new thread had started. At least on my MacBook Pro, that wound up sleeping for
a full 10ms (probably 1 jiffy). By using an Event instead, we can be absolutely
certain that the thread has started, and return more quickly (217us).

Before:
$  ./python.exe -m timeit -s 'from threading import Thread'  't = Thread(); t.start(); t.join()'
100 loops, best of 3: 10.3 msec per loop
$  ./python.exe -m timeit -s 'from threading import Thread; t = Thread()'  't.isAlive()'
1000000 loops, best of 3: 0.47 usec per loop

After:
$  ./python.exe -m timeit -s 'from threading import Thread'  't = Thread(); t.start(); t.join()'
1000 loops, best of 3: 217 usec per loop
$  ./python.exe -m timeit -s 'from threading import Thread; t = Thread()'  't.isAlive()'
1000000 loops, best of 3: 0.86 usec per loop

To be fair, the 10ms isn't CPU time, and other threads including the spawned
one get to run during it. There are also some slightly more complicated ways to
get back the .4us in isAlive() if we want.