It’s Mailbag Monday!
That’s when I answer your questions about English.
Why do we call it “Mailbag Monday”?
Because in the old days, fans of radio and TV shows wrote their questions in letters and the postman delivered the letters in a mailbag.
SMART OR CLEVER?
An Atomic Homework reader asks, “What’s the difference between ‘smart’ and ‘clever’?”
Did you see the movie Oppenheimer?
It’s the story of the atomic bomb.
And two of the film’s characters, Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, show us the difference between smart and clever.
Both men were obviously smart.
But only one was clever.
In one scene, we see Einstein working.
He’s standing by a pond and simply thinking.
His hair is a mess. And his shoelaces are probably untied.
Oppenheimer, meanwhile, was trusted with a budget in the billions (in today’s dollars), managed thousands of people, built a secret city and delivered the world’s first atomic weapon.
Oppenheimer was clever.
He got things done.
