THREE FOR BART: SportsVU, Bacteria, Sorkin

  1. How data help Duke refine approach on court – If someone can read this and tell me how data has actually helped Duke refine their approach on the court let me know. This makes it seem the Blue Devils are using SportsVU like a glorified FitBit. Seriously. There’s a few other parts to this, however. 1) Duke probably isn’t going to reveal their uses, and 2) This further highlights that just because we have data, doesn’t necessarily mean we know what it means.
  2. Race Against Resistance: How Bacteria are Circumventing Modern Medicine – And this is why I found Immunology to be one of the more fascinating classes I took in college. The human body is a brilliant machine. Its ability to recognize and destroy  foreign agents is remarkable. But sometimes it needs help. The discovery of penicillin was game changing – a sixth man, if you need a basketball reference – in that it helps the body catch up – a spark off the bench. Our bodies sometimes can’t keep up with the foreign pathogens and so enter penicillin. It compromises cellular integrity (I wanted to write that), killing that which the body doesn’t recognize. So what happens when penicillin isn’t able to help at the same rate? When bacteria evolves faster than our bodies (already) or our medicines? Well, smart people get involved.
  3. The Sony Hack and the Yellow Press – I appreciate Aaron Sorkin’s perspectives on this because he’s named in some of the leaked documents. It gives him a certain connection to the events. Otherwise it seems like perfect timing for him to comment on a major media situation with The Newsroom wrapping up. So if you need one more Newsroom monologue…here it is.

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