Word: ton
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...side of man. Like most satirists, Boris secretly loved what he seemed to attack. A glimpse of a locomotive walking on crutches or a truck holding its head suggested that, to him, even machines had souls. What was more, they served man. "I would rather watch a thousand-ton dredge dig a canal," he said, "than see it done by a thousand spent slaves lashed into submission. I like machines...
...enlist his artists' aid in building a showcase for their paintings and sculptures. Thus Giacometti was able to help plan the ideal courtyard for his wasted bronze figures, which today are in the open air looking like ghosts out for a stroll. Alexander Calder contributed a 41-ton stabile, a great black dog, for the front yard. Miró filled his section, a rock-wall garden, with droll ceramics, one a giant egg nesting in a quiet pond. And in typically glad ribbons of red, green and blue, Chagall laid out his first mosaic...
...Wanna Drag, Mister?" The pursuit has never ceased; the sport has never slowed. Engines swelled in size from one to two, to four, six, eight, even to twelve cylinders, and speeds soared. In 1924, California's Peter DePaolo "cracked a ton"-averaging 101.13 m.p.h. at the Indianapolis 500-and Europe's dark genius, Ettore Bugatti, explained why he equipped his fantastically quick and costly cars with fantastically worthless brakes: "Automobiles are meant to go, not to stop...
...Nearly every brand now touts an additive-TCP, Petrox, Tri-tane, Boron-and a variety of octanes to suit different cars. Sunoco, for example, offers eight different octanes for practically every make and type of car. While the additives do improve auto performance and reduce maintenance problems, Elaine Yarring-ton, American Oil's marketing development manager, admits: "They do not ultimately result in any significant difference between the brands. As soon as rival company chemists have determined what the additives really are, everything levels off. It's what comes with the gas that makes the difference...
...sculptors. Well, only 76, since Claes Oldenburg's Giant Hamburger got caught in a rainstorm. Wrote a French critic: "Even in a country that has no great culinary pride, an 8-ft.-wide hamburger of soggy casein and canvas is artistically unappetizing." Noguchi's two-ton Sun had to be floated up the Seine on a barge, and Calder's two-ton stabile Falcon required a derrick to hoist it over the museum's walls...