Word: steeled
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...started this revolution is a beefy football jock who dropped out of college because he didn't think he was learning enough. Kirila grew up working the family farm in the shadow of the struggling steel mills of Pennsylvania's Shenango Valley, 60 miles north of Pittsburgh. He was as fascinated by manufacturing as some teenagers are by cars. In high school he was devising weight machines for his football teammates. An injury sidelined him in 1984, and he dropped out of Youngstown State University to get into the fitness-machine business. With a $500 deposit from a customer...
...Systems. That's when he and his engineering chief, Bob McCollum, devised a software program to control each step in the manufacturing process. A company offered them a lucrative contract to build storm drains, but Pyramid didn't have the $2 million needed to fashion or tool the proper steel mold to shape the pipe. That's when McCollum came up with a startlingly simple--and cheap--idea. Instead of a metal mold, why not fashion two pieces of composite in the shape of the product, inject the resin into the cell and brace the flimsy mold with pressurized water...
Pittsburgh venture capitalists wanted nothing to do with it. Despite Kirila's charisma and his successful start-up, they saw in him a college dropout from a depressed steel valley. He faced an age-old paradox: his idea was too big to get funded, but he couldn't prove its worth unless he had the millions to start building stuff...
...historian Robert Armstrong defines the band's sound as a "unique blend of jazz, pop and hokum," and a few seconds into Dinah, the listener surrenders to the melange. The plucky violinist takes a solo, then a guy going infectiously nuts on tissue paper and comb. Finally it's steel guitarist King Bennie Nawahi's turn. He attacks the melody while caressing his instrument; his solo, like the best improvs, seems both wild and thoughtful. The full band convenes for a last mad-dash chorus, racing to Bennie's steel pulse. Who can hear this music, this musician, without feeling...
...artists expressed the verve and virtuosity of classic-era pop as smartly as Benjamin Keakahiawa Nawahi. The Honolulu native taught himself the acoustic slack-key guitar (resting on the lap, it is played with one hand manipulating the strings and the other moving a steel bar). He then adapted the Hawaiian style to almost every form of music percolating through vaudeville, speakeasies and grange halls. He was as comfortable playing Broadway songs, New Orleans jazz and country laments as he was his native tunes. And with versatility went a distinctive instrumental voice, one that smiles at the extra few notes...