Think Before You Speak!

Fox News reported this morning that the Navy would be christening the newest aircraft carrier in its fleet today, the USS George HW Bush. One of the newcasters described it as being as tall as the Empire State Building. This set my BS meter off the charts. Image the size of the ship building facility that would be required to build such a ship! It would have to dwarf the building on its own. In addition to that, the flight deck would probably be in length a few times the height of the ship. In other words, you'd have a ship big enough to float the entire naval air wing. I would think there would be more hype about a boat that big!

So I did a little fact checking:

Size

Towers 20 stories above the waterline with a 4.5-acre flight deck

1,092 feet long: nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall

That's big...but not quite so big. You would think a little reflection on what it would mean for a ship to be as tall as the Empire State Building would prompt the newscaster to check into the facts a little. Makes you wonder what other whoppers they're reporting every day.