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Many decades ago I spent what seemed like a great deal of time under a scorching sun, watching groups of sweaty soldiers as they solved a problem. I was doing my national service in the Israeli Army at the time. I had completed an undergraduate degree in psychology, and after a year as an infantry officer, I was assigned to the army's Psychology Branch, where one of my occasional duties was to help evaluate candidates for officer training. We used methods that were developed by the British Army in World War II.
One test, called the leaderless group challenge, was conducted on an obstacle field. Eight candidates, strangers to one another, with all insignia of rank removed and only numbered tags to identify them, were instructed to lift a long log from the ground and haul it to a wall about six feet high. There, they were told that the entire group had to get to the other side of the wall without the log touching either the ground or the wall, and without anyone touching the wall. If any of these things happened, they were to acknowledge it and start again.
A common solution was for several men to reach the other side by crawling along the log as the other men held it up at an angle, like a giant fishing rod. Then one man would climb onto another's shoulder and tip the log to the far side. The last two men would then have to jump up at the log, now suspended from the other side by those who had made it over, shinny their way along its length and then leap down safely once they crossed the wall. Failure was common at this point, which required starting over.
As a colleague and I monitored the exercise, we made note of who took charge, who tried to lead but was rebuffed, how much each soldier contributed to the group effort. We saw who seemed to be stubborn, submissive, arrogant, patient, hot-tempered, persistent or a quitter. We sometimes saw competitive spite when someone whose idea had been rejected by the group no longer worked very hard. And we saw reactions to crisis: who berated a comrade whose mistake caused the whole group to fail, who stepped forward to lead when the exhausted team had to start over. Under the stress of the event, we felt, each man's true nature revealed itself in sharp relief.
After watching the candidates go through several such tests, we had to summarize our impressions of the soldiers' leadership abilities with a grade and determine who would be eligible for officer training. We spent some time discussing each case and reviewing our impressions. The task was not difficult, because we had already seen each of these soldiers' leadership skills. Some of the men looked like strong leaders, others seemed like wimps or arrogant fools, others mediocre but not hopeless. Quite a few appeared to be so weak that we ruled them out as officer candidates. When our multiple observations of each candidate converged on a coherent picture, we were completely confident in our evaluations and believed that what we saw pointed directly to the future. The soldier who took over when the group was in trouble and led the team over the wall was a leader at that moment. The obvious best guess about how he would do in training, or in combat, was that he would be as effective as he had been at the wall. Any other prediction seemed inconsistent with what we saw.
Because our impressions of how well each soldier performed were generally coherent and clear, our formal predictions were just as definite. We rarely experienced doubt or conflicting impressions. We were quite willing to declare: "This one will never make it," "That fellow is rather mediocre, but should do O.K." or "He will be a star." We felt no need to question our forecasts, moderate them or equivocate. If challenged, however, we were fully prepared to admit, "But of course anything could happen."
We were willing to make that admission because, as it turned out, despite our certainty about the potential of individual candidates, our forecasts were largely useless. The evidence was overwhelming. Every few months we had a feedback session in which we could compare our evaluations of future cadets with the judgments of their commanders at the officer-training school. The story was always the same: our ability to predict performance at the school was negligible. Our forecasts were better than blind guesses, but not by much.
We were downcast for a while after receiving the discouraging news. But this was the army. Useful or not, there was a routine to be followed, and there were orders to be obeyed. Another batch of candidates would arrive the next day. We took them to the obstacle field, we faced them with the wall, they lifted the log and within a few minutes we saw their true natures revealed, as clearly as ever. The dismal truth about the quality of our predictions had no effect whatsoever on how we evaluated new candidates and very little effect on the confidence we had in our judgments and predictions.
I thought that what was happening to us was remarkable. The statistical evidence of our failure should have shaken our confidence in our judgments of particular candidates, but it did not. It should also have caused us to moderate our predictions, but it did not. We knew as a general fact that our predictions were little better than random guesses, but we continued to feel and act as if each particular prediction was valid. I was reminded of visual illusions, which remain compelling even when you know that what you see is false. I was so struck by the analogy that I coined a term for our experience: the illusion of validity.
I had discovered my first cognitive fallacy.
Decades later, I can see many of the central themes of my thinking about judgment in that old experience. One of these themes is that people who face a difficult question often answer an easier one instead, without realizing it. We were required to predict a soldier's performance in officer training and in combat, but we did so by evaluating his behavior over one hour in an artificial situation. This was a perfect instance of a general rule that I call WYSIATI, "What you see is all there is." We had made up a story from the little we knew but had no way to allow for what we did not know about the individual's future, which was almost everything that would actually matter. When you know as little as we did, you should not make extreme predictions like "He will be a star." The stars we saw on the obstacle field were most likely accidental flickers, in which a coincidence of random events — like who was near the wall — largely determined who became a leader. Other events — some of them also random — would determine later success in training and combat.
You may be surprised by our failure: it is natural to expect the same leadership ability to manifest itself in various situations. But the exaggerated expectation of consistency is a common error. We are prone to think that the world is more regular and predictable than it really is, because our memory automatically and continuously maintains a story about what is going on, and because the rules of memory tend to make that story as coherent as possible and to suppress alternatives. Fast thinking is not prone to doubt.
The confidence we experience as we make a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that it is right. Confidence is a feeling, one determined mostly by the coherence of the story and by the ease with which it comes to mind, even when the evidence for the story is sparse and unreliable. The bias toward coherence favors overconfidence. An individual who expresses high confidence probably has a good story, which may or may not be true.
I coined the term "illusion of validity" because the confidence we had in judgments about individual soldiers was not affected by a statistical fact we knew to be true — that our predictions were unrelated to the truth. This is not an isolated observation. When a compelling impression of a particular event clashes with general knowledge, the impression commonly prevails. And this goes for you, too. The confidence you will experience in your future judgments will not be diminished by what you just read, even if you believe every word.
I first visited a Wall Street firm in 1984. I was there with my longtime collaborator Amos Tversky, who died in 1996, and our friend Richard Thaler, now a guru of behavioral economics. Our host, a senior investment manager, had invited us to discuss the role of judgment biases in investing. I knew so little about finance at the time that I had no idea what to ask him, but I remember one exchange. "When you sell a stock," I asked him, "who buys it?" He answered with a wave in the vague direction of the window, indicating that he expected the buyer to be someone else very much like him. That was odd: because most buyers and sellers know that they have the same information as one another, what made one person buy and the other sell? Buyers think the price is too low and likely to rise; sellers think the price is high and likely to drop. The puzzle is why buyers and sellers alike think that the current price is wrong.
Most people in the investment business have read Burton Malkiel's wonderful book "A Random Walk Down Wall Street." Malkiel's central idea is that a stock's price incorporates all the available knowledge about the value of the company and the best predictions about the future of the stock. If some people believe that the price of a stock will be higher tomorrow, they will buy more of it today. This, in turn, will cause its price to rise. If all assets in a market are correctly priced, no one can expect either to gain or to lose by trading.
We now know, however, that the theory is not quite right. Many individual investors lose consistently by trading, an achievement that a dart-throwing chimp could not match. The first demonstration of this startling conclusion was put forward by Terry Odean, a former student of mine who is now a finance professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Odean analyzed the trading records of 10,000 brokerage accounts of individual investors over a seven-year period, allowing him to identify all instances in which an investor sold one stock and soon afterward bought another stock. By these actions the investor revealed that he (most of the investors were men) had a definite idea about the future of two stocks: he expected the stock that he bought to do better than the one he sold.
To determine whether those appraisals were well founded, Odean compared the returns of the two stocks over the following year. The results were unequivocally bad. On average, the shares investors sold did better than those they bought, by a very substantial margin: 3.3 percentage points per year, in addition to the significant costs of executing the trades. Some individuals did much better, others did much worse, but the large majority of individual investors would have done better by taking a nap rather than by acting on their ideas. In a paper titled "Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth," Odean and his colleague Brad Barber showed that, on average, the most active traders had the poorest results, while those who traded the least earned the highest returns. In another paper, "Boys Will Be Boys," they reported that men act on their useless ideas significantly more often than women do, and that as a result women achieve better investment results than men.
Of course, there is always someone on the other side of a transaction; in general, it's a financial institution or professional investor, ready to take advantage of the mistakes that individual traders make. Further research by Barber and Odean has shed light on these mistakes. Individual investors like to lock in their gains; they sell "winners," stocks whose prices have gone up, and they hang on to their losers. Unfortunately for them, in the short run going forward recent winners tend to do better than recent losers, so individuals sell the wrong stocks. They also buy the wrong stocks. Individual investors predictably flock to stocks in companies that are in the news. Professional investors are more selective in responding to news. These findings provide some justification for the label of "smart money" that finance professionals apply to themselves.
Although professionals are able to extract a considerable amount of wealth from amateurs, few stock pickers, if any, have the skill needed to beat the market consistently, year after year. The diagnostic for the existence of any skill is the consistency of individual differences in achievement. The logic is simple: if individual differences in any one year are due entirely to luck, the ranking of investors and funds will vary erratically and the year-to-year correlation will be zero. Where there is skill, however, the rankings will be more stable. The persistence of individual differences is the measure by which we confirm the existence of skill among golfers, orthodontists or speedy toll collectors on the turnpike.
Mutual funds are run by highly experienced and hard-working professionals who buy and sell stocks to achieve the best possible results for their clients. Nevertheless, the evidence from more than 50 years of research is conclusive: for a large majority of fund managers, the selection of stocks is more like rolling dice than like playing poker. At least two out of every three mutual funds underperform the overall market in any given year.
More important, the year-to-year correlation among the outcomes of mutual funds is very small, barely different from zero. The funds that were successful in any given year were mostly lucky; they had a good roll of the dice. There is general agreement among researchers that this is true for nearly all stock pickers, whether they know it or not — and most do not. The subjective experience of traders is that they are making sensible, educated guesses in a situation of great uncertainty. In highly efficient markets, however, educated guesses are not more accurate than blind guesses.
Some years after my introduction to the world of finance, I had an unusual opportunity to examine the illusion of skill up close. I was invited to speak to a group of investment advisers in a firm that provided financial advice and other services to very wealthy clients. I asked for some data to prepare my presentation and was granted a small treasure: a spreadsheet summarizing the investment outcomes of some 25 anonymous wealth advisers, for eight consecutive years. The advisers' scores for each year were the main determinant of their year-end bonuses. It was a simple matter to rank the advisers by their performance and to answer a question: Did the same advisers consistently achieve better returns for their clients year after year? Did some advisers consistently display more skill than others?
To find the answer, I computed the correlations between the rankings of advisers in different years, comparing Year 1 with Year 2, Year 1 with Year 3 and so on up through Year 7 with Year 8. That yielded 28 correlations, one for each pair of years. While I was prepared to find little year-to-year consistency, I was still surprised to find that the average of the 28 correlations was .01. In other words, zero. The stability that would indicate differences in skill was not to be found. The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.
No one in the firm seemed to be aware of the nature of the game that its stock pickers were playing. The advisers themselves felt they were competent professionals performing a task that was difficult but not impossible, and their superiors agreed. On the evening before the seminar, Richard Thaler and I had dinner with some of the top executives of the firm, the people who decide on the size of bonuses. We asked them to guess the year-to-year correlation in the rankings of individual advisers. They thought they knew what was coming and smiled as they said, "not very high" or "performance certainly fluctuates." It quickly became clear, however, that no one expected the average correlation to be zero.
What we told the directors of the firm was that, at least when it came to building portfolios, the firm was rewarding luck as if it were skill. This should have been shocking news to them, but it was not. There was no sign that they disbelieved us. How could they? After all, we had analyzed their own results, and they were certainly sophisticated enough to appreciate their implications, which we politely refrained from spelling out. We all went on calmly with our dinner, and I am quite sure that both our findings and their implications were quickly swept under the rug and that life in the firm went on just as before. The illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in the culture of the industry. Facts that challenge such basic assumptions — and thereby threaten people's livelihood and self-esteem — are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them. This is particularly true of statistical studies of performance, which provide general facts that people will ignore if they conflict with their personal experience.
The next morning, we reported the findings to the advisers, and their response was equally bland. Their personal experience of exercising careful professional judgment on complex problems was far more compelling to them than an obscure statistical result. When we were done, one executive I dined with the previous evening drove me to the airport. He told me, with a trace of defensiveness, "I have done very well for the firm, and no one can take that away from me." I smiled and said nothing. But I thought, privately: Well, I took it away from you this morning. If your success was due mostly to chance, how much credit are you entitled to take for it?
We often interact with professionals who exercise their judgment with evident confidence, sometimes priding themselves on the power of their intuition. In a world rife with illusions of validity and skill, can we trust them? How do we distinguish the justified confidence of experts from the sincere overconfidence of professionals who do not know they are out of their depth? We can believe an expert who admits uncertainty but cannot take expressions of high confidence at face value. As I first learned on the obstacle field, people come up with coherent stories and confident predictions even when they know little or nothing. Overconfidence arises because people are often blind to their own blindness.
True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes. You are probably an expert in guessing your spouse's mood from one word on the telephone; chess players find a strong move in a single glance at a complex position; and true legends of instant diagnoses are common among physicians. To know whether you can trust a particular intuitive judgment, there are two questions you should ask: Is the environment in which the judgment is made sufficiently regular to enable predictions from the available evidence? The answer is yes for diagnosticians, no for stock pickers. Do the professionals have an adequate opportunity to learn the cues and the regularities? The answer here depends on the professionals' experience and on the quality and speed with which they discover their mistakes. Anesthesiologists have a better chance to develop intuitions than radiologists do. Many of the professionals we encounter easily pass both tests, and their off-the-cuff judgments deserve to be taken seriously. In general, however, you should not take assertive and confident people at their own evaluation unless you have independent reason to believe that they know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, this advice is difficult to follow: overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion.


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REVEALED: The winner of £250 worth of Anfield Index gear unveiled!
It's been a great start to the new season for reigning Champions Liverpool, but it's just got even better for Connolly, who is the winner…
Live Streaming of each match is provided by Bet365. Read our Bet365 Review here.
See below for the latest betting odds for this game from Bet365.
We have also provided some useful statistics for Motherwell v Rangers including head to head games information and latest match results for the last six games for each team.
Confirmed lineups will appear approx. 30 mins before the scheduled kick off.

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SUNY Canton's Summer Session Breaks Enrollment RecordsFriday, June 29th, 2012
SUNY Canton's Summer Session has broken enrollment records for the fifth consecutive year.
"We are very proud of our Summer Session growth and the faculty who continue to make our summer terms successful," noted Carli C. Schiffner, the College's provost and vice president for academic affairs. "Our expansion and outreach allow us to help students get ahead or catch up to their graduation timeline goals."
To date, almost 1,800 students have enrolled this summer, and one more session is about to begin. Currently, total enrollment is up more than 20 percent from Summer Session 2011, which broke the previous year's records with 1,400 enrollments.
"Almost 150 of our 170 Summer Session courses are being offered through SUNY Canton OnLine, allowing students to enroll from anywhere," said Kyle Brown, SUNY Canton's director of online learning and information services. "We've seen a surge of students enroll from other colleges around the country and even internationally."
Much of the growth is attributed to the course selection, which includes many core courses or general education credits applicable to many popular majors at all SUNY colleges and most private universities, according to Brown. Students and faculty members have explained that the abbreviated but intensive online format lends fits well into the summer months, leaving time open for vacations, family obligations and work schedules.
There are also several unique and advanced course offerings during Summer Session including a course on serial killers and their victims taught online by Criminal Investigation Assistant Professor Elizabeth A. Erickson, and a traditional classroom based section of digital photography, taught by Graphic and Multimedia Design Instructor Jason E. Hubbard.
The final term of Summer Session begins on July 9. For more information, visit http://www.canton.edu/courses/summer.html.
SUNY Canton has also set new enrollment records for six consecutive years in overall college enrollment and for five straight years in Winterterm enrollment. The College recently broke its all-time application record for the fourth straight year and has received more than 6,400 applications for the Fall 2012 Semester.
Media inquiries should be directed to Gregory Kie, Media Relations Manager, or call 315/386-7527.


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On March 26, 2003, Paul Smith argued to the United States Supreme Court that the justices should declare sodomy laws unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution – despite the court's opinion of less than 20 years earlier to the contrary.
He – and the team he was helping at Lambda Legal – succeeded, and the court agreed on June 26, 2003, with Justice Anthony Kennedy famously writing of "[p]ersons in a homosexual relationship" that "[t]he State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."
Eight years later, with other prominent lawyers like Ted Olson and David Boies leading the challenge to California's Proposition 8 – and with the first same-sex marriage victory fading into history – it's easy to lose track of the changes that have happened since Smith and his firm, Jenner & Block, agreed to help Lambda Legal on the Lawrence v. Texas case.
"Paul never says that this was a big, brave thing to do or anything like that," says Kevin Cathcart, the current executive director of Lambda Legal, "but I do think there's a difference. First of all, there was a difference between 2002 and today, and secondly, I think there's a difference between going to your firm and saying, 'Let's fight sodomy laws' versus 'Let's fight for marriage rights."'
Smith was not a prominent LGBT equality advocate when he argued the case – but he was already a respected Supreme Court lawyer, notably for First Amendment cases like the video game case – Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association – that he argued before the court this term.
NPR's longtime Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg calls Smith "incredibly elegant" and says, "He's certainly in the absolute top echelon of people who argue Supreme Court appeals."
Totenberg, who covers American legal affairs at NPR, is effusive in her description of Smith's advocacy. "He writes like a dream. His briefs are just beautiful. … He deals with the problems he has to deal with. I would say that a high-school student could read his briefs and understand the basic issues – and that's a compliment."
As for Smith's arguments before the court, Totenberg says, "There might be a dozen" – including Smith – who "argue cases regularly and have incredible strengths as advocates before the court. It matters who makes these arguments because, while you can't necessarily win by your oral argument, you sure as hell can lose."
In that video game case, Smith did not lose. Justice Antonin Scalia struck down "California's effort to regulate violent video games" as unconstitutional under the First Amendment as "the latest episode in a long series of failed attempts to censor violent entertainment for minors."
In doing so, the conservative justice gave Smith – for whom the case was his 14th argument before the court – another victory. Yet, it was Scalia who harshly criticized the majority in a blistering dissent to Kennedy's decision for the court in Lawrence.
At the time, Scalia wrote, "Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned."
Smith, who didn't come out until his 30s, today has a husband. They were married in the District in 2010, shortly following the District's passage of marriage equality.
Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese, who often turns to Smith for guidance on legal questions, also points to Smith's persona beyond his legal work.
"There's his work – but then, there's also Paul, himself," Solmonese says. "Paul has been such a great gift to this community – beyond just his brilliance in the courtroom. He's one of the most genuinely, unconditionally generous and kind people that I've come to know through this work."
Or, as Cathcart notes, "Paul is just this amazing mix of incredible skill and accomplishment and then completely, low-key, regular, nice guy. Our movement would do well to have more regular, low-key, nice people."
METRO WEEKLY: The way that most of the LGBT community is familiar with your work is obviously Lawrence. How did you get involved in that case?
PAUL SMITH: Well, I was a fairly well-known Supreme Court lawyer at that time, but hadn't been particularly involved in the movement. And [Lambda Legal] actually came to a colleague of mine — Bill Hohengarten — first; they'd worked with him in the past on certain things. I'd done a little bit of stuff with them in the past, and we were asked whether we would consult on the question of whether they should go to the Supreme Court with this case, and if so, how? So Bill and I got involved. One thing led to the other, and then there was the question of the argument. So, Lambda Legal ended up deciding that they would rather have a veteran … argue the case.
MW: Lawrence is notable for how quickly the court overturned its precedent.
SMITH: Right, I mean it was 16, 17 years. It wasn't that quickly. But in the time frame of the Supreme Court, I guess that counts as quick. [Laughs.]
MW: That's only a few cases. I mean, what was your experience? How did you see Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case upholding Georgia's sodomy law that was overturned by Lawrence v. Texas?
SMITH: Well, Hardwick was a real problem for the movement because it wasn't just that we had lost, but then you had this decision that said there's nothing constitutionally wrong with putting people in jail for being gay. And so it actually was used as a weapon by everybody who wanted to defeat any other kind of constitutional claim you could bring. So, this was a situation where a loss ended up making things worse than if we'd never brought the case in the first place.
It was also a case that lots and lots of people — even people that had nothing to do with LGBT issues – just found repugnant in the way that it was written on the facts: Somebody comes into somebody's house and arrests them for having consensual adult sex. And then, the way the court referred to any claim of constitutional right as facetious, that sort of thing. So, that case had a target on its back, in many ways, for a long time. But it took the right case to come along to deal with it.
One of the problems was that you couldn't just bring a case arguing that Bowers should be overruled. You had to wait for somebody to actually be arrested and prosecuted before they could bring that argument to the Supreme Court. And the truth of it was that in those days there weren't that many people who were arrested in a private setting. Two adults consensually engaging in sodomy was used as a weapon in other ways: People would lose their jobs if they admitted that they were in a gay relationship, they would lose their children if they were in a divorce fight and they admitted they were in a gay relationship, those sorts of things. It was a way of keeping people in second-class citizenship, indirectly. But it took Texas to produce the right prosecution to lead to the overruling of Bowers.
MW: Obviously, Scalia in his Lawrence dissent talks about the legal profession as a culture "that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda." Was Bowers seen within the legal profession as an outlier?
SMITH: Eventually. If you went back to the late '80s, though, there weren't any major law firms involved with the Bowers case. It was litigated by a law professor and by Lambda Legal and ACLU and people like that. The law profession changed starting in the '90s and has changed even more rapidly since Lawrence, since 2003, to the point now where it is probably the single profession in the country most receptive to LGBT people. It used to be [that you would be] worried about revealing your sexual orientation in an interview with a partner at a big law firm, but nowadays it's the best thing you can do to get a job. [Laughs.]
MW: In talking with people and looking at the changes between Bowers and Lawrence, a lot of it does seem to come back to AIDS and where the country was in the mid-'80s in terms of fears of gay people because of AIDS, and the way that the community needed to come together in a way that it hadn't before.
SMITH: I would say it slightly differently. I think that what changed culturally between the '80s and 2003, the time of Lawrence, was a vast increase in visibility of the gay community. Huge numbers of people coming out, the television, mass-media portrayals changing dramatically both in frequency and in the quality of the characters. Ellen and all of those sorts of things.
And you certainly can say that the HIV crisis was a big impetus for that change from a kind of more ghettoed culture to a much more open culture – and that's just a fact, I don't think there's any doubt about it. But it wasn't just that. If you think about the way the world changed — by 2003, there had been any number of law clerks for Supreme Court justices who were out. In 1986, I don't think there were — and had ever been one. So that was a very big difference.
MW: With you existing as a part of this, how were you viewing these changes?
SMITH: I may not be the best observer of this. I was very late in coming out, I was very sort of personally unsure about whether that was the right thing for me to do. I was the sort of perfect little "A" student guy who did everything I was supposed to do in life, and had my Supreme Court clerkship, and didn't really come to terms with being gay until my 30s. So in that sense I don't have the same perspective on all of these events of the '80s and early '90s that others might have had who were living through it in a more painful way in my generation, my age group.
MW: And yet your experience isn't unusual.
SMITH: Not for people of my age. And I think even people younger, I think this phenomenon does continue to happen — people come to terms with being gay or lesbian at different times in their lives, that's just the way people are. But certainly the greater visibility of the community, the greater role models of people out there who are successful professionals who are out – they presumably had an effect on my choices in life to change course as well.
MW: And what was that decision? What experience did you go through?
SMITH: I don't know if there's any particular climactic event. When you're in your 30s, it's a fairly common thing to say, "Well, is this what life's going to be for me? Are there going to be other things in life? Have I made all the right choices? Or do I want to change course either professionally or personally in some other way?"
So I did that reassessment and kind of painfully came to the conclusion that I'd made wrong decisions about getting married. And so, that started a painful process of changing course. I was lucky. In a way, I think it was much easier for me than it was for a lot of people, but it still was not easy.
MW: And where did that process lead? How did that impact your career?
SMITH: It didn't impact my career.
MW: If you look from a biographical perspective, it obviously looks like it went well.
SMITH: Well, if you think about it, from a funny point of view, being the person who was in position to do the Lawrence case, I suppose you could say it had a positive effect on the career. [Laughs.] That wasn't the intention.
MW: You weren't coming out for Supreme Court arguments?
SMITH: [Laughs.] Not exactly, no. It was a personal decision, and you sort of make the best of things in life and you sort of muddle through. My ex-wife is still my best friend in many ways, so that makes it a lot easier.
MW: You were the board co-chair of Lambda, you are still on the board of Lambda. Just by virtue of having argued Lawrence, as well as everything else that you've done since then, you've clearly become one of the leading legal voices in the community.
SMITH: One of the things I tried to do after Lawrence was to kind of give back because I'd been given this wonderful opportunity to do something really important. Admittedly, Lawrence was really an accomplishment of a lot of people — Lambda Legal and elsewhere — who created this opportunity, but I got to be the one who stood up there. As a result, I had the opportunity to go around and raise lots of money and receive lots of awards and have some credibility, so I tried to give back in the ways I could by both going back on the Lambda Legal board, but also actually being the person who could work with lots of the organizations. I've had the really rewarding opportunity to do cases with [the National Center for Lesbian Rights] and with [Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders], and have cooperated a lot with the ACLU and worked with the Human Rights Campaign. I've been sort of a free agent to some extent. But, even now, my first loyalty is to Lambda Legal. It's been interesting. That's only eight years ago, but those eight years have been quite a ride.
MW: You clearly know Paul Clement.
SMITH: I do.
MW: Probably one of the biggest LGBT issues regarding the world of big-law firms this year involved Clement and the really brief but high-profile representation by King & Spalding of the House Republican leadership and their defense of the Defense of Marriage Act. How was that situation handled in your view?
SMITH: I actually don't know all the facts about how the internal processing at the firm were handled, so it's hard for me to judge who was at fault in that situation. Clearly they ended up with a disagreement about whether this is a good thing for the firm to take on. And that's not particularly surprising. There are such disagreements in law firms all the time, particularly about cases where the firm is not being paid its full freight, its full rates. "Do we want to invest our people and our time in this cause or this problem or another one? And what kind of political problems is that going to cause internally to the firm if there are lots of people who disagree with the position we're being asked to take?" So, it's not a particular surprise that there would be such a political problem. It would have been nicer if it was all decided before they had a big public uproar about it, but I don't have any way to judge whose fault it was.
MW: I find it interesting that it was the representation of Congress in defending DOMA that led to this public debate and not the representation of Gibson Dunn [law firm] in trying to strike down Proposition 8. There was no discussion of this sort at that point about whether or not this was right for Gibson to get involved.
SMITH: I think there are differences. At this point in our cultural evolution, you have lots of out gay people in every law firm and so to take an anti-gay position is going to be controversial because you are essentially litigating against the interests of your own people. But, I think it's a little hard for anybody at Gibson Dunn to complain that Ted [Olson] is litigating against the interests of the firm. There may be people in the firm who disagree whether there ought to be marriage rights in California, but that's a little different from saying that they're personally going to be worse off if the firm wins the case.
MW: You've hit at the argument of why the court ended up striking down, in part, Prop. 8. I mean, that was the question that Judge Vaughn Walker asked the Prop. 8 proponents about "what harm comes to you?" – and they had nothing.
SMITH: It's one of the interesting issues in the whole marriage debate – there really isn't any good response to the question of what's the state interest in maintaining a distinction between same-sex couples and different-sex couples for marriage purposes. What's the state interest? It's not a question that anybody's ever satisfactorily answered. Which is why I think the constitutional push will continue. Whether this is going to be the case that ends up going to the Supreme Court or not, I don't know. But those arguments are very powerful because there simply isn't anything that's accomplished by discriminating.
MW: How do you view the impact of having somebody like Ted Olson leading up that team with David Boies?
SMITH: Well, first of all, they did a very good job in the trial – they're very quality lawyers. [Laughs.] And I think the primary impact has been on public opinion and public awareness, because the publicity around the fact that Ted is doing this case, and doing it with Boies and the whole heightened awareness that that has produced is really quite remarkable. Ted has said publicly – so I can say – he asked me to be the guy who was his partner in that case first and, at the time, I certainly didn't think it was something I could take on, in part because there was a lot of controversy about whether this was the right thing to do at that point and I was going to be the co-chair of Lambda Legal. But in many ways it worked out well because the Boies-Olson pairing had this nice echo of Bush v. Gore that led to lots more news stories than I think it would have been if the Olson-Smith pairing had been litigating.
MW: Is there anything you would have liked to have seen go differently in the past decade, in terms of the way that the movement has gone forward in terms of its litigation strategy?
SMITH: I don't have any real criticism of the movement's strategy decisions for the past decade. As a general matter, the movement is extremely well-organized and talks things through very carefully and tries to be strategic about these things. It's somewhat unfortunate that courts have not been as receptive to Lawrence as I think they should have been in a lot of contexts. The first real disappointment was the Florida adoption case where the big fight was, "Does Lawrence really mean we really have to look at discrimination against gay people differently?" And the court in the Eleventh Circuit ended up being divided six to six on that issue and left in place the Florida adoption ban, which is the only state in the country that said – at least until very recently – "If you just admit you're gay, you can't adopt."
And so it took five or six years for the momentum to build up on the understanding that Lawrence really does mean you can't just discriminate on the basis of orientation without a very strong reason. But that momentum is building up. In the meantime, the state supreme courts in the marriage cases were enormously important in recognizing the message more quickly than the federal courts did. Starting with Massachusetts, of course.
MW: Marriage is both a legal and political win, but also a personal victory. Are you married?
SMITH: I am.
MW: And when did you get married?
SMITH: Last April.
MW: Here in the District?
SMITH: Yes, we said we'd get married when it meant something where we live. Then they called our bluff. It was nice. It was a lovely event.
MW: Evan Wolfson talks about the impact of having marriage in terms of the way that it changes the conversations. There was a moment at the LGBT Pride Month Reception at the White House when President Obama said "welcome" to people and somebody shouted out, "and spouses!" And he responded, "And spouses." Does having a married gay man arguing in the Supreme Court in and of itself matter?
SMITH: Well, I think the reason why, after some initial hesitation, the whole leadership of the movement came around to the idea of fighting for marriage is because it matters a great deal. Once you accept the proposition that you can't discriminate against gay couples in that area and that you have to give them equal respect and they ought to be treated exactly the same as other couples, it's very hard to figure out how you could justify other kinds of discrimination: "You can't discriminate in marriage rights but you can discriminate in public employment." So, it is a way to cut through a lot of the step-by-step progress and really get to the process of equality more quickly – that is, at least, I think the way in which people decided that this was the right thing to fight about at the time.
MW: And have you personally seen any impact of that?
SMITH: In my personal life?
MW: Yes. You were talking earlier about out gay partners being a surprise. Now there are out gay married partners.
SMITH: I had many, many of my law firm colleagues come to the wedding. It's not even an issue anymore. The level of comfort with being an establishment figure at a big institution like a law firm now is so different than what it was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. I think marriage is sort of icing on the cake. It wasn't so much the marriage thing that changed that, but the way the culture has changed, particularly in the legal profession as we talked about before.
MW: How would you like to see the process of further equality play out? There's been a lot of debate about the power of democracy, and a lot of criticism of some of the president's comments about democracy versus the power and the finality of the court decisions.
SMITH: The way civil-rights movements work is that there's a kind of a dialogue between the democratic institution and the courts – and public opinion is involved in that dialogue, too. And so, a Lawrence case comes along, it changes public opinion, it encourages other courts like the Goodridge court in Massachusetts to do marriage rights. People learn enormous amounts from that in observing that whole phenomenon, and eventually the legislators are in a completely different posture than they otherwise would have been because public opinion is shifting and then, when legislators act, that in turn encourages courts in other places to recognize equality that they might not have otherwise recognized.
So, I don't think you can talk about a choice between democracy and courts. There is, at this stage of the game, no way that we could give up either of those as a part of the movement toward equality. Ultimately, there are certain aspects of equality that will need to be done by federal statute, like employment discrimination, just as they were done for women and racial minorities. And there are other aspects that will have to be done by the Supreme Court. And I think there will be equal marriage rights at some point in this country, and it will probably come from a Supreme Court decision. Whether it will come in the next couple of years is a more complicated question.
MW: When do you think it will come?
SMITH: I don't have a way to predict that. The one thing we are seeing is somewhat of a breakdown of that level of organization of the movement. It used to be there were only a small handful of lawyers out there litigating gay-rights issues. Now everybody's litigating gay-rights issues. So I don't think that the movement is going to be successful in keeping these issues from continuing to percolate up to the Supreme Court. And I think some of the initial hesitation about the Olson and Boies case in the movement has dissipated because people have come to recognize if they didn't challenge Prop. 8, 67 other people would have – and at least they are doing it as well as they possibly can.
MW: What would you like to see receive more focus that isn't getting attention now?
SMITH: I don't think that there's an issue out there that's not getting attention. As with lots of non-gay people, there are an enormous number of people out there who have legal needs that are not being met. The civil justice system in this country is not well designed to actually provide legal services to middle-class and lower-middle-class people. Some poor people can get services. So I think there are lots of gay people who don't get good legal services when they need them. It would be nice if we could figure out a way to meet more of those needs.
The hotlines at organizations like Lambda Legal get hundreds of calls. Part of the problem is there's lots of places where there's no law to apply to help people. But even where there is, there's obviously a large unmet need for lawyers out there. That's not by any means unique to the LGBT world, but it's certainly an area in which there could be a lot more work done if we could figure out a way to deploy more people.
MW: What about you personally – what do you want to see for you in the years moving forward, with your career?
SMITH: I feel like I've been very lucky to be able to argue cases in the Supreme Court on occasion, get involved in the movement at a time when it is sort of a leading civil rights movement of our time, and play a role of advising lots of people about how to deal with Washington and the Supreme Court. And I'm happy to keep doing what I'm doing for the moment. I don't have any great plan for some new next step at this point.
MW: What is the key thing that you think that people need to keep in mind as that moves forward, or the GLAD cases challenging Section 3 of DOMA?
SMITH: It makes sense for people to keep in mind that every movement toward equality takes time and has missteps that mean we can't get there tomorrow. There are people who think we ought to be able to figure out a way to just slice through everything and get equality for everybody all of a sudden if we would just ask for it. And it is a much more difficult process than that. And this movement has been remarkably successful in spite of all the opposition and the horrible amendments that were passed around the country – but it's not something that can be accomplished overnight. So there is a certain patience that, I think, people need to have when things go wrong – and they will go wrong again. There will be bad court decisions, and legislative defeats and maybe referendum defeats, but there are also going to be an increasing number of successes, too. So I would say people ought to remember how difficult this really is and just be in it for the long haul.
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New Year Resolutions
I understand it's a few days into the New Year and I'm just posting my resolutions now, so I can tell you that I will not have a resolution regarding not being a procrastinator.
However, in my defense, I didn't get back to VA until the 2nd, and needed a day to settle in.
Here we go:
Find Balance and Happiness
In 2011 I just started blogging & doing my new side business PB&Jcreations and it quickly took up a lot of "free time" I had after work. It kept me busy and happy while my husband has been gone on deployment, but I know once he returns priorities need to be set. I have loved my projects and making signs, but they keep me busy every.single.night. and weekends and I know I'll have to find a balance of work and play.
Love more Critique less.
I have a tendency to be really hard on my husband {and myself} about things he does. I kind of have always expected the most from him, without appreciating all the little things. He and I have vowed to build a lot more on our relationship this year and this is one of my biggest areas I'll personally be working on for us. This goes hand in hand with learning to become a happier person. I hope that as I learn to love more, I'll let go of the little things and in turn - be happier more often.
Communicate Openly
Another resolution regarding my husband and I. This will be the first time we are together for almost an entire year for the past five years. Sometimes it's so easy to get used to communicating via email and texts it becomes more difficult to communicate openly with one another face to face. Luckily this will also work well in many other areas of my life such as my career.
Make Sense of Organizing
As our lives get busier, organization is a must. I've already tackled a few projects in 2011 that helped with organization; my kitchen pantry and my cork board. But I hope to tackle a lot more projects that will help with organization in our home... and be sure to continue using them effectively.
Grow with Jackson
Jackson will be turning 4 in 2012 and become a lot more independent this year. As he grows, I hope I can grow with him - at his level and as a parent. Does that make sense to anyone else? I want to let him grow, make his own decisions, and help build up his imagination but also learn to be a little more constructive with my rules and disciplining to help him learn boundaries.
That's it. Obviously I have other areas I hope to grow and continue to work on, but those are my main ones that I always want to keep in mind throughout 2012 and I really do hope that these are not the typical resolutions such as "lose weight" that are quickly tossed aside. These will help me become a better wife, a better mother, and a better person.
What are your resolutions?


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New Year Wish For Dog Lovers
All the desires in your heart and
All the hopes in your life blend together,
To give you the most spectacular New Year ever
Read more...
Thanks a million to "istockphoto" for this lovely German shepherd Dog Christmas card.
Here's a little smile, some words of cheer, a bit of love for dog lovers around the world and their beloved dogs. Here's my Christmas dog lover wishes and best wishes for the coming year.
Let this Christmas wave a magic wand over your world and let the Lord's blessings on you turn all things golden for you.
One most real German Shepherd Dog description found by my very personal experiences is that, he is a dog with intense sense of bondage with his own ones. He is a dog that can be called "caninestein" instead of just "canine". Yes, the degree of intelligence that he possesses, has made him the most talked about breed all over the world. I'm really a happy owner of German Shepherd Dogs, but I can't deny the fact that his intelligence level have fooled me a number of times. Often I've seen him capable of thinking too deeply; even logically of a number of ways to get whatever he wants or to attract my attention. If not trained properly, intelligence of German Shepherds can be nightmare for his owners. Certain funny behaviors that seem to be cute in your GSD puppy today, can throw your life out of gear tomorrow, when he would grow to be a mighty wolf! Here's the importance of proper training. Find a few tips on training GSDs. Read on....
Teach Basic Commands to your German Shepherd
If you're envying to see your friend's well mannered king-size Shepherd, its YOU who's responsible for such discontentment of yourself. It's just a magic of 5 most common words! A well-behaved German shepherd knows to follow the 5 most important basic commands: Come, Sit, Down, Stay and Heel. Teaching these 5 basic actions will make your German Shepherd your most loved companion. This basic training can make life easier for both you and your shepherd. Most importantly, you can keep him and yourself cool and safe in any situation.
Train Your German Shepherd to act on the command "Come"
Almost a dozen times in a month I get phone calls from people around my locality and even from far and wide, inquiring about the ways to train up their German Shepherds. Interestingly most of them have already put their German Shepherd on training sessions, but the sadly many of them turn up with loads of complains. Let me tell you that stubbornness and aggression are not typical characteristics of German Shepherd Dogs. These are the consequence of improper training. Believe me, there's no word like "Bad Dog", the owners, handlers and trainers may be bad and compel their dogs to behave in the way they should not! If your shepherd have are developing bad habits, you are responsible for that – don't blame him! It's due to the lack of socialization and bad training that a dog become what they shouldn't be.
As for my first German Shepherd Dog training tips, Stop Muzzle your GSD Immediately! If a trainer suggests you to muzzle your dog, just move on... look for another good trainer. No point wasting time talking to him regarding dog training. Remember, no reputable dog trainer or canine behaviorist will ask you to muzzle your dog. There are other good ways to control your dog if he is aggressive to other dogs.
Training German Shepherd Dogs is an art, to be mastered properly before actually you start training a GSD. Here's how to train German Shepherd Dogs.
Be Gentle While Training a GSD
German Shepherd dog training can be perfectly accomplished by starting at an early age. If you lose your patience and temperament you are an utter flop in this field. Undesirable behaviors have to be dealt with in the most consistent manner. Loving lavishly during the training session won't work; being too harsh to him would be a bad idea either! Things must be dealt with in a gentle manner. Hitting and yelling at him will make your work tougher.
Use His Intelligence
German Shepherd Dog is the world's most intelligent breed after Border Collie and Poodle. He can learn things faster than many of the other dog breeds. This reveals a great opportunity for you, if you are a dog trainer; encash this opportunity! Don't forget to reward him for all positive behaviors with treats and lavish praises. Be consistent in this. You will get to know how smart your German Shepherd puppy is! Remember that German Shepherd Dogs have the inherent quality to distinguish goods from the bads! Your GSD's behavior may be modified at any point of time almost throughout his life.
Early Start Off
Start off training your German Shepherd Dog at an age as early as around 6 months. This will make life easier for both – you and your dog. Letting the problems go unaddressed may be nightmare for you as a GSD owner.
House Training Your German Shepherd Dog
House training German Shepherd Dog is unquestionably a great idea. Once a dog properly housebroken he would never uses the house for his toilet. House breaking your German shepherd puppy can be an easy process or difficult as well depending on the method you follow. Remember it starts on the you bring your GSD puppy home. Right after you bring your puppy home, take him out on a leash to the potty spot as per his choice. Don't carry him to it's potty spot. As soon he reaches the spot, just deliver the command – one single word you would use for him for potty. Be consistent. German Shepherds are very smart to learn things quickly. You have to be a patient and keep an eye on your shepherd all the day. When you see the toilet or potty signs take your GSD puppy out to his potty area. Common signs are circling, floor scratching, ground sniffing and running here and there looking for an apt place for potty.
Chewing Things
All German Shepherd puppies chew on things – sometimes his own body parts. It's a normal behavior – as normal as heartbeats! Just don't be worried. All you need to do is to divert his attention by putting him to play with other puppies and stuff. If he chews you finger... don't let him do that. A single approach to say one word of dissatisfaction (for instance "Uffff or ouch") in response to the behavior with moderately strict voice can be a good method. But don't forget to get out of the room, leaving him alone for a while. Repeat things as many time as he tries to chew your thumb.
Socializing GSD
Early age socialization is of utmost importance. While an unsocialized German Shepherd may be a nightmare for you, a properly socialized GSD puppy can make the most precious companion. Start of the Socialization session before he is 3 months old. Just try out these few full proved approaches.
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Showcasing 35 antique and vintage gowns and outfits on mannequins, the Pilgrim Hall Museum exhibit is a visual feast of silk, satin, chiffon, lace, tulle and pearls in elegant designs.
A white wedding dress is so customary now, it's a surprise to realize that it's a relatively new tradition.
As the summer wedding season begins, the exhibit "Wedding 396: Four Centuries of Wedding Fashion in Plymouth 1621-2016" offers an interesting and fun look behind the veil, so to speak, at the evolution of gowns and wedding behaviors. Showcasing 35 antique and vintage gowns and outfits on mannequins, the Pilgrim Hall Museum exhibit is a visual feast of silk, satin, chiffon, lace, tulle and pearls in elegant designs.
"Wedding dresses tend to be cherished and taken good care of," said Pilgrim Hall archivist Rebecca Piccirillo. "When they're donated, they're usually in very good condition. There hasn't been a display like this in a very long time."
Drawn from collections of the Plymouth Antiquarian Society and other historical societies, each dress is identified by its owner, information about the marriage and about the significance of the materials and style.
Rather than a chronological display, the dresses are organized to illustrate tradition and innovation, evolution of custom and other themes.
"We're trying to dispel some of the myths," said Piccirillo, who co-organized the exhibit with executive director Donna Curtin. "A lot of people are surprised to see that white was not always the favorite choice and to see the blues and other colors."
Queen Victoria of England popularized the white gown after she wore one for her 1840 wedding, but many 19th century brides chose color after new chemical dyes created new brilliant shades.
What's more, the idea that a wedding dress was worn on just one day is recent. Until the 20th century, brides usually expected to wear their wedding gown for other special occasions.
The earliest outfit is a production from the first couple to marry in Plymouth Colony in 1621 – 396 years ago, as referenced in the exhibit title. Susanna White, who married Edward Winslow after each of their spouses died from sickness during the colony's first winter, wore a red wool jacket tied in the front with blue ribbons and a matching long skirt. Winslow wore a high-necked jacket and pantaloons, both in black, a symbol of status at the time.
"We don't know exactly what she wore, but we know what an English woman of that time would have worn for a nice occasion," Piccirillo said. "It would have been the nicest dress she owned."
Another early gown was an open front dress, a popular English style, which revealed the petticoat underneath. Worn in 1787 by a woman loyal to the British who fled to Canada, the green silk brocade and linen dress has a bold floral pattern.
Many gowns are from the 19th century, when tight bodices over full skirts were common. One of the most impressive is a dress worn by Lucy Damon of Norwell in 1888 that is extravagantly adorned with pearls and beads. A velvet trimmed silk three-piece wedding dress, worn by Priscilla Beals Shaw of Weymouth on 1867, shows the shift from crinoline hoops to soft bustles and the association of blue with piety.
A transformation came in the 20th century, when mass manufacturing and the expansion of the middle class made it possible for brides to indulge in a dress worn only for a single day. They purchased them in department stores or sewed their own from patterns, often imitating the styles of the famous.
Inspired by the glamour and elegance of Depression era actresses like Jean Harlow, Agnes Lillian Cooch of Hanover wore a sinuous satin gown with a lacy star burst on its rounded train in 1937.
"In the 30s silk and satin were the height of fashion," Piccirillo said. "This was a classic Hollywood style."
A 1990s dress designed by Alfred Sung, one of the most recent, reflects the late 20th century popularity of sleeveless dresses, which previously were considered too risque for a house of worship.
While the exhibit just touches on men's fashion, it does display two significant tuxedos – those worn by Richard Sommi and Samuel John Keller, the first same-sex couple to marry in 2004 Plymouth after the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. One has a bright red tie and cumberbund.
In display cases, objects are showcased that reflect traditions. A torn 17th century stocking and a piece of chocolate wedding cake from 1929, for example, illustrate the traditions of throwing an article of clothing or bouquet and of saving a piece of cake.
Some brides found meaning in wearing their mother's dress, but altering it to reflect changes in style. Thirty years after her mother's marriage in 1951, Penny Brewer wore Alice Nowell Hedge's dress for her marriage to Nate Bekemeier in Hingham. Changing the high neckline into a V-neck, the bride walked down the aisle in an elegantly embroidered silk, satin, chiffon and lace dress. Worn for just those two wedding days, the gown now can be admired by the public for the rest of the year.
Jody Feinberg may be reached at email@example.com or follow on Twitter @JodyF_Ledger.
WHAT: "Wedding 396: Four Centuries of Wedding Fashion in Plymouth 1621-2016"
WHERE: Pilgrim Hall Museum, 75 Court St., Plymouth
WHEN: 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily through Dec. 30.
ADMISSION: $10 adults, $8 seniors, $6 ages 6-15, free for Plymouth residents and ages 5 and younger. INFORMATION: pilgrimhallmuseum.org


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Israel's PM opens exhibit at Auschwitz
OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) -- In a defiant speech coming from the place symbolizing the suffering of Jews during World War II, Israel's prime minister warned on Thursday that the Jewish state will do everything to prevent another Holocaust and to defend itself against any threat.
Benjamin Netanyahu spoke during the inauguration of a new pavilion at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz that is to educate visitors about the Holocaust and Nazi's quest to exterminate Jews. Auschwitz with adjacent Birkenau was the most notorious of a system of death camps that Nazi Germany built and operated in occupied Poland.
"From here, the place that attest to the desire to destroy us, I, the prime minister of Israel, the state of the Jewish people, say to all the nations of the world: The state of Israel will do whatever is necessary to prevent another Holocaust," Netanyahu said, as he stood in front of the red-brick former prisoner block that houses the new exhibition.
"We must not be complacent in the face of threats of annihilation. We must not bury our heads in the sand or allow others to do the work for us," he said, not naming the threat but apparently meaning Iran and its nuclear program.
Before the speech, he visited Block 27, which is now dedicated to presenting Auschwitz in the larger context of the World War II genocide. More than 1.1 million of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
Among some 4.2 million names of Holocaust victims listed, page after page, on a 14-meter (yard) -long list, Netanyahu found the name of Yehudit Hun, the twin sister of his late father-in-law, killed in Bilgoraj, southeastern Poland.
"If there are Holocaust deniers, have them come to Block 27 and go over one name at a time," Netanyahu said in clear reference to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who questions the extent of the Holocaust.
The exhibition was curated by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. It aims to provide the backdrop of the Holocaust, the Nazi Germany's ideology for murder, and the physical and spiritual struggle of its victims. It also includes survivor testimonies and drawings by some of the 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust.
The Germans carried out the Holocaust to a large extent in occupied Poland, because it had Europe's largest Jewish population and it was at the heart of a railway network that allowed the Nazis to easily transport Jews there from elsewhere in Europe. Many Israeli leaders are children of Holocaust survivors, and Israel has the world's largest population of survivors.
In recent years, Poland has become one of the friendliest states to Israel.


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The latest figures from the United States support our scenario of accelerated economic activity in 2017. True, growth was still just slightly under 2% in the fourth quarter (1.9%), but this can largely be explained by foreign trade. As the main growth driver in recent years, consumption (+2.5%) has kept economic activity going. More importantly, after marking time for a spell, business spending has grown more dynamic: capital expenditures, on the decline for a year now, have gained 3.1% and stocks contributed 1% to growth (chart 1).
In early 2017, business and consumer surveys alike confirmed this improvement: the ISM Manufacturing and Services indices began climbing sharply at the end of last year (chart 2), and have stayed the course in the new year, while consumer sentiment has reached new heights (chart 3). The job market is still on a good track: although hourly wage rises slowed in January (+2.5% year-on-year), job creations bounced back (227,000 vs. 148,000 on average in Q4 2016) and the wage bill progressed by another 4%.
In 2017, the US economy is also expected to benefit from the removal of a number of obstacles. After taking 0.4% away from growth in 2017, inventory adjustments finally seem to be coming to an end. Undermined by falling oil prices, structural investment in the fossil-fired energy sector should gain momentum again after costing 0.25% in growth last year. Overall, growth should accelerate by 1.6% in 2016 and top 2% in 2017 (chart 4).
Finally, the fiscal stimulus promised by Donald Trump in his presidential campaign may give additional fuel to the US economy. Of course, there are many uncertainties surrounding this point, making it difficult to establish projections. The content of the various plans under discussion (cross-border tax, household and business tax rate, stimulus for infrastructure investments, etc.) is undefined, and the length of the process means the budget won't be implemented before the end of summer. Until we have a clearer picture, and as long as wage pressures are moderate, the Fed has little reason to rush the normalisation of its monetary policy.
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Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, one of the highest-profile athletes at London's Paralympic and Olympic games this past summer, may harbor a darker side, several pre-Olympic interviews reveal.
Pistorius, 26, was charged with the murder of his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, on Thursday, Feb. 14, after Steenkamp was found shot to death in the athlete's apartment in the early hours of the morning. And reports are now surfacing that Pistorius, who was previously hailed as a national hero in his native South Africa, may not have been as golden as previously thought.
Pistorius, who took home the silver medal at the London Games, sat down with OMG! Insider during the London Olympics, and spoke about his interest in firearms.
"It's just fun, really," he told the site at the time. "I grew up in South Africa and we do a lot of hunting and I really enjoy that side, so it's a good sport. [It's] something I've really taken an interest in."
According to the Associated Press, Pistorius owned firearms and once tweeted a photograph of himself at a shooting range back in November 2011 with the now-chilling caption: "Had a 96% headshot over 300m from 50shots! Bam!"
A 9 mm pistol was recovered at the scene of Thursday's crime.
In the January 2012 issue of New York Times Magazine, the athlete also detailed how he had pulled out a pistol to search his home when his security alarm went off just prior to the interview. At his suggestion, he and the journalist later went to a nearby target range to squeeze off a few rounds.
When asked how often he went target shooting, Pistorius replied, "Just sometimes when I can't sleep."
The runner's former coach, Andrea Giannini, tells the AP that he hopes the whole situation was "just a tragic accident."
"No matter how bad the situation was, Oscar always stayed calm and positive," he told the AP in Italy. "Whenever he was tired or nervous he was still extremely nice to people. I never saw him violent."
Pistorius and Steenkamp, 30, had been dating for several months, and police spokeswoman Brigadier Denise Beukes told the AP that there has recently been a string of complaints involving Pistorius, "allegations of domestic nature."
"I'm not going to elaborate on it but there have been incidents [at Pistorius' home]," she said. The report is a far cry from the couple that Sarit Tomlinson, Steenkamp's publicist, remembers.
"[They had] a healthy, fabulous relationship," she told Sky News.
Just last year, Pistorius sat down with legendary journalist Larry King, and talk turned to his then-new relationship with Steenkamp.
"Do you want a family?" King asked the Olympic athlete.
"Oh, I think that's probably one of the greatest things in the world," Pistorius answered with a smile.
"Are you dating anyone?" the talk show host followed up.
"Yeah, I am seeing someone but it's in the early stages," Pistorius said at the time, "but she's the one for good."
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This thread has come to a screeching halt! No volleyball chatter?
No news???
Started by Common Sense, Oct 25 2013 11:49 AM
7 replies to this topic
Posted 25 October 2013 - 11:49 AM
Posted 25 October 2013 - 12:12 PM
I don't venture over here much, but my hometown Coldwater Cavaliers will be playing Liberty-Benton tomorrow night for a District title and trip to Regionals. The Cavs dispatched the Eagles in the season-opening Cavalier Spikeoff. Gonna be a tough matchup, as it always is with L-B.
Coldwater Cavaliers--20 State Titles and Counting!!!!
Posted 25 October 2013 - 02:32 PM
Liberty Benton has lost to Coldwater three times over the past two years in volleyball.....for once it's time to send the Cavaliers home sad.
Edited by LBHS79, 25 October 2013 - 04:04 PM.
Posted 25 October 2013 - 03:26 PM
Ouch LBHS79 a little tough on Coldwater there! Have to agree with you though. Should be great match!! Would be nice to have 2 teams from BVC in regionals.
Posted 25 October 2013 - 04:03 PM
Coldwater is great school system just saying we are tired of losing to them in volleyball..... also it will not be easy....we will need to play really well. GO EAGLES!!!!
Posted 28 October 2013 - 06:21 PM
WOOHOO!!! The Cavs are still rolling after beating the Eagles in three games. Great job, ladies!! Next up...Archbold.
Coldwater Cavaliers--20 State Titles and Counting!!!!
Posted 30 October 2013 - 08:14 AM
Interesting season for Archbold, they are officially 14-11, but they had to forfeit their first 8 matches for using an ineligible player. I'm guessing the ineligible player has been playing now once the rule and penalty was assessed?
Posted 30 October 2013 - 07:56 PM
Doesn't matter much now. Coldwater moves on to the regional final vs. Upper Sandusky with a 26-24, 25-19, 25-15 win over the Blue Streaks. Great job, ladies!!! KEEP IT GOING!!!!!
Edited by Wilco98, 30 October 2013 - 07:56 PM.
Coldwater Cavaliers--20 State Titles and Counting!!!!
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The sleek, ultracompact Canon Powershot SD1100 IS brags 8.3 mega-pixels of resolution and image stabilization (IS) technology. Canon is pushing the SD1100 not just as a camera, but as a fashion accessory.
The camera is available in five colors: "Rhythm & Blue," "Swing Silver," "Pink Melody," "Bohemian Brown," and "Golden Tone" (I thank Canon for not sending me "Pink Melody").
While the variety of color schemes might be a draw for younger crowds, the camera also comes with appealing technical features like enhanced face detection technology, motion detection technology, and a variety of useful shooting modes. All of this is available for just over $200.
Face Detection Technology: You Better Be All Smiles
The camera's integrated face-detection technology is designed to recognize people's faces in your photos and adjust white balance to enhance skin tones. It also has an option that tracks your subject's face so you do not lose them if they move around in the frame. When using this feature, I found it difficult to lock onto someone's face if they weren't smiling. I also noticed that this function didn't work as well if there was a large amount of backlighting, or if I wasn't directly in front of my subject. In my opinion, using the auto-focus assist beam is a superior method for setting the right focal length.
Macro Mode: Up-Close and Personal
I was extremely impressed with the Canon SD1100's macro focus mode, which allows users to take highly-detailed photos of small or up-close subjects. I took the photographs below at the same distance (two inches) from my shoe. See the difference in the shoes detail when taken in macro mode versus the blur when not. The macro feature is easy to access and use; it's a simple as changing modes on the camera.
|Auto Mode
|Macro Mode
What most surprised me about the SD1100 was the quality of the camera's digital zoom. In the past, I have been vehemently against using the digital zoom in cameras because it is "fake zoom," a digitally manipulated blow-up of the image that breaks down the resolution of the photo and typically results in a loss of quality. This little wonder of a camera allows you to digitally zoom up to 12 times with minimal loss to resolution. In fact, at the greatest zoom, photos from this camera will print just fine at sizes up to 20 x 30 inches. This camera has changed my mind about using digital zoom in newer cameras.
|Widest Angle Lens (38mm Equivalent)
|3x Optical Zoom (114mm Equivalent)
|12x Digital Zoom (456mm Equivalent)
Motion Detection Technology: Not So Fast!
If you've ever tried to take a photo of a high-intensity sports game, hyperactive children, or precocious pets, then chances are you've ended up with a blurry, disappointing photo. Canon's motion detection technology is another attempt to eliminate this problem.
The SD1100's motion detection technology calculates your subject's movement and selects the optimal exposure and ISO settings in order to reduce blurring. I tested this feature by heading out to a busy street at dusk to see if it could clearly catch cars in lower light situations without a flash. The camera performed fairly well, but I found nothing to brag about. When using the AUTO ISO mode, the pictures still came out blurry. I switched the camera to HIGH ISO and the images were better, but not perfect. I had to pan with the subject slightly to make sure the focus mode captured the cars.
Canon's Shooting Modes Provide Artistic Accents
Utilizing the SD1100's "Color Accent" mode allows the user to choose a particular color to emphasize in the scene. The camera filters out all other colors, turning them black and white, so that only the color you selected comes through in the final photograph. While this is a very cool feature, users have to be careful that they aren't accidentally highlighting unwanted objects of their selected color. Anything with the selected color shade is highlighted. For example, if you were trying to isolate a red rose, you might also pick up the subtle reds in a person's skin tone as well.
|Auto Mode
|Color Accent Mode (Highlighting Red)
The "Color Swap" mode allows users to swap one color for another by using the camera's digital view finder and selecting the two colors to interchange. While Canons website shows a photograph of little leaguers wearing blue jerseys seamlessly color swapped to display them in red jerseys, you may not get the same kind of flawless swaps they display. If the tones are not exactly the same across the photograph, you will not get an entirely accurate swap.
For instance, if a shadow is cast across a portion of the original color, it can create subtle differences in the color that won't be "swapped" with your new choice. If the colors are close in tone, like blues and grays, you might not see much of a difference in your photos. For best results, you should experiment with the way your scene is lit before taking the photo. While it's a handy feature to have in the SD1100 IS, truly accurate and advanced color swapping is probably best achieved with photo-editing software.
Overall, this pocket-sized camera does an excellent job. I've found that the camera is functional in different lighting environments and reacts quickly. The start-up time is nearly instantaneous, and even when operated under demanding conditions, the delay between shots is minimal. When I used this camera in a low-light situation (in auto mode), capturing a shot took less than three seconds. Photos taken at higher ISO settings (1600), where image noise can become a nuisance, were not overly grainy, and the image stabilization helps significantly in low light situations and when using longer zooms.
The Canon Powershot SD1100 IS keeps pace with the competition and is an excellent choice for a casual photographer interested in something with a little versatility and a little style.


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Rangehood accessories: Visit the Bosch accessories online shop and start shopping now! Including product ratings and reviews.
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Tailwind's 100,000+ members got over 5 Billion visits from Pinterest and Instagram last year. Join them. www.tailwindapp.com
We began using Pinterest in early 2011 as a solution for our own marketing purposes while building Bride...
See More sView.com. The very first version of Tailwind (then named PinLeague) asked a simple question: how can we identify brides-to-be using Pinterest to plan their weddings? As we dug in deeper, we began to see rapid success on Pinterest. Pretty soon, our friends started asking if we could generate similar insights for them.
A huge opportunity was emerging and we decided to pivot, focusing on opening the best Pinterest marketing and analytics platform to everyone.
Since then, our users have led us in new and exciting directions, and have helped us to understand that:
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Thus, we've grown with our users' needs and are thinking bigger each and every day.
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We view this as only the beginning. Thank you for making it all possible!
Founded: January 01, 2012


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By JEFF PICKELL
Darla the dog is no fan of babies.
I was worried about how she would behave when my brother John and sister-in-law Stephanie brought their newborn son over for Easter dinner last week. I even suggested keeping the froofy little bichon poodle in her night-night (cage) until John, Stephanie, and little Johnny Five were on their way home.
"Don't worry," my mom said. "Darla will be on her best behavior."
To my surprise, she was.
When my nephew arrived, I was pleased to notice that the Winnie-the-Pooh characters on his brand-spanking-new Easter outfit were recreations of E.H. Shepard's original illustrations—not the Disney-ized versions most are familiar with.
I've always been a fan of A.A. Milne's original Pooh stories, and since high school have been disheartened by what Disney has done to the characters. I took a moment to remark to John that he was raising his son right.
"Glurg," he replied. I reckoned I could've fit my entire comic book collection in the bags under his eyes. He and Stephanie had had a stressful week, as I imagine all new parents do in the days ensuing the birth of their first child.
First, there was concern over whether Johnny Five was eating enough, then there was concern about regularity, then there was concern about whether the operation "down there" was healing correctly—all issues that were discussed at length in the build-up to the Easter feast, which I was characteristically itching to get at.
Darla didn't know what to make of Johnny Five. As my mom laid him on the couch to look over his outfit, the dog sat perched on the other side of her lap. She leaned over cautiously and took a sniff of the baby's blanket, then darted back to her side of the mom. She stayed alert after that, nose up, perplexedly breathing in the new baby smells.
It was funny in a pitiful sort of way to watch the poor little dog try to figure out what the hay was going on. She shot me a series of desperate looks, as if to say, "Jeff, I don't understand. Help." I couldn't help feeling bad for her.
I went downstairs to hassle my other brother Jamie while he played video games. When I emerged a few minutes later, Darla was sitting in front of the kitchen sink, separated from Johnny Five by a counter and a couch.
"What are you doin' over there, boo-boo?" I inquired.
"Johnny Five hiccuped," my mom said. "Darla didn't like that."
"Oh Dar Dar boo-boo dog," I said, scooping her up. "You didn't let that mean old baby scare you, did you?"
"She said 'I did,' she said," I replied in mock conversation. "I don't like those babies."
"Boo-boo, you don't gotta be scared of no babies," I told her.
I went to the refrigerator and got her a carrot. My parents began substituting carrots for doggy treats when Darla started getting a little pudgy. I've read that, unlike humans, dogs can't eat anything they want without gaining a pound.
Poor thing. In a few minutes, I would be in ham heaven.
Or so I thought. As my dad began carving that juicy meat into manageable hunks, an intense rumbling came from Johnny Five, followed by a cathartic wail.
Darla boogied out of the room.
Soon, it was clear that the confusion over whether Johnny Five was regular or not was resolved.
My nostalgic mom eagerly volunteered to change the baby's diaper. I curiously ambled over to watch her work. I'd never seen anybody change a baby before, and knew it was a skill I'd have to learn at some point.
Boy, talk about a sour, unwholesome task. As my stomach veered south, my mom worked along with somewhat distressing enthusiasm. She handed the soiled baby wipes to John, who disposed of them in the next room, but not before swiveling around with an exaggerated motion that brought the wipes frighteningly close to my face.
He's such a jerk.
Anyway, I was in no way prepared for what I saw—when babies go, they go, and there is all kinds of peripheral cleaning and maintenance that I hadn't thought of.
Yuck. It was another of life's lessons learned at the expense of my appetite.
But not at the expense of Darla's. After we sat down to eat, she jealously nudged my leg as I munched a stalk of asparagus. Gone was my taste for ham. Gone was my taste for cheesy taters.
Dar Dar pawed at my shin.
Smiling, I flicked her a sliver of meat.– April 18, 2007


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- $order_summary['order_number'] = The current order number
- $order_summary['order_subtotal'] = The subtotal of the price of all products in the cart, before shipping etc
- $order_summary['credits_applied'] = A sum of all discounts/credits applied to the order (ie: handled by "credit" ot modules such as coupons and gift certificates and customer-group-discounts etc)
- $order_summary['commissionable_order'] = The amount of the purchase that is commissionable, ie: subtotal minus discounts
- $order_summary['commissionable_order_formatted'] = Formatted according to the current currency
- $order_summary['coupon_code'] = The coupon code used in this order, if any
- $order_summary['currency_code'] = The currency used when making this sale
- $order_summary['currency_value'] = The exchange rate applied while using this currency
- $order_summary['payment_module_code'] = The payment module used to facilitate payment
- $order_summary['shipping_method'] = The shipping method selected by the customer
- $order_summary['orders_status'] = The status number denoting the order's status in the system
- $order_summary['tax'] = The amount of tax on the order
- $order_summary['shipping'] = The shipping cost
- $order_summary['order_total'] = The final/net total of the order, the amount for payment
Also available starting with ZC v1.5.5 are the following (or add them to older versions using the extra PHP code shown below the following examples)
- $order_summary['products_ordered_models'] = a list of product model numbers, delimited by '|'
- $order_summary['products_ordered_ids'] = a list of product ID numbers, delimited by '|'
An analytics or affiliate-tracking system can use these variables as part of their tracking-pixel or other callback notification by simply referencing these variables in their callback/tracking code.
(Advanced tip: If passing product ID/model numbers needs a different delimiter in your system, simply do a replacement on it while doing your output, such as: str_replace('|', '@', $order_summary['products_ordered_models']) if you wanted to replace | with @, for example.)
No need to edit any core Zen Cart files.
Simply create a new file: /includes/modules/pages/checkout_success/jscript_idevaffiliate.php ... be sure to set the correct URL for your iDevAffiliate system, and appropriate profile number:
<?php echo '<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.yourdomain.com/idevaffiliate/sale.php?profile=1&idev_saleamt=' . $order_summary['commissionable_order_formatted'] . '&idev_ordernum=' . $order_summary['order_number'] . '&products_purchased=' . $order_summary['products_ordered_models'] . '&coupon_code=' . urlencode($order_summary['coupon_code']) . '"></script>';
<?php if ($current_page_base == 'checkout_success') { echo '<img border="0" src="http://www.yoursite.com/idevaffiliate/sale.php?profile=1&idev_saleamt=' . $order_summary['commissionable_order'] . '&idev_ordernum=' . $order_summary['order_number'] . '&coupon_code=' . $order_summary['coupon_code'] . '&products_purchased=' . $order_summary['products_ordered_ids'] . '" height="1" width="1">'; } ?>
No need to edit any core Zen Cart files.
Simply create a new file: /includes/modules/pages/checkout_success/jscript_jam.php ... be sure to set the correct URL for your JAM system:
<?php echo '<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.yourdomain.com/affiliates/sale.php?amount=' . $order_summary['commissionable_order'] . '&trans_id=' . $order_summary['order_number'] . '"></script>';
Adding product IDs or Model Numbers on older versions:
Add the following extra code before the tracking pixel/script code above if you want to have product ID or Model data available:
if (!isset($order_summary['products_ordered_models'])) { $products_array = array(); $products_query = "SELECT products_id, products_model FROM " . TABLE_ORDERS_PRODUCTS . " WHERE orders_id = :ordersID ORDER BY products_id"; $products_query = $db->bindVars($products_query, ':ordersID', $orders_id, 'integer'); $products = $db->Execute($products_query); while (!$products->EOF) { $products_array[urlencode($products->fields['products_id'])] = urlencode($products->fields['products_model']); $products->MoveNext(); } $order_summary['products_ordered_ids'] = implode('|', array_keys($products_array)); $order_summary['products_ordered_models'] = implode('|', array_values($products_array)); }
Advanced programmers might choose programmatic hooks instead of javascript callbacks, by invoking the notifier system. This involves hooking NOTIFY_CHECKOUT_PROCESS_HANDLE_AFFILIATES and referencing the $_SESSION['order_summary'] array in place of the non-global $order_summary array.
This could allow a bespoke tracking service to be invoked without needing to force extra activities down to the customer's browser.
Related article: http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?...els-to-my-site


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KINSHASA/DAKAR, Aug 21 (Reuters) - At least 70 people have died in northern Democratic Republic of Congo from an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, denying that the illness was Ebola.
A WHO report dated Thursday and seen by Reuters said that 592 people had contracted the disease, of whom 70 died. Five health care workers, including one doctor, are among the dead.
"This is not Ebola," a WHO spokesman said in an email to Reuters on Thursday.
A local priest who asked not to be named said that the illness had affected several villages and estimated that the death toll was over 100 people.
Kinshasa sent its health minister, Felix Kabange Numbi, and a team of experts on Wednesday to the region after reports of several deaths.
The outbreak began in the remote jungle province of Equateur where the first case of Ebola was reported in 1976, prompting speculation that it was the same illness that has killed more than 1,350 people in an outbreak now raging in West Africa.
Symptoms of the two diseases are similar; they include vomiting, diarrhoea and internal bleeding. But the fatality rate for this outbreak of haemorrhagic gastroenteritis is much lower than the West Africa Ebola outbreak, at around 12 percent versus close to 60 percent.
The WHO, which sent representatives to the area on Wednesday together with the Congolese team of experts, said four samples would be flown from the town of Boende on Friday to the capital Kinshasa for further testing.
Medical charity MSF said it had also sent a team to Equateur province to assess the situation. MSF said it was too early to confirm what the disease was. (Reporting by Bienvenu Bakumanya and Emma Farge; Editing by Daniel Flynn/Mark Heinrich)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.


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It looks like a pride of wild cats has run through our flat and torn it apart! We are in the 'sorting' stage of our move. With just over a month until mum and I leave the flat and join dad full-time on the boat it's all stations go!
We're having to downsize a fair bit obviously, so there's lots of piles of things everywhere.
We have a pile of must keep items. (Where I'm confident most of my things will end up!)
A pile of: would like to keep, but not used or worn for a long time, perhaps it's time to say goodbye items.
Then there's the: why have we been dusting and scenting this forever pile.
We also have the rubbish pile which is alarmingly growing into a mini monster.
And finally the donate pile, which I'm sad to say will include my cat tree, but I'm sure we can find some worthy cats that will love it as much as I do!
I'm tired after such a busy day!
Bisous Bailey


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Wishlist/Dynamic Screen Orientation
From Openmoko
|Wishes warning! This article or section documents one or more OpenMoko Wish List items, the features described here may or may not be implemented in the future.
Dynamic Screen Orientation
Using an accelerometer to sense which direction is down, the interface could switch between portrait and landscape display modes, and possibly even upside down modes for a total of 4 screen orientations.
This orientation should also be used when capturing images or videos in either landscape or portrait mode. This eliminated the need for tedious rotation correction for captures images and movies. For images this orientation should also be stored in EXIF tags.