But the reception of "Girls," even more than the show itself — which is, to keep things in perspective, a clever half-hour sitcom about a bunch of recent college graduates — is an interesting sign of our confused times.
There's clever design, 24-hour room service, a large terrace, a sunny gym, a spa that offers something called spirulina body wraps, and even dog and cat massages.
In often arid hearings, clever barristers have spent hours arguing over arcane points of constitutional conventions and freedom of information law.
The walk he has chosen – it takes us a sauntering three hours – is clever: a boutique yomp that provides a perfect microcosm of the southern British landscape.
It's also a great example of the kind of riffing, casual fun that is possible because of a very modern mix of things: Memes, a bit of social media, and a couple hours of clever coding.
David Morrissey, recently starring in State of Play, gives us a very good Brown, gruffer and more gravelly than the great man himself, but conveying that reproachful intensity that makes us all feel we should be cleverer and work longer hours.
The difference, however, was that the Red Balloon Challenge was not a crisis, so participants had to find another way to motivate others to report sightings of the balloons.The winning team, led by Manuel Cebrian and Sandy Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MITT), found all the balloons in just nine hours, using a clever incentive-based strategy to encourage participation.
These clever mechanisms kick in within hours and rarely fail, except when they are overloaded - as at Chernobyl, where most of the emergency workers who received a dose greater than 4,000 mSv over a few hours died within weeks.
The Sports Direct owner, Mike Ashley, is worth nearly £5bn – yet his business's success has been built on zero-hour contracts and clever ways to circumvent the minimum wage.
Munster finally opened the scoring from a clever attack near the half hour mark.
