Those blades also have exotic coatings and actually operate at a temperature above the melting point of the metal in them. A couple of weeks ago I heard the BBC Elements program on nickel and they were bringing up its use in jet engines. Jet turbines use the vast majority of the very limited supply (about 70% of 40 tons) of rhenium produced each year and it is one of the most expensive metals so I doubt the cost is an issue.

I think the only ones that weren't were ones that were cheer-leading for the current administration or outright silly. The best example of the "Fuck off" mentality is this petition response. I forget what the issue was in the initial petition but the response of basically go read our long standing stance on the issue and piss off prompted the second one. At that point I basically gave up on the petitions and most people did.

Well the US government already subsidizes cotton producers in Brazil so why not.

but are you on a frictionless surface in a vacuum?

So an ideal presidential candidate then?

Not sure if that is better or worse pay wise (when taking cost of living into account) than a job offer I got for $35,000/year to work for a medical company in Boston a few years back. I laughed at the person who was so dumb they didn't know if I was laughing because the value was silly high or silly low so they asked if that was good. I replied it was fucking awful and that I made about 3 times that living in a lower cost state.

Hey that's the sound your mom made last night when I had her bent over the kitchen table.

Is this a recent development or was I mostly just lucky that almost 20 years ago the state school I went to (MSU Mankato) offered it as an undergrad class as an option. They also offered compiler construction as an undergrad class which I gather is another one that is fairly rare at the undergrad level.

I'm still trying to figure out what benefit this provides me.