On the stand Wednesday, Woodard's mother described Louise as a smart, caring girl.

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My mother has always been a very smart, strong-willed, inspirational person.

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For himself, as my sainted mother used to say, he was smart.

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Your iPhone is only smart and fast enough to connect in real time to the Mother Ship of Smarts in the Cloud.

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And his core stock pickers at the Gabelli mother ship Gamco Investors are similarly equipped with the ability to spot smart investment opportunities.

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In one, a teen purchases a new pair of jeans through her laptop in order to pre-empt receiving a hand-me-down pair from her mother, while, in another, an employee quickly orders a tablet computer via his smart phone so he can fit in with his co-workers, all of whom have tablets.

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As these devices pop up everywhere, there has been a recent spate of articles about smart-phone "manners" -- as if using your phone when your boss, or your mother, is talking to you is just a matter of poor training on their part.

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The public face of Goldman has been to repeat the mantra that the customer comes first, but those in the bonus pool or vying to become a managing director seemed to have mastered a completely different ethos: the cultural distinctions of shrewd, smart, aggressive and hard working more than the ethical distinctions of whether you would sell this product to your mother.

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