Word: steels
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...colorblind child's Lego castle above the charming boulevards around the Place de la Bastille, was mercifully unbuilt. But the long avenues were the same, and the bridges and the monuments, and then, as now, there were no skyscrapers in the center of Paris, no garish glass-and-steel confections, no piles of cement marring the long, twilit boulevards where the Parisians sat and sit still, sneering at the tourists and smoking their cool, carcinogenic cigarettes...
...Cold blue steel, sweet fire
...Still riding to the top peak, I look around. The cable car is made of steel and glass panels, and I notice some cracks in the panels and try not to think about the safety record of cars suspended from steel cables in Third World countries. The cable car sways a bit in the breeze and I suddenly have a brief vision of George Clooney in "A Perfect Storm" being buffeted by winds, but since that wasn't a very good movie I try hard to think of George Clooney in "Out of Sight" and then I think...
...Just then, a huge thunderbolt strikes the mountain right near Christ's statue. Maybe God is a Papa Roach fan and didn't like my sarcasm. I suddenly realize that I'm standing on top of a mountain in a thunderstorm and my only transportation down is in a steel cable car held up by steel cables. I try to keep my eyes on Cristo Redentor the whole way down...
...depleted-uranium ordnance. Depleted uranium is not radioactive, and speculation over its potential health effects focus on its toxicity as a heavy metal. It is precisely its weight - 1.7 times that of lead - that allows depleted-uranium shells to pass through all sorts of armored surfaces that might stop steel, brass or copper, and makes it an attractive tank-busting weapon. Depleted-uranium ordnance was originally used on A-10 tank-busting bombers, but during the Kosovo campaign was used in an even wider range of weapons...