Word: signed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Arika Okrent is fluent in English, Hungarian, American sign language and ... Klingon. (O.K., so she has only first-level certification in Star Trek-speak.) Okrent, a linguistics scholar, spent the better part of five years perusing library card catalogs and attending colorful conferences to learn about languages created by one person and, in some cases, adopted by thousands. Her new book, In the Land of Invented Languages, chronicles the scientists, idealists and eccentrics who tried - and failed - to create the perfect parlance from scratch. TIME spoke with Okrent about defending the cranks from the critics, ordering sandwiches in Esperanto...
...idea of making the stress tests permanent. They like the fact that the stress tests have restored confidence in most of the nation's largest banks. What's more, they argue that even in good times the public bank exams make sense because they could sound the early-warning sign that was missing two years ago. A regular public vetting of the big banks' laundry might also cause some financial firms to be more cautious in the future about the types of loans they make...
Earlier this spring, a London fringe theater put on a sellout production of Saturday Night, about young Brooklynites gambling on the 1929 stock market, which Sondheim penned when he was 24 and saw performed on stage first in 1997. "I take it as an encouraging sign that the shows are worth looking at a second time," Sondheim says. "Most musicals, you look at them a second time, they're not as good as they were the first time." His own endure, he believes, because "I write with better librettists. They're better playwrights than the librettists of most musicals...
...fitting that in a booming metropolis of 20 million people, the first sign that Mexico City had been recalled to life wasn't a public religious ceremony or a political rally but a traffic jam. After a weeklong shutdown in response to the H1N1 flu outbreak, on May 5--Cinco de Mayo--Mexico City began to stir again. The spread of the swine flu had slowed, leading Mexican officials to hope that the worst had passed. "Our strategy is working," said Mexican President Felipe Calderón. "We are now in a position to gradually resume our everyday activities...
...these announced changes, it is still worthwhile to solicit solutions or compromises that will keep students safe within budgetary restrictions. Despite the outcry on campus through private and public e-mails from students, parents, faculty, and alumni, as yet, a week after the announced cuts, we have received no sign that the administration is listening. MIT is leading a similar budget-cut initiative and is trying to incorporate community feedback, even streamlining the process of recognizing the best ideas. Its website asks the MIT community to post suggestions to the “Idea Bank” and allows others...