Comb the Manhattan waterfront and you will find, along with the usual windrows of cups, bottles and plastic bags, what the E.P.A. calls “floatables,” those “visible buoyant or semibuoyant solids” that people flush into the waste stream like cotton swabs, condoms, tampon applicators and dental floss.

Whatever might be the details of the proposition, that, he conceived, to be the result, or, in vulgar language, the upshot of it.

The patient subsequently underwent excisional biopsy of the right nostril mass under general anaesthetic using a circumferential subperichondrial incision with a small margin.

The paint in many rooms is peeling, and in some rooms (closed for repairs) the furniture is dusty and cobwebbed.