Word: metallism
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...Jonesboro and all the other dark, bloody incidents. The usual suspects are being hauled into the dock, from America's permissive gun laws and violent popular culture, to familial breakdown and the nihilistic ethos of adolescence. And everyone has a solution to offer, be it more gun control, more metal detectors, more psychiatrists, more teachers, or, in the insipid phrase of America's goo-goos, more "tolerance...
...place to slow the cars, but the changes seemed to be making the racing more dangerous. An earlier crash looked like an Armageddon of a wreck: 19 cars careering around, smashing into one another, Tony Stewart's Pontiac soaring through the air, ripping the hood off another car, metal clanging, a 16-minute red flag to clean up the mess--and only a bum shoulder, Stewart's, as a result. Then on the last turn of the last lap, Earnhardt's famous black No. 3 Chevy Monte Carlo plowed--thud--into the wall and drifted back out, nose smashed...
...driveways. These cars have engine blocks of 1960s vintage; neither you nor I have bought a car with a carburetor for 15 years, but Earnhardt drove one at Daytona. Certainly his Monte Carlo was a modified machine: its engine had been juiced to about 720 h.p.; its sheet-metal skin was lighter than a road-ready car's; its roll bars were designed to render the cab a fast-moving cage...
...track hounds knew better. They knew that when a car isn't coming apart, the energy isn't dissipating. The sheet metal in these cars is designed to shred and fly away so that a driver isn't crushed or sliced. Earnhardt's car was still more or less intact. "Talk to us, Dale!" The plea from the pit crackled in the earphones of a driver--a champion, a legend--who was, in all probability, already dead...
...fourth most abundant metal in the earth's crust, titanium surely deserves the attention it is enjoying. The birth of titanium cool probably started in 1997, when architect Frank Gehry used it in abundance for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Until then, the metal had been largely under cover. During the cold war, it was used primarily to build aircraft. When this need abated, the titanium industry promoted its other uses. Up to four times as strong as steel and half the weight, titanium is ideal for tennis rackets and skis. More cost-efficient ways to cut the metal...