SoPo: The Coining of a Neighborhood Name
Let's hope that we can't call it this for very long, but for the moment, the neighborhood-name coinage that appears to be Sandy's legacy to New Yorkers is "SoPo."
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Stoical types will tell you that the only way to SUI well is to not do it at all, but there are some tips that can help you do it better. Because chances are, you are going to be exposed to a drink and a store, or a drink and your computer and an Internet connection, at some point in the very near future. You might as well be prepared, or as prepared as possible. Follow these rules.
Let's hope that we can't call it this for very long, but for the moment, the neighborhood-name coinage that appears to be Sandy's legacy to New Yorkers is "SoPo."
Yesterday I was reminded by a friend of how "nice" people in the city became following another disaster, albeit a very different one, with far more deaths—after 9/11, she said, people were just nice to each other for almost a year. How long would we be nice to each other after Sandy? Are we being nice to each other as we speak?
Let's all sit down for this: The National Weather Service is predicting more weather of the extreme variety. A Nor'easter is "possible for Mid-Atlantic/New England states by Election Day into next Thursday," per the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center of College Park, Maryland.
A Frankenword is a special kind of portmanteau we don't talk about all that much, but given Sandy (dubbed early on a "Frankenstorm"), it is again a topic of conversation, at least among certain semantically driven people.
When did The New York Times start talking like Yoda, and when did we begin to notice it? On it, the Twitter account @NYTPrepositions is.
With cell service snarled and power still out in downtown Manhattan, a lot of people are turning to an ancient friend: The pay phone.
Remember "Très Brooklyn"? All that and those who dine upon it, it seems, may have been left in a lurch—like the rest of us—by Sandy.
Can you, if you are a Democrat, even, perhaps, not an actively campaigning one, but one who would certainly never deign to vote for Mitt Romney, consider in good faith a Republican as a possible suitor? Can you, if you are a Republican, ever love someone who believes in the presidency of Barack Obama?
Think back to last Wednesday (yes, today is Wednesday), when we were first learning that this ridiculous-sounding monster-hybrid storm with the preposterously corny name of Sandy might hit us. There have been so many emotions since then!
Some parents just hate fun. Specifically, the sugared, cavity-producing, hyperactivity-inducing fun that comes with Halloween candy.
A lot of us for whom the big impact of Sandy is past—and keep in mind: in other places, she's only beginning—want to help, but what to do, without getting in the way? We've compiled some options for you.
There are plenty of people who have behaved not just decently but positively heroically during and following Sandy's hit on New York City and the surrounding areas. Let's all take a moment to thank them for restoring our faith in humanity.
As the New York City area (and beyond) attempts to recover from one of the most massive, damaging storms in our history, we get a story in the New York Post that changes everything. Or, nothing, in that it confirms what we had suspected about a certain set of people who will stop at nothing to get their Starbucks.
There may be one small upside to the power going out. You can finally sit down and read the books you've been studiously ignoring.
In purely semantical terms, Sandy is whipping up some havoc, though of a less dangerous kind than what she's doing atmospherically. Here's a lexical exploration of some of the key storm-related words flying around.
The superstitious might wonder if perhaps Sandy were some form of cosmic payback for all the snarking and making fun and lack of respect we showed with Irene, despite that prior storm's damage to many beyond Manhattan.
In the lead-up to that scariest of holidays (no, not Thanksgiving with the family), I canvassed some of our favorite authors and writers and book lovers for a trip down Memory OMG I AM SLEEPING WITH ALL THE LIGHTS ON Lane—to find out their favorites.
Today is the day a certain set of language and literature fans celebrate Mr. Geoffrey Chaucer, who died 612 years ago today. Not only was Old Chaucey a pretty compelling writer, but also, he was far better at coining words and phrases than the rest of us amateur portmanteau-chasers.
Batten down the hatches, have you heard? There's a weather situation a'brewing, one with the best of all possible weather situation names. Sandy Snor'eastercane is on her way to the East Coast. Maybe.
Kate Carraway, Vice columnist and writer for the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and The Grid, is a media consumption machine, but she draws the line at sites that ask her to write for them and then say they can't pay her.
Just days ago, Nate Silver wrote in the New York Times that "if only women voted, President Obama would be on track for a landslide re-election, equaling or exceeding his margin of victory over Senator John McCain in 2008." Today, a new Associated Press-GfK poll, cited by CBS News, indicates that that gender gap is "all but gone."
It was a time of much strife, we'll be telling our grandchildren many years hence of this moment in our New York City history. It was brunch. It was ice cream. It was chicken. And then it was breakfast.
The Roman police force is on the lookout for defiers of the law, the law being: Eating and drinking at historic sites. Thou shalt not do it, capisce?
Today in the New York Times' Opinionator blog there's a love letter of sorts from Ben Yagoda, author and professor of English at the University of Delaware, to the dash.
Pippa Middleton is kind of the best, right? But not everyone likes Pippa! Not everyone is approving of her new status as writer, a party-planning and advice writer, to be precise.
Face the Nation's Bob Schieffer hosted the final presidential debate sit-down with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, focused ostensibly on the matter of foreign policy, Monday evening. Here is your semantical commentary. (For GIFs and things, go here).
It is International Caps Lock Day, as Megan Garber has alerted us in her TheAtlantic.com post on the subject. This is a day to celebrate (if you must), but with some caveats. It's not like you can just hit the caps lock key with your pinkie and carry on. There are rules, here, even on its special day.
There's a new book out this week from bestselling memoirist Julie Klam, and this one diverges a bit from her two recent books, You Had Me at Bark and Love at First Woof. For one, it's about human friendships, not interspecies ones.
Could ladies be as cheating-prone as their husbands? Could this be because of "gender equality"? There's some recent research indicating that "unfaithfulness among wives may be approaching that of husbands."
Ice cream truck wars in the summer; urban farming fisticuffs in the fall—there's neighborhood-based trouble for every month in the Big Apple. The beef of the season in Park Slope is chicken.
Prohibition be damned, words were just better in the 1920s. If you don't request extra foot juice tonight at that dive bar where you order the subpar pinot grigio, you are doing something wrong.
One clear lesson about language is that it's ever-evolving, but at the same time, the more things change, the more things stay the same. Take the case of whom.
Lady nudes are all over the art world, but there are few naked men (Michelangelo's "David" being a notable exception) on display in museums and galleries, as Mary M. Lane writes in a Wall Street Journal piece about "Nude Men," an exhibit opening at Vienna's Leopold Museum on Friday.
Speak, a Y.A. novel written by Laurie Halse Anderson and published by Farrar Straus Giroux in October of 1999, tells of the aftermath of the rape of Melinda Sordino, who, in her freshman year in high school, nearly stops speaking altogether in her struggle to deal with what's happened to her.
Just when you thought it was safe to go to work without the dreaded scourge of artisanal hunkering down and making itself at home in your workspace, oops, there it is. Artisanal cubicles, welcome to the year 2012.
Best-selling author Jennifer Weiner has responded to the news of New York Times Magazine's "Talk" columnist Andrew Goldman's month-long suspension from the paper over his recent tweets, called "insulting and profane" by New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan.
As we grow old and grey on the Internet, one thing will remain the same. There will always be trend stories about ladies' hair, whether it's about bangs, or lack of bangs, or partial Caesar-type bangs, or short new gamine cuts (how French!), or updos, or long-dos, or color (ombre, remember ombre?).
Rembert Browne, staff writer for Grantland, loves books, thinks he still hates the Internet (but uses it constantly anyway), and steals his New York Times from a neighbor.
Last week, Australia's Julia Gillard, the first woman to serve as the country's prime minister, gave an impassioned speech against sexism, accusing conservative Opposition Leader Tony Abbott of being a misogynist. Her words have inspired changes in how that word is defined in Australia's Macquarie Dictionary.
Tuesday evening we went down the old presidential debate road yet again, meeting our candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama for a second time with all the convivial discourse-ready trappings of America.
Fifty Shades of Grey, according to The Guardian's Paris correspondant Kim Willsher, is not enamoring the French un iota of its alleged sexiness.
Y.A. author Mary O'Connell plans to feature J.D. Salinger's most-famous character, Holden Caulfield, in her upcoming book for adults, In the Rye. How would Salinger have felt about this?
Happy Dictionary Day, word-nerds! This is the official holiday in which we celebrate the birth of Noah Webster, who would be 254 years old if he were still living and breathing on this planet.
Every so often we get one of those articles about how someone more frugal than your average frugal person is living off the land on the cheap, surviving on stuff discovered in Dumpsters and other people's trash. But they have limits, these people do.
Today, Charlotte's Web, the most famous book by the masterful E.B. White, has turned 60. It is no worse for wear in terms of readability and resonance, even amid a world of dystopias, fantasies, and futuristic plots and themes.
A piece in this month's Economist adds fuel to the Anglocreep fire: People who aren't British want butlers now. Some of them can actually afford to hire one.
Can a time period be defined by its method of killing the pesky housefly—or the mosquito, the cockroach, the spider, or other unwanted home invaders of the insect variety? Perhaps.
Last night sitting Vice President Joe Biden faced off against Republican nominee Paul Ryan for the first—and only—VP debate we're going to get this year. Was there excitement? There was some excitement! Here we're going to talk mostly about the semantics and style of the debate.
"Can you believe we're talking about this in 2012?" asks New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan in a piece regarding a recent inflammatory situation involving best-selling novelist Jennifer Weiner and New York Times Magazine contributor Andrew Goldman. She's talking about the way we talk about sexism.
Just a handful of the Y.A. and middle-grade books I read while growing up in the '80s featured overweight or obese characters. Usually they weren't the protagonists. Since then, things have changed a bit, but Skinny, by debut Y.A. novelist Donna Cooner, promises to bring some new conversations to the category.
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