Two meaty books this week, a strange but natural pairing:

* “The Power Of Myth”:amazon by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. On the shelf forever, a great book about some of the deep issues of life and humanity. One sentence of this book has more insight into humanity than all of Kurzweil’s book. Not a light read. * “QED”:amazon by Richard P. Feynman. Simple (to the degree that anything quantum can be simple) explanation of the basics of quantum electrodynamics. When you read this, you have to wonder why we continue to stuff deterministic models of chemistry and physics down the throats of high school students, only to have to rip it out when they get to higher level sciences in college. There is no reason we can’t start with quantum science at the beginning, this stuff is very approachable.

Together these two books provide nice bookends on the nature of the universe – at one end, the squirelly but true behaviour of the universe at the quantum level; at the other, the squirrelly behaviour of humans and the deep motivations of our behaviour.

Preseason coaches poll is out, OSU at 6th, SC at 4th. Man I am fired up for the opener against Navy in less than a month, and for the SC rematch.

Other teams and stories I’m excited about:

* Michigan. Can they take steps back to respectability? The best rivalry in sports needs drama to sustain itself. * SC. How good how fast, and will they learn to win the games they ought to win? * UW. My adoptive hometown team, will a new coach get them off the mat? * Florida. Hoping the rest of the SEC mans up and pins a couple losses on them. * Denison. Go Red Raiders! Only because a member of extended family is on the team.

BTW, big kudos to Sea Ray and Lake Union Sea Ray for their help this last weekend with my stupid battery issue. The Lake Union service guys were very gracious on the phone talking me through things, even tho the last time they got revenue from me was in 1996 or so. And the Sea Ray customer service website had an issue with downloading manuals, and the Sea Ray guys were super responsive in debugging and also in getting me the manual out-of-band. All this on a weekend, and a very busy boating weekend at that. Appreciated.

Journalists Rejoin Relieved Friends, Family in U.S. - washingtonpost.com – it is awesome that these folks have been freed, and it is generally a good thing that we have found a way to talk to North Korea and have a success at something, here’s hoping that this event will contribute to calmer relations with the country.

But as a country we have expended a lot of dollars and diplomatic chips to get these folks free. I hope that we present the folks with a big bill for services rendered – if you go poking around in dangerous places in the world (like these folks, who goes hiking in Iraq/Iran for gosh sakes, was that really the only place you could think of to go hiking??), you should not expect that all the other taxpayers in the country are going to carry the cost of rescuing you. Yes we will rescue you, but there will be a reckoning for services rendered.

UConn (after signing a home and home series last week with Michigan) doesn’t feel like they have to bend over for Notre Dame anymore. ND has been able to stuff a schedule full of lower rank Div I opponents, but these are the teams that are exactly in demand by the top tier of Div I teams. So the price in dollars and return visits for all these games are heading up. It will be interesting to see how this plays out for ND, as the price rises for them to maintain their schedule, though obviously they still are doing fine economically as an independent.

The UConn/Michigan linkup tho is especially pointed, as teams from the two conferences which have been most desirous of ND inclusion have joined up to put a hole in ND’s schedule.

Some more serious non-fiction – two good, one drivel:

* “The Post-American World”:amazon by Fareed Zakaria. A little dated by financial events of the last year and, like all nonfiction books, really ought to be a pamphlet. But still some great core points about the US and it’s place in the world. The future is not to be feared because of waning US influence, but to be embraced because of the growth and development of so many other parts of the world. Amazon says 4 stars, I ding it a little bit for length but still a good book. * “The Only Three Questions That Count”:amazon by Ken Fisher. One successful investor’s view on how to invest. Insightful and worth a read, the discussion on national debt levels alone is worth the book. Successful investing is clearly not something done as a hobby, it takes a serious amount of discipline and analysis to follow his guide – not surprising. Oh the book is way too long though, where was the editor? Amazon says 4.5 stars, I would agree that there is great content in here. * “The Singularity Is Near”:amazon by Ray Kurzweil. I found this to be nearly unreadable. First the early nonsense about the knees of exponential functions (a bogus notion), then the unending blather about order and information (where was the editor?), and I just gave up. Maybe there are genius ideas in here but I suspect the author vastly underestimates the complexity and sophistication of our evolved biological structures. Feels like Wolfram’s “A New Kind Of Science” – the author is all fired up about his “insights” but didn’t bother to get any critical review. Amazon says 4 stars, I give this a 1.

Is this the year of speech recognition? GigaOM thinks speech recognition is getting ready to take off – Is Speech-Recognition Technology Finally Ready for Prime Time?

IN 2006 AnandTech had similar headlines – Speech Recognition – Ready for Prime-Time?

CNN called it in 2001 – Speech Recognition Technology will hear you now – “After years of hype and false starts, automated speech recognition (ASR) technology is ready for prime time”

SpeechTechMag made the claim in 1999 – Speech recognition technology is “ready for prime time”

Apparently Comdex buzz in 1998 was that 1999 would be the year of speech recognition. Again.

At one point in the mid/late 90’s, the Microsoft Speech Recognition team worked for me thanks to a reorg. All great people, very enthusiastic speech supporters, and convinced that widespread speech recognition was right around the corner. I loved the team but it seemed apparent that the hardware and software were both generations away from achieving useful speech recognition and so ultimately I worked to get the team moved to Microsoft Research.

So call me a skeptic. Over the past 15 years, you would have done well to always bet on “No” as the answer to “Is this the year of speech recognition?” I don’t see a lot of reason to change the bet. Speech is tough, we are demanding, we expect a system to respond to conversational input – rapid, lots of colloquialisms, speaker-independent, etc. Yes there are systems that can respond reasonably well to very limited inputs but as a general use technology, I’m not yet optimistic.

This post is going to save someone’s as$. The information is invaluable.

We have a SeaRay 280 Bowrider, 1996, but I am sure the info applies to newer models. Someone (not me, I know better!) unwisely left the batteries on when they left the boat. Which of course is always a mistake on a boat. Batteries are dead.

And what compounds the problem is that the batteries are underneath the hydraulically lifted engine cover. Which needs battery power to open. And which weighs a ton and is linked to hydraulic lifters which effectively prevent you from just lifting it by hand. Oh crap. (This is a strange boat – large for a bowrider, small for inboard/outboard engines, any bigger and it would have a shore power connection which would solve my problem, but this boat does not).

The SeaRay owner’s manuals are useless (though you can download them all here to your heart’s content). Clearly they don’t expect boat owners to actually ever look at the engine. So I called Lake Union Searay Redmond branch – nice people, very helpful. Apparently there is some way to reach through the oil check hatch and remove pins from the hydraulic lifts to allow you to muscle the hatch cover up – but it would require an intimate knowledge of the engine compartment since you are basically reaching around blind, the hatch is just large enough for your arm and no more.

Here is the key trick though. If you cobble together a 12V source (battery, charger, whatever) with a cigarette lighter adapter, and plug it into the cigarette lighter 12v port at the helm (which is normally used to provide power to 12v devices), the electricity will flow back into the boat and allow you to use boat electrics – hatch cover, etc. Completely undocumented and SeaRay won’t give you the parts to do it, but the service guys admit it will work.

So I got a $21 small riding mower battery. Went to Fry’s and got lighter adapter hardware. Wired them together, plugged it into the cigarette lighter, and pop the breaker went in the boat. Disconnected, switched polarity, reset the breaker, and tried again. Voila!!!! Hatch cover openers worked, I can now get at the batteries and either recharge or replace as needed.

Additional warnings and tips:

* the cigarette lighter adapter from Fry’s had 16-20 gauge wire, not sure what. Whatever it was, it is not enough for longterm use – the wire got hot to the touch. So get the job done and get it out of there. * Before I went to Fry’s, I tried used an old cell phone car adapter I had lying around. I cut the phone connector off, stripped the wires. This was clearly never going to work for two reasons. One, the wires were incredibly small, I am guessing 26 gauge. They would never have been able to carry the power. Two, the lighter head of the adapter is full of rectifying/transforming electronics, stepping down the car 12v voltage/high amperage to something the phone can use. Clearly I would not be able to stuff 12V/moderate amp signals back through this.

Good luck, hope this helps someone.

* Scanaroo. The idea of something to manage all my cards is cool – one place to see account numbers, 1800 customer service numbers, etc etc etc. But this isn’t it. The shortcoming is the dependency on the iphone camera. If it worked more like snaptell (use the photo to ID the card in a dbase and get all the detailed info and image from a dbase) it would be better. * Statplot. Interesting idea, charts for sports junkies. Not a lot of community around my teams yet but will be fun to watch * Card.ly. Microsites. If 140 chars is good enough for a message, why should a website need much more? I guess. Ultimately I don’t know what I’d use this for. * TuneWiki. Rich loves it, I am not sure I get it yet. * Linear Programming using Google Spreadsheets. Is this really what is keeping people tied to Excel? * Notepad++ and plugins. Not sure I will stick with, the app is busy * SuperUser. This could turn out to be super helpful

CFN’s Big Ten Preview is up. OSU gets the requisite amount of love. Though OSU needs some defensive players to surprise to achieve the promise of the team.

OSU picked to finish first at Media Day.

Here are my hopes for the season: * OSU of course defeats SC and goes on to win the Big10 * Michigan takes steps towards respectability. You can’t have the best rivalry in sports if one of the programs sucks. * Someone rises in the west to challenge USC. * UW gets up off the mat and makes some progress. * Florida and Tebow take a dive. I am so sick of the Tebow-gasm in the press every day. My 2nd favorite team every weekend will be whoever is playing Florida.

* My Favorite Things Mars. Amusing and entertaining * Why Nokia and Sony are failing. Succinct. Complexity is a killer. * Inflatable buttons. Cool, not sure practical. * Computer Hardware Chart. Periodic table of connectors * W* house. Your portal for great looking expensive sh$t. * Ford developing laser ignition. Nice, car engines with laser beams! * WarrantyElephant. Idea is promising but site useless. I need something that will automatically find the warranty policy for my products and summarize my rights for me – without me having to punch in the data myself. IE something akin to ManualsOnline but for warranty info

* “Long Lost”:amazon by Harlan Coben. Coben takes his Bolitar character into dark and personal territory. As always a fun adventure. Bolitar in Paris is great. Amazon says 3.5 stars, I’d up it to 4. * “Gone Tomorrow”:amazon by Lee Child. Another fine Reacher tale. Tho I start to feel that Reacher needs some depth – the Bolitar character in the Coben is more interesting because of his personal relationships. Reacher could benefit from some commitment – personal or professional. Amazon says 4 stars but I’d drop to 3.5. * “House of Suns”:amazon by Alastair Reynolds. In a far distant future, the galaxy filled by humanity and it’s offspring, a galaxy-threatening crisis. A fairly typical form, some interesting elements, but ultimately somewhat forgettable. Amazon says 4.5 stars, I’d say 3.5. Maybe 3.75. * “Judas Horse”:amazon by April Smith. A nicely layered tale of an FBI agent deep undercover. No one is quite who they seem, no one is a pure hero or villian. The agent’s struggles to maintain her own identity are nicely handled. Amazon says 4.5 stars, this is clearly the star of this crop of books.

Ann Arbor News abandons print, goes online.

Apple’s quarter (NYTimes): “We’re making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding”…“unexpectedly strong sales of Macintosh computers and a surge in iPhone purchases pushed Apple’s profit up 15 percent in the third quarter”…“PC shipments for the industry fell 3 to 5 percent over the last three months. But Apple said it sold 2.6 million Macs in the quarter, up about 18 percent from the 2.2 million it sold in the previous quarter”…“overall gross profit margin grew to 36.3 percent, from 34.8 percent in the year-ago quarter”…“Revenue rose to $8.34 billion, from $7.46 billion last year”.

MSFT’s quarter (NYTimes): “has been humbled, both by the recession and by problems of its own making”…“Year-over-year revenue and full-year sales of Microsoft’s flagship Windows software dropped for the first time”…“29 percent drop in net income”…“17 percent drop in quarterly revenue”…“warned that people should not expect a major bounce-back in technology spending when the economy recovers.”

Hmm. Apparently the economic downturn is worse among PC buyers than among non-PC buyers.

* Solar Camping Lantern – I remember the old coleman lanterns using white gas, the pumping, the mantles. What a pain in the a$%. This looks way simpler. * King Cobra wristwatch – awesome looking. Tho I have completely given up on wristwatches. * Carabiners make everything better. So true. * Denture ice cubes. Seriously awesome. * Resistor cheat sticker. I can never remember how to speak resistor. * Antitheft lunch bags – brilliant. * Woven wood chairs. Beautiful. Probably uncomfortable as hell.