A couple of nights ago I enjoyed a chat with my oldest daughter. The topic of Ivy-League schools came up and we tried to remember which schools belong to it. Then my daughter mentioned that I told her the name came from the Roman numeral 4 (IV) and represented the original number of schools. I didn't remember saying anything about that, but I could have. Naturally I pulled out my phone and looked up the information. Thanks to Wikipedia we discovered that the Ivy League started with 8 schools, not 4 and that it is an often quoted rumor. In the end we both felt enlightened knowing which schools are part of the Ivy League and that the name really does refer to the plant growing on and around the buildings on campus.
My dad works in advertising and often says not to ruin a good story by sticking too close to the truth. Unfortunately with everyone having access to the world's combined knowledge in a pocket device, it is more important not to stray too far from the truth. For instance, I remember hearing that my last name is the 6th most common in the United States. I made the comment, someone looked it up, and informed me it is the 60th most common last name. Okay, I knew there was a 6 in it but I was off by a factor of 10.
This evening my wife needed to know if her ski pass would work at a neighboring ski area. She looked it up and after a bit of searching confirmed what I told her. It does work and she doesn't need to do anything other than let the RFID scanner in the lift line scan her pass. Now she knows she doesn't have to do anything special to ski there tomorrow when she goes up with a neighbor friend. Why she didn't trust me and felt the need to look up the information, I don't know. I'm hardly ever wrong (see the previous paragraph for an exception).
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