PHOTOS: U10 Baseball Traveling Team host tournament
USHL Clark Cup Game 4: Waterloo 5, Gamblers 3
Indoor football: Sioux Falls 66, Green Bay Blizzard 39
Packers Tailgate Tour, May 19
U10 Baseball Traveling Team host tournament
Armed Forces Day Celebration held in Fond du Lac
Marian University holds 2012 Commencement
PHOTOS: U10 Baseball Traveling Team host tournament
USHL Clark Cup Game 4: Waterloo 5, Gamblers 3
Indoor football: Sioux Falls 66, Green Bay Blizzard 39
Packers Tailgate Tour, May 19
U10 Baseball Traveling Team host tournament
Armed Forces Day Celebration held in Fond du Lac
Marian University holds 2012 Commencement
Traveling wall more than a symbol
The wall holds special significance for Dean who was wounded almost 43 years to the day this coming Friday, April 13, when a comrade triggered a booby trap.
“I guess I’ll always be a little superstitious about Friday the 13th,” Dean, a Eudora native, said as he thumbed through a scrapbook later Wednesday afternoon at the DeSoto County Museum.
The explosion killed one of the only friends he made during his 13-month tour of duty in Southeast Asia. A dozen fellow Marines were injured.
The Traveling Vietnam Wall which memorializes their service is a 3/5 scale of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. It stands six feet tall at the center and covers almost 300 yards from end to end, the length of three football fields.
The wall will arrived May 9 and will be on display May 10-14. An opening ceremony is planned for 6 p.m. May 10. The dedication of a new flagpole near the site is set for 5 p.m. On May 12, veterans and their families will gather in Landers Center Arena.
Dean won the Purple Heart for his actions along with other medals. The Marine machine gunner spent six weeks in a U.S. Naval hospital in Japan.
“To me, it was like a movie I saw a long time ago,” Dean said.
The emotions are still just under the surface.
His brother Lawrence killed a Viet Cong in hand-to-hand combat.
“He wasn’t the same when he came back,” Dean said. “Eight on patrol were killed. He was the only one who lived.”
Dean said it was often difficult to discern friend from enemy. A South Vietnamese barber who cut GI’s hair later turnerd out to be a spy.
“It’s not like Cowboys and Indians,” Dean said. “You didn’t know who was your friend and who was your enemy. They might cut your hair today and cut your throat tonight.”
Seventy-two-year-old Air Force veteran John Dunn served during the early days of the war, when U.S. military advisors were first sent to South Vietnam.
Dunn said even at that early stage, one could see the war against the VC would be a difficult one to wage.
“It was a waste of manpower and energy,” Dunn said, adding that he blames the politicians for losing the war. “We had the capability of ending it in a day and a half. That’s my opinion.”
Dean agrees with Dunn.
“Any time you have a politician running a war, it’s a problem,” Dunn said. “If we had dropped a bomb on Hanoi, some 56,000 people would not have been killed.”
Stan Jenkins, an Alabama native, served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era.
“I guess you might say I was one of the lucky ones,” Jenkins said as leaned on a cane.
“My oldest brother Nathan spent three tours of duty over there.”
Jenkins agrees with the other veterans about the Vietnam legacy.
“The U.S. didn’t have any business being over there,” Jenkins said, adding the conflict carries meaning in today’s war-torn world. “We’re doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Letters from home sustained the enlisted men and women who served in Vietnam.
“A Sunday School teacher was about as faithful as Mama about writing me,” Dean said.
Diane Moore, along with husband R.G. Moore, a Vietnam War era veteran, are helping to coordinate events surrounding the Traveling Vietnam Wall exhibit.
Moore said the wall will arrive May 9 and be installed on several acres to the south of Landers Center.
“It will be guarded 24 hours a day and will be fully lighted,” Moore said. “It’s going to be quite a big event. We expect a lot of people. We are really trying to honor the veterans.”
Moore said Landers Center is also unfurling a 30 X 60 feet American flag.
DeSoto County Museum Executive Director Brian Hicks said the public will have the opportunity to view a month-long exhibit in the main rotunda of the DeSoto County Courthouse beginning May 1.
“The entire month of May we’ll have a special exhibit in the courthouse which will feature everything from medals to photographs,” Hicks said.
Robert Lee Long: rlong@desototimestribune.com or at 662-429-6397, Ext. 252
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of desototimestribune.com.
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Traveling Salesman: A Seemingly Unsolvable Problem Offers a Glimpse of the Limits of Computation
Image: Illustration by Thomas Fuchs
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way…
Is it hopeless to try to compute the shortest route to visit a large number of cities? Not just a good route but the guaranteed shortest. The task is the long-standing challenge known as the traveling salesman problem, or TSP for short.
Finding a method that can quickly solve every example of the TSP would be a stunning breakthrough in mathematics. Using complexity theory, such a method would allow us to solve efficiently any computational problem for which answers can be easily verified. Most mathematicians expect this to be impossible.
But suppose that you are handed the locations of 100,000 cities. Is it really impossible to find the shortest route? We are not asking for a solution to every instance of the TSP, just the quickest way around these specific locations.
To take up the challenge, your best bet is to follow Yogi Berra’s advice: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” A tool called linear programming allows us to do just that by assigning fractions to roads that join pairs of cities rather than deciding immediately whether to use a road or not. In this model, it is perfectly fine to send half a salesman along both branches of the fork. The process begins with the requirement that, for every city, the fractions assigned to the arriving and departing roads each sum to 1. Then, step by step, further restrictions are added, each involving sums of fractions assigned to roads. Linear programming eventually points us to the best decision for each road and thus the shortest possible route.
I should add that 100,000 cities is not a hypothetical challenge. Current computations are zeroing in on the solution to a pretty set of 100,000 points created by Robert Bosch of Oberlin College, where the tour traces out a drawing of the Mona Lisa. We may not be able to knock off every example of the TSP, but new ideas can push the frontiers of solvability.
Here is the big picture: complexity theory suggests there are limits to the power of general computational techniques in science and elsewhere. What are these limits and how widely do they constrain our quest for knowledge? That is what research into the TSP is all about.
This article was published in print as “The Case of the Traveling Salesman.”
Traveling Translator App Hits Over 5 Million Downloads
Chinese-based startup Mafengwo is a website that provides content on all things travel-related. Aside from the website, one of the products that it has developed is Traveling Translator. The app serves to help users to get around despite language barriers. It contains all the frequently asked questions likely to come from a confused traveler, ranging from greetings, transport, ordering food etc. Simply tap on the questions you want to ask and show it to a native person.
Note that Traveling Translator doesn’t do simultaneous translation. All the content is already loaded within the app. In other words, you do not need internet connection to be able to use the app. I thought this is really helpful since most travelers will not have data access on the road anyway. There is also simple “simultaneous translation.” If you type in hello the app will return a “nihao” result. But it’s very limited, of course, compared to Google Translate.
A PR rep told me that the app gets its answers from its group of third-party translators who have pre-loaded their translated content into its database. This is why users can access the app and its content without having an internet connection. The team at Mafengwo took a year to collect all this translated content to be able to provide a useful experience for users even when offline. Because the content is translated by humans, it is far more accurate than machine translation. Traveling Translator is available in over 30 languages and has so far attracted five million downloads. The iOS version costs $1.99 while the Android version is free. Click here to get yours.
Traveling art show to visit 10 libraries in coming months
Traveling Translator App Hits Over 5 Million Downloads
Chinese-based startup Mafengwo is a website that provides content on all things travel-related. Aside from the website, one of the products that it has developed is Traveling Translator. The app serves to help users to get around despite language barriers. It contains all the frequently asked questions likely to come from a confused traveler, ranging from greetings, transport, ordering food etc. Simply tap on the questions you want to ask and show it to a native person.
Note that Traveling Translator doesn’t do simultaneous translation. All the content is already loaded within the app. In other words, you do not need internet connection to be able to use the app. I thought this is really helpful since most travelers will not have data access on the road anyway. There is also simple “simultaneous translation.” If you type in hello the app will return a “nihao” result. But it’s very limited, of course, compared to Google Translate.
A PR rep told me that the app gets its answers from its group of third-party translators who have pre-loaded their translated content into its database. This is why users can access the app and its content without having an internet connection. The team at Mafengwo took a year to collect all this translated content to be able to provide a useful experience for users even when offline. Because the content is translated by humans, it is far more accurate than machine translation. Traveling Translator is available in over 30 languages and has so far attracted five million downloads. The iOS version costs $1.99 while the Android version is free. Click here to get yours.
Traveling wall more than a symbol
The wall holds special significance for Dean who was wounded almost 43 years to the day this coming Friday, April 13, when a comrade triggered a booby trap.
“I guess I’ll always be a little superstitious about Friday the 13th,” Dean, a Eudora native, said as he thumbed through a scrapbook later Wednesday afternoon at the DeSoto County Museum.
The explosion killed one of the only friends he made during his 13-month tour of duty in Southeast Asia. A dozen fellow Marines were injured.
The Traveling Vietnam Wall which memorializes their service is a 3/5 scale of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. It stands six feet tall at the center and covers almost 300 yards from end to end, the length of three football fields.
The wall will arrived May 9 and will be on display May 10-14. An opening ceremony is planned for 6 p.m. May 10. The dedication of a new flagpole near the site is set for 5 p.m. On May 12, veterans and their families will gather in Landers Center Arena.
Dean won the Purple Heart for his actions along with other medals. The Marine machine gunner spent six weeks in a U.S. Naval hospital in Japan.
“To me, it was like a movie I saw a long time ago,” Dean said.
The emotions are still just under the surface.
His brother Lawrence killed a Viet Cong in hand-to-hand combat.
“He wasn’t the same when he came back,” Dean said. “Eight on patrol were killed. He was the only one who lived.”
Dean said it was often difficult to discern friend from enemy. A South Vietnamese barber who cut GI’s hair later turnerd out to be a spy.
“It’s not like Cowboys and Indians,” Dean said. “You didn’t know who was your friend and who was your enemy. They might cut your hair today and cut your throat tonight.”
Seventy-two-year-old Air Force veteran John Dunn served during the early days of the war, when U.S. military advisors were first sent to South Vietnam.
Dunn said even at that early stage, one could see the war against the VC would be a difficult one to wage.
“It was a waste of manpower and energy,” Dunn said, adding that he blames the politicians for losing the war. “We had the capability of ending it in a day and a half. That’s my opinion.”
Dean agrees with Dunn.
“Any time you have a politician running a war, it’s a problem,” Dunn said. “If we had dropped a bomb on Hanoi, some 56,000 people would not have been killed.”
Stan Jenkins, an Alabama native, served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era.
“I guess you might say I was one of the lucky ones,” Jenkins said as leaned on a cane.
“My oldest brother Nathan spent three tours of duty over there.”
Jenkins agrees with the other veterans about the Vietnam legacy.
“The U.S. didn’t have any business being over there,” Jenkins said, adding the conflict carries meaning in today’s war-torn world. “We’re doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Letters from home sustained the enlisted men and women who served in Vietnam.
“A Sunday School teacher was about as faithful as Mama about writing me,” Dean said.
Diane Moore, along with husband R.G. Moore, a Vietnam War era veteran, are helping to coordinate events surrounding the Traveling Vietnam Wall exhibit.
Moore said the wall will arrive May 9 and be installed on several acres to the south of Landers Center.
“It will be guarded 24 hours a day and will be fully lighted,” Moore said. “It’s going to be quite a big event. We expect a lot of people. We are really trying to honor the veterans.”
Moore said Landers Center is also unfurling a 30 X 60 feet American flag.
DeSoto County Museum Executive Director Brian Hicks said the public will have the opportunity to view a month-long exhibit in the main rotunda of the DeSoto County Courthouse beginning May 1.
“The entire month of May we’ll have a special exhibit in the courthouse which will feature everything from medals to photographs,” Hicks said.
Robert Lee Long: rlong@desototimestribune.com or at 662-429-6397, Ext. 252
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of desototimestribune.com.
You must register with a valid email to post comments. Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Registered users sign in here: |
Become a Registered User |
Traveling art show to visit 10 libraries in coming months
Traveling wall more than a symbol
The wall holds special significance for Dean who was wounded almost 43 years to the day this coming Friday, April 13, when a comrade triggered a booby trap.
“I guess I’ll always be a little superstitious about Friday the 13th,” Dean, a Eudora native, said as he thumbed through a scrapbook later Wednesday afternoon at the DeSoto County Museum.
The explosion killed one of the only friends he made during his 13-month tour of duty in Southeast Asia. A dozen fellow Marines were injured.
The Traveling Vietnam Wall which memorializes their service is a 3/5 scale of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. It stands six feet tall at the center and covers almost 300 yards from end to end, the length of three football fields.
The wall will arrived May 9 and will be on display May 10-14. An opening ceremony is planned for 6 p.m. May 10. The dedication of a new flagpole near the site is set for 5 p.m. On May 12, veterans and their families will gather in Landers Center Arena.
Dean won the Purple Heart for his actions along with other medals. The Marine machine gunner spent six weeks in a U.S. Naval hospital in Japan.
“To me, it was like a movie I saw a long time ago,” Dean said.
The emotions are still just under the surface.
His brother Lawrence killed a Viet Cong in hand-to-hand combat.
“He wasn’t the same when he came back,” Dean said. “Eight on patrol were killed. He was the only one who lived.”
Dean said it was often difficult to discern friend from enemy. A South Vietnamese barber who cut GI’s hair later turnerd out to be a spy.
“It’s not like Cowboys and Indians,” Dean said. “You didn’t know who was your friend and who was your enemy. They might cut your hair today and cut your throat tonight.”
Seventy-two-year-old Air Force veteran John Dunn served during the early days of the war, when U.S. military advisors were first sent to South Vietnam.
Dunn said even at that early stage, one could see the war against the VC would be a difficult one to wage.
“It was a waste of manpower and energy,” Dunn said, adding that he blames the politicians for losing the war. “We had the capability of ending it in a day and a half. That’s my opinion.”
Dean agrees with Dunn.
“Any time you have a politician running a war, it’s a problem,” Dunn said. “If we had dropped a bomb on Hanoi, some 56,000 people would not have been killed.”
Stan Jenkins, an Alabama native, served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era.
“I guess you might say I was one of the lucky ones,” Jenkins said as leaned on a cane.
“My oldest brother Nathan spent three tours of duty over there.”
Jenkins agrees with the other veterans about the Vietnam legacy.
“The U.S. didn’t have any business being over there,” Jenkins said, adding the conflict carries meaning in today’s war-torn world. “We’re doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Letters from home sustained the enlisted men and women who served in Vietnam.
“A Sunday School teacher was about as faithful as Mama about writing me,” Dean said.
Diane Moore, along with husband R.G. Moore, a Vietnam War era veteran, are helping to coordinate events surrounding the Traveling Vietnam Wall exhibit.
Moore said the wall will arrive May 9 and be installed on several acres to the south of Landers Center.
“It will be guarded 24 hours a day and will be fully lighted,” Moore said. “It’s going to be quite a big event. We expect a lot of people. We are really trying to honor the veterans.”
Moore said Landers Center is also unfurling a 30 X 60 feet American flag.
DeSoto County Museum Executive Director Brian Hicks said the public will have the opportunity to view a month-long exhibit in the main rotunda of the DeSoto County Courthouse beginning May 1.
“The entire month of May we’ll have a special exhibit in the courthouse which will feature everything from medals to photographs,” Hicks said.
Robert Lee Long: rlong@desototimestribune.com or at 662-429-6397, Ext. 252
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of desototimestribune.com.
You must register with a valid email to post comments. Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Registered users sign in here: |
Become a Registered User |
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