1. The natural counter to a submarine is cheap mass produced surface vessels specifically tasked with anti-sub duty. There's be scarcely few, 1 in fact, kills where an underwater submarine killed another underwater submarine. The predominate number of submarine on submarine kills during WW2 were surface to surface or underwater to surface in which the target killed was on the surface making it's sole difference from any other surface vessels its low profile.

2. The B-52 mission the US flew to Iraq requires two mid-air refuelings which meant it required a friendly base for the air-tanker to launch from where the B-52 could have launched from in the first place.

I thought they were all singing Louie Louie in an attempt to sound like a bunch of drunk fishermen.

A 16" Mark VII turret cost $1.4m to install which I cannot tell if that's adjusted for inflation or the cost in the 1940s. The guns themselves were probably at least $200,000 apiece so the total turret + gun combination was probably around $2-2.5m in sunk costs. Each projectile costs about $10,000 to produce (according to a 1999 GAO report I found). Cruise missiles will always be far more expensive than artillery fire.

The battleship class would need a signficant relook but I have a feeling that direct long range fire provided by guns and turrets is obsolete. I could see the battleship revived as a new class with large gun turrets removed and the ship's direct fire capable handed over to cruise missiles (more compact) and having the ship bristle with CIWS or other anti-air systems.

I would also expect such a ship to have its belt and underwater armed strengthed and see these vessels being close escorts for carriers.

A battleship was two things. It was heavily armed and heavily armored. If we ditched the turrets and guns for cruise missile launchers and use the recovered deck space for anti-air you would have an extremely formiddible fortress. Pair one or two of these with a carrier.

In WW2 battleships were cycled off into a direct fire role for amphibious operations as well as a large platform for anti-air weapons. There were very few ship-to-ship gunfights in WW2 involving battleships. I don't think we'll ever see battleships again, at least not as they've been defined, however I definitely see a potential for battleship sized vessels that serve the direct fire and anti-air roles just as well if not better than battleships ever did. If we work from a root that the battleship size/displacement were instead to be a vessel with the maximum amount of CIWS possible while relying on cruise missiles to serve its direct fire function you could have a serviceable replacement for the battleship.

Muons are deflected by heavy materials like nuclear waste. The object your looking for does not need to be between the detector and the atmosphere (implied to be underneath the object). The object can and that would work in the sense that you would have a blank spot in the detector corresponding to where the waste is. Instead they're relying on the muons being deflected by the waste where detectors on the surface can pick up those muons and use the array of collects and deflected muons to triangulate where the waste is located.

The audience sniffed while tugging on their braids.

Death to Smoochy.

The director then excused himself to go to the bathroom.

It's either this year (2015) in which cast the number of donations increased by just under 300 over these first 6 days of February. If it's this year (past 365 days) then it means that over the past year, excluding January, there were a bit under 300 donations totalling to just under 10,000.

So basically.... the Linux Foundation gave him $60,000 to keep working on the project and told him to shut up and not disclose it until after the pity article to trick people into donating when they otherwise wouldn't have.

Which you could just use cruise missiles against.

Good point and I amend my statement to include, "Do NOT use the Big Dig model as your reference or as your influence. Also, don't be cheap, pay for proper studies, vet them, and use good engineers who have done this work before."

As for rail? I can now drive down to Portland and hop a train to Boston to catch a Bruins game. It is, by no means, high speed though. The Big Dig was a horrific project and, yeah, I suppose you may be right in that that's what government projects will result in. We *can* do better though.

California had subways. Their inclusion will be no more catastrophic than without when the big one hits so that is a moot point. Seriously, they had them. I don't recall if it was the automobile companies or the oil companies that bought them and closed them (watched a documentary on it once but it was quite a while ago) but they had them then. That and we've gotten pretty good at making things withstand quite a bit of abuse. They have subways in Japan which is more tectonically active than California. So, yes, put in subways but be smart about it and don't be cheap.