Election

Election by Tom Perrotta

A school president election is about to take place. Tracy Flick has been trying for this for all of her life. However, a smart jock has also decided to enter the race. Then at the last minute, his sister enters. However, she seems to be more interested and getting suspended and going to a Catholic girls' school. There are a whole bunch of affairs. Tracy also manages to unintentionally get a couple teachers fired. Stylistically, it is great as the book rapidly takes us into the minds of various characters. The characters themselves are all really messed up. 

The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football

Football is a very tradition-based sport that prides itself on violence and physical contact. Change does not come easy. It took the deaths of many players in the early days to kick start some initial change (such as the allowing of the forward pass.) However, it took oddballs to really bring the passing game forward. The "outsiders" would go on to heavily influence the game, yet not be able to glory in the rewards.

Hal Mumme had toiled the near-destitute life of a football coach. He had worked for high school and college programs. In the process he became enthralled by the passing offensive. He researched efforts by other programs, such as an Ohio high school, BYU and the San Francisco 49ers. These programs had opened up passing offenses. BYU in particular under Lavell Edwards had focussed on passing to compete with teams that had much greater talent levels. Mumme sucked in any knowledge he could get as he went on to develop his offense.

He helped Copperas Cove high school in Texas to get out of the cellar and even defeat rival Temple. From there he got a college coaching job at small school Iowa Wesleyan. He built up the team nearly from scratch, recruiting people from all over. He also hired quirky Mike Leach to help run his offense. Together they had a great deal of success. In fact is was too much, and the university decided it was time to move on. He went on to a college in Georgia before being hired at Kentucky. There he helped fill the stands with his pass-happy offense before being chased out. Since then, he has toiled in relatively minor coaching rolls. Leach has managed to carry on better with positions at Texas Tech, Washington State and Mississippi State. However, he was chased out of Texas Tech, despite being one of the winningest coaches.

Mumme's innovation was the "air raid" spread offense. This was a fast moving, pass-first offense offense. The playbook was kept very simple. Players had the ability to quickly read the defense and adjust accordingly. This made it appear very complex to the defense despite being relatively simple for his players. He was also able to give his players many more reps practicing the plays due to the simplicity. He also had a "lighter touch" to practice. He didn't want players to get injured with heavy contact. The plays focussed on short, high probability passes. Despite throwing more, his quarterbacks had much higher completion rates. He utilized the entire width of field to space things out. The offense is extremely difficult to defend.

The old guard of football criticized Mumme's offense as being gimmicky. However, it has since gone mainstream in all levels of football. 

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: A Hunger Games Novel

The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes is a standalone Hunger Games prequel novel. Knowledge of the main series will help to quickly understand the universe, but is probably not necessary to enjoy the novel. The name of the main character seemed vaguely familiar to me since it had been a while since I read the main series. This may have made the novel more enjoyable. I kept hoping for him to succeed and make it against the odds. Only after completing the book did I realize he was the "bad guy" from the main Hunger Games series. Perhaps this book explains why he was so "bad."

In this book, Coriolanus Snow hopes to be able to get the education and career he wants. However, the odds seem to be stacked against him. He has an opportunity to serve as a mentor to a Hunger Game tribute. He discovers that the tributes are treated horribly - often like expendable animals. (After all, they all will be fighting each other to the death.) His tribute is a small girl with a great singing voice. He befriends her and even falls in love. He makes suggestions to make the games more "exciting" for the viewers. He also ends up actively participating - going into the games kill somebody and training snakes to help his tribute to win. He believes he will get a full scholarship by winning. Alas, they find out about his cheating and he loses out on education. Dejected, he seeks escape in the military and is stationed in the district of his tribute. He finds out that the Hunger Games was originally conceived as a drunken joke, but ended up getting implemented. His friend ends up getting stationed with him, and later plotting an escape. Coriolanus nearly joins the escape with his girl, but ends up making it back to the capital where he has been hardened by his experiences to engage in subterfuge for personal gain. It seems like there were so many simple ways that the future "evil" life could have been avoided. Alas, the accumulated life experiences result in a psychopathy rather than empathy.

Laws of Medicine

Laws of Medicine is a short work that distills some of the important "laws" of medicine. Medical care as we know it is a very recent phenomenon, only existing in the last century or so. Medicine had to be "cleansed" of the old "bad" ways (like bloodletting) The intermediate "do nothing" period helped pave the way to medicine as we know it. However, properly practicing medicine requires much more than simply understanding the book learning. That is where the "laws" come in. Every person is a little bit different. A study that showed great results with one population may not have any impact on a different group. Understanding the entire person can help provide insights into possible issues. (He gave an example of learning that a man was a drug user providing a risk factor to test for HIV.) Tests are rarely 100% accurate. If we test everybody for a rare condition, we are likely to get more false positives than true positives. However, narrowing down the population to a more susceptible group can get better results. On the other end, a study that only seems to help a single person may actually show a promising cure for people that match that person's characteristics. However, even the most carefully designed studies are subject to human bias. Even the naming of a procedure can influence its popularity even if the data is hidden. A great doctor has the knowledge and the intuition needed to look at the hidden clues. Alas, as medicine becomes more mechanized, we are becoming more reliant on "tests" at the expense of truly resolving issues.