letter to the editor

Mom was the scribe in the family. If anyone was going to write a letter I'd have expected her to. However, on a recent trip back to the family home. I discovered that my dad wrote a letter to the editor of the Nashville News (probably) in the late '80s. It was published with the headline "Ordinary men were greatest WWII heroes."

For Independence Day, I am reproducing his letter to the editor here.

Dear Editor:
I am enclosing a copy of an article from a book entitled World War II Fighting Men of Arkansas published shortly after the end of the war. The man pictured was my father Brooks Ayers Tolleson. He was born north of Nashville at Mount Pleasant and was raised in the Highland/Nathan/Center Point area.
The approach of Veterans Day prompts me to highlight his contribution to that war along with those of many others from this area.
Brooks married Katherine Wood and had three children before being drafted into WWII from Pike County and another child after returning home.
Just at the end of the war, he was captured and held as a POW in a German Stalag for over six months. Even after suffering as a prisoner, he never held an anomosity toward anyone.
He was always proud of his country; he never failed to vote. He was proud to have been part of the process of freedom and protection this country offered, and he honored the flag and other veterans every chance he had.
Brooks lived most of his adult life in Clark County working in the logging industry. After suffering an initial hear attack in 1975, he and Katherine returned to Howard County in the early 1980s.
He applied for and began receiving veteran benefits of only $16 a month. I thought this was a disgrace because much of his disability was the direct result of his injury while a POW, but my dad received it gladly.
My dad was the most honest person I've ever known, and he was only one of many of his generation who did what they believed to be right. Ordinary men like him were truly the greatest heroes of the war. America needs more heroes like him today.
Sincerely,
Ronnie Tolleson
Mineral Springs

Mom has the original handwritten letter as well as an original clipping somewhere. We'll try to preserve them. I can't locate the book the letter references, but will try to at some point.

Raise your flag this week. Honor a veteran this Independence Day. Vote this fall. The price that my grandfather and many others paid make the examples that they lived worthy of following.

eating a rainbow

Took kcrazorback daughter to a baseball game today. It's amazing how a 5-year old girl can eat for three hours straight. She's definitely my kid.

Course #4 was a gigantic snow cone. Of course, ice chunks with multi-colored sugar syrup on them can occupy a kid for a while. Two-thirds of the way through this frozen sugar bomb I looked down at her. She looked back up at me and said "I'm eating a rainbow."

6/26 Added photo: Thanks to my friend Wendy (2nd from right) for sending me this photo which shows the little rainbow-eater (right), although it doesn't look much like a rainbow on that little tongue.

merry Christmas

OK, I know it's not really Christmas. But any day I hear about new hp calculator models feels a little like Christmas morning. And so, today I present the new models I've heard about:

I've always been a really big fan of hp financial calculators. Financial professionals seem to love 'em as well. This new model, the 20b seems to be the perfect basic scientific. What? Oh yeah, it is a financial calculator--it also calculates IRRs and amortizations with classic 12b ease but it's combined with basic trig functions for example. I think it will end up being a great one for your student or consumer who just wants the power of a financial calculator occasionally to calculate car payments, etc. Of course, soon, the car will be free with each tank of gas purchased.

Check out the new graphing calculator, the 40gs here. I'm not much into the graphing ones so won't offer much of an opinion. It looks like it'll be a midgrade (maybe in the $99-$110 range) that will be a fantastic choice over the $150 version.

Wow, it looks like our old calculator company is introducing a whole new line of products: the Home and Office category. With three new calculators that give you the feel of an old-school adding machine and one really cool looking basic (think 4-function) model, there is something for almost any office or retail environment. If you don't have to calculate payments or IRRs, consider one of these:

The OfficeCalc 100 appears to be your basic adding-machine but it's all hp under the hood. The OfficeCalc 200 looks like the 100 but is actually quite a bit bigger. And, if you really need the register tape on your adding machine, check out the PrintCalc 100.

Out of all the new models, though, my very favorite may just end up being the QuickCalc. It looks really cool. It is rugged. It goes anywhere. It's magnetic. In short it's just like me: attractive, simple, rugged, magnetic. OK, I'm not really magnetic. But this calculator looks like it will be great. The design is creative.

OK, so my Christmas gift to you is a blog post. Well, it's not really Christmas either, is it? So, stop your complaining. If you want to get me a gift, I'll take one of each of the products listed above.

the incredible heaviness of being

OK, I've been a member of a health club for a week and a half. With membership comes two personal trainer sessions.

The first one, last week, basically went down like this: the trainer did a fitness assessment involving a scale (ugh), a tape measure (double ugh) and a long questionnaire about what, when and how I eat. I am one messed up puppy. The good news, though, is it doesn't matter where you start, but where you end up. The first session ended with 10 minutes of core muscle exercises. I didn't know I had ab muscles. Maybe I don't. It was almost enough to make me decide not to return.

I did go back. The second session also ended with 10 minutes of ab training. But instead of sitting at a desk for 40 minutes, I lifted weights. My muscles did not appreciate this at all. They haven't voluntarily lifted anything in a while. It felt good. I think I'm on the road to making it for the first couple of months.

During the first week, my eating was quite good and I exercised moderately. As I add in core and resistance training (oooh, sound like I know what I'm talking about), I hope you'll see more improvement and less kcrazorback, weigh less. The PT will bring me in for a followup assessment in one month--the whole scale & tape routine. I'll let you know how it goes.

hpanda

Saw the Kung Fu Panda movie with the fam last night. It's not the greatest movie, but it is entertaining and worth the $8.25 to plunk down imho. If they had just made the entire movie as humorous as the big battle at the end was it would have been really good.

Also stayed through the credits hoping for really cool animated outtakes, etc. Didn't really get that but did get to see the hp logo quite prominently after the credits. So, later I checked out the movie's official site and clicked on the list of partners. Unfortunately the hp logo is not a link on the official site, but almost all of the other partner links do work.

Note, however, that the hp site does have some pretty cool kfp related content. Check it out here.

Peace to the valley.

rooting irrationally

If you aren't yet subscribed to the hp calculator newsletter HP Solve, check out the newest one here. Then sign up here if you want.

For the real math geeks, this month's issue takes you through the calculations your calculator does when calculating the square root of 2. Cool.

On my first day of graduate school, my instructor proved that the square root of 2 is irrational. On his first exam, he asked us to prove that the square root of 12 was irrational. Out of some 40 math students in the room, I was one of only two or three (I think) that got it right. Can you prove that the square root of 12 is irrational?