Sputnik! Mutnik! Whatnik!

The other day my young daughter, having returned home from a day's session at school, sat down with the family to partake of the evening meal. As is quite often the case, she receives much of our attention and interest with her conversation about the happenings of the day. On this occasion she floored us with the enigmatical question: Why can the Russians see to ride horses at night better than we can? When we could not produce the answer, she replied: Because they have the satellite. Naturally...