She's not a wooden vessel. If you look very closely at the picture, you can actually see the details in the hull that give it away as a steel-hulled ship. For instance, not the slight creasing in the hull; you don't get that with a vessel built of wood. Steel hulls took over from wooden hulls almost 150 years ago, and…

You're right, they don't build the like they used to. They build they build them out of steel, like the Amerigo Vespucci.

I just went to Ferrari's website and realized that the California is currently the best-looking car in Ferrari's line-up. Ouch. Also, their online configurator sucks. Double ouch.

When the gun is too big for a tank, one has but to mount it on a 58,000 ton battleship.

Which, when you think about it, is borderline brilliant. You can be sure as shit no one is going to go tearing West Point or the Naval Academy up looking for a known criminal; it's just kind of the last place you'd ever really think to look.

If we extend your logic, you could argue that ballistic missile submarines are also worthless and ineffective, because everyone knows that we only ever threaten with them. That's all fine and good, other than the fact that you're somewhat mistaken. The reason that no one wants to see a ballistic missile sub is that…

I found myself thoroughly amused by that; it's just one of the ultimate dick moves short of actually attacking them. Sure, for all the North Koreans know there could be an Ohio-class SSBN tied up at Kitsap with its hatches open, getting ready to unload on Pyongyang while they're waiting for dinner to be served. But…

The one that really scares me is the idea of going deep-sea fishing off of Georgia or Washington, without the faintest clue that the world's largest mobile nuclear arsenal might be passing underneath me in near silence.

Ah. In that case, you have my apologies. I'll work on the reading comprehension.

True, but in full-cost accounting, the R&D costs are inherently embedded within each unit built. At 21 units built, the build price of each of unit may only have been $700 million, but the cost of going from zero to 21 operational aircraft was ultimately significantly more than the combined $14.7 billion in build…

I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that it's irrelevant. To start with, as a general rule, B-2 deployments tend to be quite highly classified. We don't know much about what they have or haven't done in recent conflicts. Secondly, there is a lot more to its usefulness than a simple count of how many bombs have…

Demonstrate to me what part of the hyperbole is outrageous.

A masterpiece? Hardly.

By the same token, you simply can't replace a dedicated carrier-based, long-range interceptor, a dedicated counter-insurgency aircraft, a dedicated strike-fighter, a dedicated VTOL forward deployed attack aircraft, a dedicated air superiority fighter, a dedicated stealth first-strike platform, and a dedicated patrol…

The ultimate unit cost of the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers has yet to be determined. The number that you quote is for the initial ship, and the initial ship alone. As such, all of the immense R&D costs that went into developing the class are saddled on the shoulders of just one ship. If we were to stop…

Well, the replacement for the Nimitz-Class carriers are the Gerald R. Ford-class carriers. The first of the class, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is set to launch this autumn. If we take R&D costs related to the development of the many new systems being incorporated into the next generation of aircraft carriers (including…

No, actually, I always wanted the sedan. I thought it was criminal that BMW didn't have an E46 M3 sedan. It was arguably their best 3-series ever, and certainly the best looking. It just needed an M3 sedan variant

There are a lot more than seven founding fathers, and a lot more good answers than were posted.

Oh, I know what an Oakland is. I also know who William Whipple is. It's jus that very few people think of William Whipple when they think of "founding fathers" and very few people think of Oakland when they think about American cars. In fact, no one ever really thinks of either of them. Ever. And that was the joke.

Mostly because in many environments, such speed is either unnecessary or unpractical. There's just no reason for doing it in our modern mentality. With the advent of cars and airliners, people became less dependent on trains for high-speed, long-distance travel. There's also the case that steam power simply isn't used…