Mathematics After The Fall

On Memorial Day, I decided to delve into a different culture and read a book from a former military man. That book, by James Wesley Rawles, has an appropriate title, Patriots. The subtitle gives a strong hint of the content, “A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse.” It’s been very popular in these troubled times, so much so that the Amazon link above is for the Kindle book only. I grabbed my copy from Borders.

I believe in preparation. Based on a recommendation, I’ve been reading Mr. Rawles’s blog, SurvivalBlog, since the fall. Since I believe in fair value, I donated to the site. If you skip over some of the gun articles (training is far more important than caliber), there’s a lot of good information. Everyone should have supplies to stay in their home for about 10 days, and supplies to flee almost immediately if needed. Just in the past year in Louisville, I’ve faced a windstorm, where much of the area was without power for a week, and an ice storm, where much of the area was without power for a week. These sort of things happen. The official government provides ready.gov if you prefer a site without weaponry. I take suggestions from both places.

The primary point of this review, though, is not to talk about survival preparedness. It’s also not to judge the book as a survival manual, though I will take a short digression. There are very good parts, particularly about retreat preparation, weaponry, and military tactics. Given that Mr. Rawles has lots of experience in that subject, this is not surprising. On the other hand, the book provides little guidance on morale and psychology. Most plans have people living in very small groups, with little to no outside contact, for years. Additionally, much comfort, even down to flush toilets, will be gone. Anyone who doesn’t make serious plans for morale, and psychological issues, shows far too much confidence in their people. And you need people and a group to survive.

Anyway, let’s assume you want to read Patriots as a novel, not a survivor’s guide. It’s not very good. In several places, a character spends several pages lecturing. From a plot perspective, five pages on how radio communications are detected are not interesting, or information on stringing together gun magazines, or building claymores. Can these parts be skipped? Well, yes, but it exposes the slimness of the narrative. It will also make the product placements more obvious. It’s like Chuck and Subway, except with the Encyclopedia of Country Living instead of the $5 footlong. I know that the full titles and authors are there for the survival references, but they don’t help the story.

Furthermore, the characters are often indistinguishable. There’s Kevin, Lisa, Todd, Dan, and over a dozen more. While there are some attempts to keep people apart, and a few succeed (like Dan), it doesn’t generally work. Sometimes Mr. Rawles uses a last name for a character, and I found myself forgetting who it was. They certainly don’t have the distinction of Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn in a much better fantasy series. For that matter, they don’t have the distinction of the characters in the Left Behind series. That’s not a high standard.

Speaking of standards, the fact checking is surprisingly lacking, given the updates for the current financial crash of 2008 and the military details. I find it amazing that Mr. Rawles couldn’t get the number of amendments correct. As of 1992, there are 27, not 26, so the new “27th Amendment” mentioned would be impossible. Furthermore, on page 22, Todd and TK are walking back to their dorm in 2006 even though Todd was married by 2001 and TK was a Sears manager by 2002. And having been at the University of Chicago, a lot of their majors do not exist. Finally, the deaths from the “influenza pandemic” make no sense in Chapter 21; there is no model that would give that mortality rate, yet survive long enough to cause the stated number of deaths, but not be known to people in the west, even by rumor. Pandemics don’t work that way.

Finally, I turn to the plot. The first half was interesting, in a post-apocalyptic situation traversed before by Alas Babylon and other tales. While some might find the fundamentalist Christianity simplistic, I didn’t have a problem; complicated systems would be out of fashion. I did have a problem with the Federal invasion. It combines several far right notions such as United Nations control, National ID cards, Marks of the Beast, and martial law. Furthermore, the opponents seem to have a black ninja problem, where they are orders of magnitude less competent than the heroes. For example, the invading forces had air superiority. Why wasn’t there recon? Or aerial bombardment? The US has bombed civilians in many wars. If the opposition is “worse”, why wouldn’t they use these tactics?

There are too many simplifications, errors, and digressions to make this a good novel. It’s a good reference, but as a work of literature, not a survival manual, Patriots gets a 1 out of 5.

Two similar books get quick reviews tonight: Basketball on Paper by Dean Oliver, and The World’s Most Dangerous Places by Robert Young Pelton.

It seems a little strange to put these books together, so why do I? Because they’re both from a new perspective, and that’s what makes them strong. There are lots of books on basketball, like there are lots of travel guides. You can find shelves of each at Borders. Most, frankly, are boring. Why do I need 20 uplifting autobiographies “with” a secondary author? Why are there 10 guides for each American state? It’s pretty much more of the same.

Basketball on Paper does something different. It tries to quantify the game. There had been, and continues to be, other work on the subject. There’s nowhere near as much as baseball with the Sabermetrics community. Mostly, that’s because baseball is easy to analyze. Almost all actions involve one or two people at a time. It’s pitcher versus hitter, then a fielder and a runner. Everything is separate. That’s what makes some people like baseball, while I find it slow. Basketball, on the other hand, involves ten players moving together, where one failure or success routinely changes several other actions. Basketball is tougher. People still try, and a good starting page is at SonicsCentral.

I’m not going to go into much detail, because if you’re a quantitative basketball fan, you should read the book. If you’re not, you likely won’t. Mr. Oliver is given credit for popularizing the concept of possession, offensive rating, and defensive rating, so it’s good to read to get examples. On the downside, the writing is pedestrian, and there are lots of tables. There are so many tables that my eyes would glaze a bit, and I like this stuff. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to read it all at once? The writing brings this grade down to 2 out of 5.

And if you want just a little detail, here are the key things to remember.

1. The Four Factors are, in order of importance, shooting percentage, turnover percentage, offensive rebounding percentage, and free throws.
2. The best shot attempt is an open layup. The second best attempt is an open three-pointer by a good shooter. The third best outcome is to get fouled and get free throws.
3. Interestingly, jump shots have approximately the same success percentage at all distances from about 6 feet to the three point line. Thus, medium to long two pointers are silly shots.
4. The disadvantage of a contested shot is very large. In one record, open shots went in about 61% of the time while contested shots went in less than 40% of the time.

Better writing, yet on another limited subject, grants Mr. Pelton’s book a 3 out of 5. Dangerous Places does something different. It provides a travel guide on countries that don’t have many of those silly travel books. As such, I learned a lot about North Korea, Afghanistan, Liberia, Yemen, and the rest. There’s good history. One small problem is that the book was published in 2003, so some countries – like Zimbabwe and Iraq – are somewhat out of date. On the other hand, South Africa and the United States still have bad spots.

The best part of the book consists of true stories, “In a Dangerous Place”. Some of the tales are just amazing. Even if you’re not a history or geography person, like I am, these are well worth the time. The Russian TV show, the Mali airport, and Albanian smugglers are all memorable. These are not happy stories; it’s no Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. You need to have a dark sense of humor to like things here, like the convenient list of mercenary companies. If you do, like with basketball, there are great rewards from an unusual approach.