (55:1-4) . The didactic ethos of numerous Quranic injunctions on the pen, knowing and reasoning, seem to be lost today in the heap of ignorance and obscurantism that is consuming many a Muslim land . Lands where scholars of Islam underwrite political power at the expense of freedom of speech and a rational interpreting of the Quran that delivers Muslims from the yoke of oppression that is consuming Muslim youth and pleads the case of social justice, freedom of thought and tolerance . The sad state of the violence that today engulfs Muslim cities, pitting Muslim against Muslim, is in no small measure the result of the over-politicisation and over-securitisation of Islam . Whole states are disintegrating , and religious and sectarian intolerance is ushering in a horrible era of annihilation and self-destruction . Islam never began with jihad (a holy war) . The miracle of the Prophet Muhammad is that he knew when to retreat(via Hijra or emigration) to build values of solidarity, peaceful coexistence with all kinds of "otherness" (such as in Medina and hostile Arab tribes), create know-how, and voluntarism in faith and membership of community, along with moderation ("wasatiyya") . Quran is the word for "reading" . Those Muslims who, in cold blood, killed French journalists and cartoonists, supposedly to "avenge the prophet" miss the point about the prophet's ways . That includes the injunctions that "Verily, this Quran guides [human beings] to that which is most just"(17:9), and"If anyone took a life unless it be for murder and spreading injustice in the land, it would be as if he killed mankind entirely" (5:32) . Satire, criticism, and cartoons will never caricature the grand stature of the prophet nor diminish the sacredness of the Quran to Muslims and billions of tolerant human beings who share countries, ideologies or friendships with hundreds of millions of Muslims . Denigration comes from the savagery of heinous violence and Manichean ways many self-professed learned scholars of Islam or self-serving politicians knowingly and unknowingly are pushing trusting Muslim youth and entire nations towards the abyss . France has historically accommodated millions of Muslims who fled poverty, marginalisation and even oppression . Many of those come from North Africa where Maghreb countries have benefited not only from remittances, but also from a vast shared space in which Muslims, Christians and Jews have learnt the art of toleration of differences . What the murder of innocents in Paris has done is inflame inter-communal trust , and like the 9/11 attacks in the US 14 years ago, it has placed Muslims in the awkward position of being either unwelcome among host communities or defending Islam . This is because of the insane acts of co-religionists whose Islam is fixated on the "sword" and has little to do with the might of the "pen" that over millennia Muslim luminaries used to connect with others, and spread knowledge - not sow death .
Islam was revealed to save people from bloodshed and misuse of the sword

A bully in Harvard Yard: What professor's $4 food fight tells us. If you think bullies are teenagers lurking on schoolyard playgrounds , think again . At least one is a grown-up walking the hallowed halls of Harvard University . His name is Ben Edelman . He not only teaches there , but he earned several diplomas including a law degree at that storied institution of higher education . But Edelman seems to have adopted the word "higher" as his personal calling card . You see , he's higher than you and me . Or at least he seems anxious to let you know it . A hardworking Chinese immigrant family found that out when the professor ordered a takeout meal of shredded chicken with spicy garlic sauce and three other dishes . Edelman thought he was overcharged by $ 4 bucks ($ 1 dollar more for each dish) , so he launched a relentless war on Ran Duan , who works with his parents at their restaurant, Sichuan Garden in Brookline . You can read the sordid details in a story at Boston.com where the website also published the unbelievable litany of Edelman's intimidating and condescending emails to Duan . The prof's remarks ooze with arrogance and conceit . Edelman's exchange with Duan has become a viral sensation , as it should . A Harvard professor vowing legal action over the sum of $ 4 dollars . Come on . The professor has now apologized for his treatment of Duan and his family , but his emails will leave you shaking your head in disbelief that someone so supposedly "learned" could be so seemingly insufferable . Maybe that's what a Harvard education gets you these days -a degree in imperiousness . Arrogance aside, the professor's persistent threats of legal action constitute a shameful campaign of bullying . He uses his knowledge of the law --at least his tortured interpretation of it-- for a purpose that can only be described as abusive . It turns out , he has done this before to a different restaurant . Bullies tend to target the weak and vulnerable . For Edelman to use his advantage as a lawyer to berate the Duan family who have come from nothing as immigrants and are trying their best to make a living running a restaurant is, in a word, unconscionable . During one email exchange, Duan asked the professor,"you seem like a smart man... don't you have better things to do?" Bullies usually don't . For all I know, Edelman is a pretty good professor . That does not make him a good person . Clinical psychiatrists might find him to be an interesting case study in how living in the Harvard bubble can distort even the most agile of minds . Sometimes intellectuals take themselves too seriously . Sequestered from the experiences of the average man, they can lack common sense, kindness and decency . Edelman seems bereft of them all . There is a reason why places like Harvard are called"ivory towers" . All too often, they envelop an artificial atmosphere where intellectuals are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life . So, it should be no surprise when guys like Ben Edelman explode like a bomb on some poor immigrant family trying to make a buck with the sweat of their brow . Fortunately, academic elitism is not contagious . Teaching at Harvard may be a lofty achievement in the egg-head world . But professor Edelman seems to lack the one quality which elevates people above all other primates: compassion . He might gain a measure of humility and understanding by getting a real job . Might I suggest washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant? The next time I visit the Boston area, I'll skip Harvard Yard . Instead ,  I plan to drop by the Sichuan Garden to try their sauteed prawns with roasted chili and peanut sauce . And I won't check the bill .

At least one is a grown-up walking the hallowed halls of Harvard University