Word: iridium
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...Iridium, a basement jazz club across from Lincoln Center in Manhattan, Les Paul sidles up a narrow aisle between tables. He is smaller, more gnomish, but still recognizably the wizard of Waukesha, the garage mechanic's son who revolutionized the way music was played and recorded. And since he turned 86 just two days before, and is looking forward to celebrating his birthday with some famous friends, Paul has a special glow. He sits on a stool surrounded by a few admiring musicians and starts playing 'Over the Rainbow' on one of his famous guitars...
...away.' A year later he formed his first trio, with the bass player Ernie Newton and rhythm guitarist Jim Atkins (the older half-brother of Chet Atkins, with whom Paul would cut the 1995 album 'Chester and Lester'). They came east and, 64 years before Paul's gig at Iridium, there was a Les Paul Trio playing a New York club...
...create art - cutting out bits of colored paper, painting with his brush in his mouth, supervising his decoration of the Chapel of the Rosary in Saint-Paul de Vence - because it was what he did, because it kept him alive. For those reasons, Les Paul shows up at Iridium each Monday evening, putting the final touches, grace notes, to the edifice of his achievement...
...FALLING Iridium was the world's first truly global communications system, providing wireless phone service anywhere on Earth via an orbiting network of satellites. When the service didn't catch on, the company went bankrupt, and Iridium announced it would allow all 66 satellites, launched at a cost of $5 billion, to burn up in the sky. Now a group of enterprising technophiles called Save Our Satellites is attempting to buy the satellites, on the ground that they constitute one of history's greatest engineering feats. If you want to help raise funds, sign up at saveiridium.com...
...social life was edgy. He spent hours poring over technical charts, and then steered his clients to blue chips like Merck and AT&T. But somewhere along the way, he was seduced by the adrenaline rush of higher risk. His Cassandra Group investment management company bet heavily on Iridium, the global telephone satellite firm that filed for bankruptcy last summer. He also invested in Paradise Music & Entertainment, which was paying him to serve as a consultant. (Giacchetto says he informed most of his clients of the arrangement...