Word: deafness
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Dimitri Kanevsky helps computers understand human speech, a surprising line of work for someone who has been deaf since age 3. The odds are good that if your computer can transcribe a voice or your cell phone knows which number to dial when you tell it to "Call Julie," Kanevsky, 50, is partly responsible. His algorithms are at work inside much of the software that helps translate human speech into the digital language that machines understand...
...over November's congressional elections. According to Roll Call, House minority leader Dick Gephardt recently spoke with senior Dems about the corporate crookery, saying that "if this thing plays out right, we could pick up 30 to 40 seats." Bush is desperate to show voters that he is not deaf to their concerns, but he has not found the message. "He wrapped his arms around this market," laments a senior Administration official. "Now he owns...
...LIPS, being French, is wryer and dryer. A mousy, overworked executive secretary (Emmanuelle Devos) is given permission to hire a trainee-assistant. She chooses a newly paroled con (Vincent Cassel), a hunky lunk, but observant enough to divine her well-kept secret, which is that she is virtually deaf. She covers this defect by being an expert lip-reader. Now, this is a skill a bad guy can use. Soon she's perched on a rooftop, peering through binoculars, learning the secrets of a criminal gang whose ill-gotten gains he plans to heist. The comedic first part of Jacques...
...says. But Mr. Nasty can be nice. When someone wows Cowell, he'll gush, "You are talent. You are a star." (His praise, like many critics', isn't half as inspired as his insults.) And his put-downs can backfire. Jim Verraros, a likable young man who has two deaf parents and who accompanied his first audition by signing, was voted into the finals last week despite a subpar performance. It probably helped that Cowell had savaged his vocals: "If you win this competition, we will have failed...
Robert Todd, 15, missed huge pieces of the plot when he saw the latest Star Wars movie. "Who's supposed to be the young Darth Vader?" he asked his dad. Robert has severe to profound hearing loss, and like most of the 28 million other deaf or severely hearing-impaired Americans, he can't follow a movie without some help--from captioning or a companion. Last month his father Rob Todd filed a class action in federal court in Texas against 12 film-production companies and theater chains. The suit, the first legal slap at movie studios in an emotional...