If your television show has been running for, say, twenty or thirty years, and you have finally, in a moment of weakness, allowed your romantic leads to marry, you can always create romantic tension all over again by separating the couple. The separation is most easily accomplished by having the female half of the pair declare that she “needs space.” This is inherently plausible, because everyone knows that a female television character periodically “needs space” even though she lives in a Manhattan apartment the size of a cathedral. With careful management, you can build a season-long story arc on the foundation of the woman’s need for “space.” Then, for next season, there’s always amnesia.

Go to the Public Art Portfolio page of the Willet Hauser Architectural Glass company. Hover over one of the thumbnails and a plus sign appears, indicating that you could click on the picture to enlarge it. Now click on the picture to enlarge it.

You bring up a Web site in your browser, hoping to savor the delectable nuggets of entertainment and information to be found there. The first thing you see is a picture—let us say a picture of an okapi—with two or three paragraphs of information beside it. Your interest is piqued. You have always admired okapis from afar, and have been waiting for an opportunity to be better informed on the subject of okapis. You feel as though a long-vacant space in your mind is filling up, and your deepest longing is about to be satisfied: at last, you will soon be up to date on okapi-related matters—

And then suddenly the picture and text make a mad dash for the left edge of your screen. Before you can catch them, they are gone, and you had not even finished the first paragraph. In their place appears something else—something about new fashions in organic fertilizer or six International Style gas stations to see before you die. What happened to the okapi?

You have encountered that pampered darling of Web designers, the slider. Web designers are in love with the slider. They salivate over sliders the way chocolate addicts salivate over triple chocolate mousse cake. “There is literally no better way to make your website look totally stunning,” says the Web site of a company that sells a slider plugin for WordPress.

But does anyone who is not a Web designer like sliders? Anyone at all? Are there any readers who, coming upon a Web site with a slider on the front page, shout, “Hallelujah! At last, here is information presented in the exact form in which I was hoping to find it!”?

Dr. Boli believes that no one likes sliders as a consumer of information; that they are adored only by what one might call the pushers of information: people and organizations that want to put information out there, without actually thinking through the question of whether it is information anybody wants to pick up once it has been put out there.

But Dr. Boli could be wrong. He has been wrong in the past. He was, for example, wrong about ebooks once; and before that, he recalls having been wrong about something to do with Franklin Pierce, though he cannot recall what it was at the moment.

So he puts this question to the Internet at large. Do any of you reading this right now actually like sliders? Vote by commenting below. Web designers may comment, but they must in fairness identify themselves. This survey will produce data exactly as scientific as those produced by other Internet surveys and quoted by respectable journalists as definitive, so vote as often as you like.

One interesting datum Dr. Boli will mention: the Web site he mentioned earlier, the one hawking a slider plugin for WordPress with the claim that “There is literally no better way to make your website look totally stunning.” does not use sliders.

Miss Rutherford Mysteries. When Miss Rutherford comes down with a rare case of Single-Episode Blindness, it’s up to her dog Jemmie to solve the mystery of where she hid the leftover ham. Starring Dame Wilhelmina Frimp as Miss Rutherford, with special guest Anthony Quagga as the dog Jemmie.

…and therefore creation is very good (Genesis 1:31):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHJxfZ2euD4

UPDATE: It has been taken down, and therefore you may draw your own conclusions.

Uncle Tom (Pilot).—The bestselling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin gets a 21st-century update with Theodore Naphtha as Uncle Tom, a crusading hero who must stop a diabolical plot by supervillain Simon Legree (Anthony Quagga) to break the levees and destroy New Orleans.

The Plant. Has awesome vegetative power that can crack sidewalks and split rocks. Moves very, very slowly, so evildoers never notice him until it’s too late.

Absolution Man. With cowl and cape, this ordained Lutheran minister roams the night granting absolution to sincerely repentant villains. They call him the Dark Knight of the Soul.

The Crumpet. Absorbs butter at a prodigious rate.

Captain McKean County. Protects Bradford, Smethport, and the surrounding area from various forestry crimes.

Independentman. Steadfastly refuses to sign a contract with any major comic-book publisher, preferring to self-publish through CreateSpace.

The Accountant. His preternatural ability to detect financial irregularities has stopped many a supervillain’s evil plan.

Today is Mr. Orson Welles’ hundredth birthday, and you really ought to celebrate by watching Citizen Kane, or by hiding in the basement from Martian invaders—whichever is more appealing to you. If you are in Pittsburgh, you might head for the Hollywood Theater in Dormont, where you can celebrate by hearing retired Post-Gazette critic Bob Hoover, eating birthday cake, and then watching Citizen Kane on the big screen in one of the few undivided neighborhood movie palaces left in North America.

ANNOUNCER. And now the Bureau of Public Safety, providing fine police services since 1893, presents…

SCRAGGLES. Woof!

(Music: Theme, in and under for…)

ANNOUNCER. The Adventures of Scraggles, the Dog Detective! With senses keener than those possessed by any living human, Scraggles sniffs out crime and fetches the perpetrators back to justice!

(Music: Fade.)

ANNOUNCER. Today we find Scraggles interviewing Roger W. Suspect, a person of interest in the murder of yogurt magnate Irving Wolfe.

SUSPECT. Well, I must say, when my secretary told me that someone from the police wanted to see me, I sort of expected someone a little more—you know—tall. But anyway, what can I help you with?

SCRAGGLES. Woof.

SUSPECT. Yes, I heard about the murder of Irving Wolfe. Ghastly, isn’t it? I mean, to think that a murderer walks among us. I mean, of course it couldn’t be me, because everyone knows what I was doing at the time of the murder. I was busy in the office, putting the final touches on a deal that will merge Suspect Yogurt, Inc., with our biggest competitor.

SCRAGGLES. Woof.

SUSPECT. Yes, exactly—the Wolfe Dairy Products Corporation. But of course Irving Wolfe retired from the day-to-day management of the company years ago. It was a particularly tricky deal, but I’d finally managed to smooth out all the bumps in the road, so to speak, except one.

SCRAGGLES. Woof.

SUSPECT. You’re very perceptive. Yes, it was Wolfe himself. He still controlled enough shares to block the deal, and out of sheer pigheaded obstinacy— I mean, I loved him like a brother, of course, but let’s just say he was not willing to see reason in this particular matter. So I decided to see whether I could find some alternate route, so to speak.

SCRAGGLES. Woof.

SUSPECT. Yes, his daughter, Uvularia Wolfe. She could see the potential in the deal—potential to make her family rich, if only her father could give up his stubborn insistence on maintaining the independence of the company. I met with her, and she agreed to try to persuade her father to see the reality of the situation. But then later that day I got a note hand-delivered to my office. I opened it up…

SCRAGGLES. Woof.

SUSPECT. Good lord, you fellows don’t miss a beat, do you? Yes, it was from Irving Wolfe. He said he was furious that I had gone around his back and suborned his daughter, and the next day he was going to meet with his lawyer to change his will, cutting her out completely, and making sure that all his shares went to someone who agreed with him about the fundamental importance of keeping Wolfe Dairy independent. So, you see, that was why I was so busy, trying to work out a way to make the deal go through. In fact, you can check with my secretary: I was in a meeting at the very time of the murder.

SCRAGGLES. Woof.

SUSPECT. What? No, of course it wasn’t with Wolfe. Why would you say that? It was with Jeannette Hart, my business manager. You can check it out with her. In fact, my secretary remarked on how much the office smelled like Jeannette’s perfume after the meeting.

SCRAGGLES. Woof.

SUSPECT. No! I tell you, it wasn’t with Wolfe! What, did Jeannette sell me out? That disgusting lowlife schemer! She promised! Yes, blast you, I did go out and meet Irv Wolfe! And I killed him, you hear? I killed him! But it was an accident. It was self-defense. I mean, he had it coming to him.

SCRAGGLES. Woof.

SUSPECT. All right! It was premeditated! I told my secretary I’d be in a meeting with Jeannette, and I locked the door, and I poured a bottle of that stinking cheap Metro Mart perfume she always wears into the aspidistra, and then I slid down the drainpipe and went over to Wolfe’s house and killed him and came back here and climbed up the trellis and no one was the wiser! It was the perfect murder, and I would have got away with it if the stupid Bureau of Public Safety hadn’t sent its very best detective!

SCRAGGLES. Woof.

SUSPECT. So, um, did you bring somebody along to cuff me, or do I have to do that myself?

SCRAGGLES: Woof woof.

(Music: Theme, fade in and under for…)

ANNOUNCER. And so once again Scraggles uses his keen senses and awe-inspiring deductive powers to thwart another murderer! Tune in next week for more of Scraggles, the Dog Detective, when pretty much the same thing will happen. Meanwhile, remember, friends, when you’re a victim of crime, don’t try to scrape by with any old off-brand cut-rate police force. Insist on genuine City Police brand police from the Bureau of Public Safety. Only City Police brand police offer the famous Bureau of Public Safety Money-Back Guarantee. Why settle for anything less? Don’t be a victim without the number for City Police brand police in your pocket.

(Music: Theme, in full then out.)

Dear Dr. Boli: For months now I have been attempting to develop superpowers without success. Nothing has happened, not even when I goaded a radioactive wallaby into biting me. What can I do? —Sincerely, A Man Who Has the Costume and Everything, but No Superpowers.

Dear Sir: Perhaps you ought to concentrate on your own robust mental health. You could be Normal Psychological Development Man. Given the current fashions in superheroes, your lack of paralyzing moral ambiguity, soul-sapping angst, and crippling depression would give you such an advantage against the competition as to constitute a superpower in itself.