Learning.

Given that we all have a quota of one new thing to learn everyday I got mine in early.

Maybe I'm stupid, but maybe this is a common misconception.
You've heard the phrase "the exception that prooves the rule". I once read a review of Inglourious Basterds (sic) that said something along the lines of "every Tarintino film is excellent. IB is just the exception that prooves the rule".

Up until today I was unaware that anything is wrong with that statement, however, I have been corrected.
I was under the assumption that the phrase referred to the (sort of tongue-in-cheek) idea that if you have a general rule about something there is always going to be one exception that messes it up, and as such that one exception prooves that it is a good rule.

But it's not.
The phrase was originally used in Latin, a language notoriously much more able to avoid confusion regarding words. In English it is very easy to confuse words, because we have hundreds of homophones and alternative meanings for the same words. This makes English excellent for comedy, and awful for clarity.

When the phrase is translated from Latin it means something different than the idea that a rule can be asserted as correct inspite because of an exception to it. Instead we have to look at it a different way.
The best example I have found is:
"Over the holiday weekend, students do not need to be in the dorms by midnight".
The point is that this statement is "prooving" that students must be in their dorms by midnight most of the year round.

I didn't know that. But now I do.
One new thing learnt. Check.
Now I can live the rest of my day in blissful ignorant oblivion.