The Department of Public Works in Dormont Borough has asked us to inform motorists that the block of Dell Avenue in Dormont between Mervin Avenue and McFarland Road is closed for excavation of a badly needed hole. All traffic must turn left at Mervin Avenue, which is a one-way street. Mervin Avenue then terminates at Raleigh Avenue, which is a one-way street, where all traffic must turn left. Raleigh Avenue passes the Dormont Junction subway station and terminates at Park Boulevard, which is a one-way street, where all traffic must turn left. Park Boulevard will take motorists back to Dell Avenue, where they have two choices: they may turn left and repeat the circuit, or they may turn right and go back where they came from and think about that for a while. They may not continue on Park Boulevard, as the block of Park Boulevard between Dell Avenue and Annapolis Avenue is closed for excavation of a badly needed hole.

Since the last time we took a glance at the spam folder in our comment system, 25,689 messages have accumulated there. We apologize to those faithful readers who have taken the trouble to leave us words of encouragement and wisdom, many of them in Russian, and we hope that bringing some of them to the front page will be some atonement for our neglect.

A reader whose name carries so many diacritical marks that we were afraid it might break the more simpleminded browsers writes:

You’re so awesome! I don’t believe I have read a single thing like that before. So great to find someone with some original thoughts on this topic. Really.. thank you for starting this up. This website is something that is needed on the internet, someone with a little originality!

Fortunately, originality is all over the Internet these days. For example, with slight variations of wording, this original comment appears hundreds of times in our spam folder.

A reader by the poetic and euphonious name of “Top 5 Crypto Casinos with Massive Bonuses” writes:

This piece of writing is genuinely a good one it helps new net users, who are wishing for blogging.

Are new net users even aware that there is such a thing as blogging? Everyone tells Dr. Boli that blogs are so 2007.

A reader whose name appears to refer to certain quasi-legal derivatives of Cannabis sativa was kind enough to let us know that we have been of assistance in furthering his education.

Wow! At last I got a blog from where I can really obtain helpful facts concerning my study and knowledge.

The author of the Encyclopedia of Misinformation is always at your service.

A correspondent with a Vietnamese name writes:

I hope it works every day without interruptionLoading…

Apparently it does not.

“Louisville Personal Injury Attorney” remarks:

An interesting discussion is worth comment. I think that you should publish more on this subject, it may not be a taboo subject but usually people don’t discuss these issues. To the next! Cheers!!

Interestingly enough, this comment was left at the last roundup of correspondence from the spam folder. Perhaps there is a reason why people don’t usually discuss these issues.

A reader who seems to be looking for a romantic partner, to judge by the “handle” by which she identifies herself, writes:

I am now not certain the place you’re getting your info, however great topic. I needs to spend a while learning more or understanding more. Thank you for magnificent info I used to be searching for this info for my mission.

Dr. Boli agrees that you needs to spend a while learning more or understanding more, but he is not sure how reading his Magazine will aid you in your mission.

Finally, another diacritic-rich correspondent gives us what is apparently intended as advice:

Asking questions are genuinely fastidious thing if youare not understanding anything completely, but this article presents fastidious understanding yet.

If there is one piece of advice Dr. Boli could give this correspondent, it is that fastidiousness is often the enemy of understanding. Get your hands dirty and learn something new.

Thank you for using our handy Spam Call and Text Reporting Process to report receiving a spam call or text.

1. Please write the number from which the call or text originated on a 3×5 index card.

2. Add your name, address, Social Security number, and valid email address to the bottom of the card.

3. In the upper right-hand corner of the card, write your mother’s maiden name.

4. On the back of the card, write your credit-card information, including card number, expiration date, name exactly as it appears on the card, and CVV.

5. Fold the card in half lengthwise.

6. On each of the folded halves, fold down one corner toward the outside of the fold, so that the two folded corners are opposite each other.

7. Fold each folded half down, so that the outer section projects at a 90° angle from the middle of the folded card.

8. From an upstairs window, launch the paper airplane you have created in the direction of Seattle, Washington, USA.

9. Did you honestly think we were going to do something about spam calls or texts? Because, really, that’s just adorable.

If the Supreme Court has closed off the constitutional argument against forced exposure to television and other media in public places (our thanks to “von Hindenberg” for pointing out the case), then where shall we turn?

It seems to Dr. Boli that, in our current legal and intellectual climate, there is a way forward for the media-sensitive.

First, we must recognize that there is such a thing as media sensitivity. Some people cannot concentrate on a task if there is a television flashing moving images or a loudspeaker droning drivel; no matter how much they dislike the programming, they find their attention monopolized by the thing that is, after all, specifically designed to attract their attention. Such people may be described as media-sensitive: they have a reaction to media in the same way that people sensitive to urishiol have a reaction to poison ivy. This media sensitivity is a disability: it prevents them from functioning normally in situations where their attention is required to be elsewhere. If, for example, you find it impossible to fill out a form in your doctor’s waiting room because a television is begging you to watch an exciting baking contest, then you suffer from media sensitivity that prevents you from succeeding with tasks that are straightforward for the apparently normal people around you who can ignore the television in the room.

Once we have forced the recognition that media sensitivity is a disability, then our next step is simply to demand the enforcement of the laws that already protect people with disabilities. The media-sensitive must be granted reasonable accommodation. And, as we have found in many other contexts, making the world more accessible to people with disabilities has the unintended side effect of making it more accessible to everyone else as well.

Dr. Boli does not pretend that the struggle will be easy. He predicts that the average office with public-facing television screens would resist pushing the off button much more vigorously than it would resist spending a hundred thousand dollars for a wheelchair ramp. But victories are won by the patient and persistent; and, in the words of an old Danish proverb, “No one ever yet won the day by snoring.” The time to begin the struggle is now.

Our old friend Father Pitt found this tombstone thus decorated in a pre-Revolutionary graveyard south of Pittsburgh. He suggests that there are two possible conclusions:

1. The experiment was a failure.

2. The experiment was a success.

Neither conclusion is consoling.

Abstractions are useful to academic writers, because a writer can use them to spin out an article to the desired word count without needing any definite knowledge. Here is a sentence from the Wikipedia article on Necker Island (Hawaii):

This difference in form represents an earlier iteration of Hawaiian monumental architecture that offers a unique perspective on cultural norms prior to the abandonment of Necker.

We are talking about how the temple structures on Necker Island and Nihoa differ from those on the main islands in the chain. It has the appearance of an informative sentence. But did we learn anything? Probably not. Strip away the adjectives and the modifying prepositional phrases and what do we have? A difference that represents an iteration that offers a perspective. You will notice that the cultural norms are not described, and you will have trouble finding them anywhere in the article. The difference may be offering us a unique perspective, but since we do not know what the perspective is, we cannot take it up on its offer. We do not know how this perspective differs from the perspective we might otherwise have, which was not described either. The sentence suggests two perspectives but gives us none. In effect, this sentence is twenty-six words of no information at all.

If, therefore, you find yourself in a situation, like graduate school, where you are required to turn out a large number of words to demonstrate your knowledge of a subject, remember that you are judged more by the number of words than by the knowledge. Take this sentence as your model, and you can fill any word count and meet any deadline.

Arlington, Texas.—Explorers returning from Texas have reported that the city of Arlington, having graduated from a suburb of Fort Worth to the fiftieth-largest city in the United States, has begun to develop a suburb named Arlington of its own.

The answer to yesterday’s Puzzle Time feature:

© OpenStreetMap.

Brady Street (marked in yellow on this map) connects Forbes Avenue to Second Avenue, unless it is closed for maintenance of the various layers of viaduct above it, in which case it is preferable to have been born on the other side of the Parkway.

Both “Mrs. Bat” and “Heavy Equipment Heloise” proposed the Brady Street solution, though Heloise dismissed it in favor of more technical approaches to the problem.

Mrs. Bat proposed her answer in the form of a question: “Any problem with taking Brady Street?” This is a question to be posed to the Department of Public Works before attempting to navigate Brady Street. There may be several different answers for any given day, depending on time and bureaucratic mood.

© OpenStreetMap, Mapbox, and Mapcarta.

---

On this map of part of the Soho section of Pittsburgh, find your way from Forbes Avenue to Second Avenue.