what did you learn today?

I've told you before that I felt I had to justify my existence every day to my father. "Just the good news, please," the doctor wanted to hear from his family to compensate for the complaints he heard all day from his patients.  So we/I wanted to give a good report, preferably entertaining and as I progressed in my studies, informative, thought-provoking and stimulating.  Well, it goes on: what did I learn today?

Actually, a lot.  It's Sunday and The New York Times is full of news and ideas. It's hard to choose. Discussions are going on apace to determine the  WOTY - the Word of the Year.  (Last year it was the selfie.)  As I read this morning, an argument has not been settled about the validity of a hashtag#phrase as opposed to one word.  We'll see.  If you didn't know it already I loove words.

Another NYT article tells the story and the difficulty of naming: products, games, all kinds of things.  At this time in the history of the world, a name has to satisfy all people, no matter what their language is. What sounds good in English might be an obscenity somewhere else.   "One man's meat is another man's poisson."  I didn't originate that, it's by an American author, poet and mystery  writer called Carolyn Wells  (1862-1942). I remembered the line and the name of the person who said it, knowing nothing of the writer till just now when I looked her up. 

The article about naming went into great detail about the difficulties involved, the research and the clearing required to establish a brand name.  You can look that. up; it's quite interesting.  But what I learned today was that Carolyn Wells was a prolific writer when all I knew was one line.

Learn something every day.