What Does it Mean to be Local in Hawai’i?

Civilbeat has been exploring that question.

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How would you guys answer this? Here’s my first attempt:

Michael Jordan’s Leadership

I have a lot of respect for Michael Jordan as a basketball player (and he seems like a decent enough guy). I don’t think I’ve ever had a negative impression or thought of him. Until now. I haven’t been watching The Last Dance, but I’ve been listening to some of the comments about the series. The ones I heard today, from Shannon Sharpe, specifically about Michael Jordan’s leadership was the first time I can remember having a negative impression of Jordan. I’ll go more why I feel this way in this thread.

Art: Innovations and Innovators

I really love artist that push and sometime break boundaries, leading to a new style or vocabulary, or even redefining what constitutes art or not. Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and maybe Andy Kaufmann would be examples of the latter. Other innovators, who may not cause us to re-think art, but I still I like a lot are Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, to name a few. This is a thread to discuss innovations of specific artists as well as innovations in art more generally. I want to start by talking about two different innovations in music that I’m interested in.

General Thread on Artists and Art

I’ve been watching several documentaries about art and artists, and instead of writing a review for these films, I wanted to start a thread for general thoughts and reaction these artists and art in general; basically a repository of notes on these topics.

Football Question: How Should a Team’s Offense Play If Their Defense is Weak?

I feel like I’ve asked this question before, but after a cursory search, I couldn’t find any thread. I apologize if this I’m repeating myself. This question often comes up when I’m interacting with Seahawk fans in the last two years–primarily because their defense hasn’t been good. A lot of people seem to think that, with a weak defense, a team should be more aggressive about scoring, which usually means passing the ball more in a way that maximizes scoring opportunities, rather than controlling the ball. Intuitively, this seems correct. A more conservative offense makes sense on a team with a great defense. That is, don’t take chances on offense, and don’t worry about scoring a lot because the defense can win the game.

However, I think one can make a conservative offensive approach when the team’s defense is weak. A conservative approach will minimize the defense’s snaps and time on the field, minimizing their exposure and also enabling them to play at their best by resting them. This second point is crucial if the defense the problem main problem with the defense is that they hit their breaking point relatively quickly.

Actually, I think a balanced offensive approach is the ideal. With a weak defense, scoring is critical–more critical than if the defense were dominant. So the offense should be good at ball control and scoring. Indeed, I think this is only viable path to a serious playoff run. An offense that’s too conservative is not going to cut it, and an offense that is aggressive will have to be fantastic at scoring TDs to make up for the defensive deficiency. That’s type of offense is difficult–you need the personnel, OC, and it puts tremendous pressure on the offense.

Where do you guys stand on this?

Could Tower Records Resurrect Itself Today?

I’m sure exactly when the coining of “third places” occurred, but I do believe it’s real–the idea that people have a need for a cozy, appealing space where they can be next to people they don’t necessarily know or interact with. After college, Tower Records was definitely such a place for me, and watching this reminded me of this.

Based on what I gather from the film, Tower Records did not need to go out of business. For one thing, if they had made a transition to online music streaming, thinking they could still be here seems reasonable. On the other hand, I believe they filed bankruptcy in the mid-2000s, and this was before a lot of music streaming sites like itunes. Made going to a music streaming wasn’t viable at the time. But even if you put that aside, there are other, perhaps more critical reasons they went out of business…con’t.