Newly Added To Merriam-Webster

Here are a few of the words and terms added to the 2012 edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary by its editor Peter Sokolowski: F-bomb, sexting, man cave, earworm, energy drink, flexitarian, mash-up, e-reader, craft beer, and shovel-ready. A couple of existing words have had new definitions added: toxic (in a political sense) and underwater (regarding home mortgages.) Flexitarian, which describes a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat or fish, was a new one to me.

Polls Say People Hate Polls

Fewer that 10% of those contacted bother to complete a political poll. But pollsters say that doesn't really affect the results.

The Pew Research Center’s latest detailed study of survey quality paints a worrisome picture for survey response rates, but again shows that a well-done telephone poll — even one with response rates in the high single-digits — accurately represent the U.S. population on a broad range of political and demographic measures. The apparent accuracy of results from a survey where fewer than one in 10 people completed the interview parallels previous studies showing a weak connection between response rates and survey quality. A 2008 study of more than 100 surveys, including many media polls, concluded that “lower response rates do not notably reduce the quality of survey demographic estimates.”

Do you hang up on pollsters?

Britishisms

I hate many of them, not because they aren't useful or descriptive, but because of the posers that say them. The worst: queue, ginger, advert, shite.

Catpacks?

According to Buzzfeed, the latest silly trend in Brooklyn is the catpack - a meshed backpack for carrying your kitty around town. Sometimes I feel bad that Shelley never gets out of my tiny apartment, but I'm very confident that if I tried this with her, the screaming would be heard from here to Harlem. Maybe these are just for trips to the vet?

Our Solo-Centric Island

New information from the U.S. Census Bureau reveals that just over half of Manhattan's residences are home to just one person, the highest such level in the nation.

More than half of all Manhattan residents are living alone -- and the number of singles in the city is continuing to rise to historic levels, new Census Bureau data show. That means you've got a 50-50 shot that the cute neighbor down the hall is looking for love. The borough now resembles some kind of "Sex and the City" fantasyland with a majority of households, 50.3 percent, with just one resident -- no roommate, no spouse, no family, no kids. When the other four boroughs are factored in, the single household rate drops to 33.5 percent -- a little closer to the national average of 27.5 percent, according the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

New York first passed the 50 percent mark in 2007 in what sociologists called an inevitable trend. There are numerous forces turning Manhattan into an isle of singletons, explained William Helmreich, deputy chairman of City College's sociology department. The factors include high-paying jobs, the expense of raising a family, longer-living widows and widowers, and, of course, a celebrated culture of singledom. "Singles attract more singles," he said. "They participate in a lifestyle that is mutually reinforcing. The more single people engage in that lifestyle, the more acceptable it is, and the more acceptable it is, the more people are going to do it."

I don't think the first paragraph in the above-quoted NY Post story has the numbers quite right. While 376,916 solo residences may be 50.3% of the total number of homes, with Manhattan's population at 1.6M that means that only about 25% of the island lives alone, not half.

I've lived alone for the (almost) six years I've been on the Upper East Side. The last time I lived alone before then was 1979, my sophomore year in college. After almost 25 years of living with a roommate, or a boyfriend (or more often - a boyfriend and a roommate), it was initially quite a luxury to be alone, if occasionally lonely. But pretty soon you've got your house keys on a dozen out-of-towners' key rings and have you have to start a calendar to track incoming visitors. I imagine lots of the above-cited "Manhattan loners" do the same.

Tipping Point

The number of Americans who don't own a landline now exceeds the number who don't own a cellphone.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released Wednesday said that fully 20 percent of U.S. households only had cell phones in the second half of 2008. That's a three point increase since the first half of 2008--a big jump, statistically speaking--and also three points higher than the 17 percent of households with landlines but no cell phones. For comparison purposes, in 2003, just three percent of households were wireless only, whereas a whopping 43 percent had landlines but no cell phones yet. In the meantime, about 60 percent of households have both landlines and cell phones.

I'm wondering why this was a CDC survey? Anyone?