Varchar(255) without even thinking about how long they may actually be?

There any storage or performance penalty for this. There is no performance penalty by doing this but as another netter pointed out: If you want to define indexes on these fields, then you should specify the smallest size because the sum of the maximal lengths of the fields in the index can't be greater than 256 bytes. And someone else wrote in saying: Your data structures should match the business requirements.

This way the data structure themselves becomes a data dictionary for others to model their applications (report generation and the like). More.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.