[Ninong]

"In the dark of night, the U.S. Navy shot down an errant satellite," is the way Brian Williams began NBC's Evening News a little while ago.

And last night on CNN, Anderson Cooper made a big deal out of the fact that the Navy managed to do this "in darkness."

What's wrong with these morons? Who writes this crap and why do the talking heads read it? No wonder 21% of Americans believe that the Sun orbits the Earth and another 17% of them believe that the Earth orbits the Sun in one day.

According to all reports, the missile was launched at 10:26 p.m. ET last night. Secretary Gates was informed that it was a complete success at 10:35 p.m. ET last night. The missile was launched from a ship "west of Hawaii." The satellite was still in a polar orbit approximately 130 miles above the Earth's surface. It would have taken the missile a little over three minutes to reach it.

If the missile was launched "west of Hawaii at 10:26 p.m. ET," then it wasn't "in the dark of night." That would be a full hour before sunset in Honolulu, and since it was "west of Hawaii," then it was more than an hour before sunset.

It was in daylight! It was NOT "in the dark of night."

P.S. -- Reminds me of the last time we had a full lunar eclipse. Not the one last night, the one before that one. One of the morning TV anchors made this brilliant comment on live TV: "We're having a full lunar eclipse tonight and what makes this one extra special is that it's also going to be a full moon." Moron! You can't have a lunar eclipse without a full moon. All lunar eclipses happen during a full moon. As a matter of the fact, the moon is exactly full when it's in the middle of the Earth's shadow.