Word: importance
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...choice about bilingualism. It is a country created of two nations at its birth, and has ever since been trying to cope with that inherently divisive fact. The U.S., by contrast blessed with a single common language for two centuries, seems blithely and gratuitously to be ready to import bilingualism with all its attendant divisiveness and antagonisms...
...only reason the sport is not more widespread now is the lack of equipment," Campbell says. No dragon boats are currently manufactured in the U.S., so most teams have to import them from Germany, although more affordable models from other European and Asian manufacturers are catching up in quality. In the meantime, a Canadian marketing company, Great White North Communications, is filling the void. The Toronto-based firm owns a fleet of 40 boats and charges some $30,000 to provide consulting, technical support and boat hire for dragon-boat festivals...
...Just after midnight tonight, as thousands of the film faithful waited to trudge up the red carpet for a 12:15 feature, a giant BOOM punctured the clear night air. Everyone understood its import. No, not a terrorist device; not even the soundburst of boos that greeted Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette in its world premiere here Wednesday. The noise heralded a 10-minute display of fireworks over the beach, its multicolor spume spraying the Palais' top balcony...
...Defining those interests should be the first thing policy makers do. Enumerating them to Americans should be the second. At that point there can be a debate about whose idea of what is good for the country is best. What kinds of skills does America need to import? And how many of them do they need? What advantage is there is in allowing family members to join new citizens, as is currently the policy...
...History Boys Might as well start at the top. In addition to its Tony nods, this London import was just named best play of the season by my colleagues in the New York Drama Critics' Circle. But the high marks mystified me when I saw the show in London, and again in the (virtually identical) New York version. Alan Bennett's comedy-drama about a class of public school boys and their lovably old-fashioned teacher, struck me as a sentimental, highfalutin' version of Welcome Back, Kotter. Only in this case, the teacher (the dismayingly rotund Richard Griffiths) also likes...