Swarfblog

Rare Earths Aren’t Rare, with Julie Klinger-Ep. 254

“Rare earths aren’t actually rare, nor are they earths,” Julie Klinger told me. Julie is an associate professor at UW Madison and literally wrote the book on rare earth elements—Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes. I interviewed her last week, the day after Trump signed a rare

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Beds, Banks and Beyond

The economy is always hard to figure out, but we seem to be in an especially baffling period for both professional economists and amateur business

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Our Crunchy New Car

About two weeks ago my boyfriend bought a 2013 all-electric Nissan Leaf while I cheered him on. Steve had been driving a 2005 Chevy TrailBlazer

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Shot at Stardom

Jon Samuelson has three daughters, Bonnie, Karlie and Katie Lou. Two were in the NCAA Basketball Final Four over the weekend. A third started for

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Paid by the Hour

I received an email recently from Steve Rose, a veteran of the machining wars who was educated in an apprentice program in England during the

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You Bet Your Life

Fifteen years ago, I was in Las Vegas for a business conference in late March and ran into a used machinery dealer from Chicago named

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