Clear Light of Morning

"Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp--all others but liars!"

--Herman Melville, in Moby Dick

Moral Culpability and Institutional Violence

I got to thinking after talking to my friend David. We were discussing LeGarrette Blount, the Oregon running back who punched a Boise State player after a game Oregon lost--specifically, whether he should be suspended for the entire season, as was initially stated by Oregon, or if he should be reinstated after a few games, as Ducks coach Chip Kelly is now saying he'll do if Blount meets certain conditions.

David was arguing that "you have to admit that there is a hypocrisy in kicking him off the team and essentially ruining his professional football career (which he would certainly have had) because he punched somebody--that we allow these kids to knock each other around for 3 hours, then tell them they have to be peaceful little angels as soon as the game is over seems silly to me." In the context of Blount, I think David's right. The infraction was relatively minor and Blount should be allowed to play after a mandatory suspension and meeting the conditions his coach sets--no need to suspend his entire season and destroy his chances of playing pro ball.

But the broader question implied by David's argument is whether, if an institution encourages certain kinds of violent behavior, does this reduce the culpability of an individual who then commits an unrelated violent act?

One way to analyze this might be along the level of violence, including both intrinsic and institutional violence. Intrinsic violence refers to the level of violence in the act itself, for example murder or rape as opposed to a relatively minor crime/tort like assault and battery. Institutional violence means the violence in the institution an individual is participating, such as military unit or a football team. Comparing low and high institutional and intrinsic violence levels yields four scenarios (fig. 1).

Institutional violence
Intrinsic | Low/High "B" | High/High "D" |
Violence | Low/Low "A" | High/Low "C" |

The example David and I were talking about--one person punching another (relatively low intrinsic violence), when they are both football players (relatively low institutional violence), falls into the lower left hand quadrant, Scenario A.

Scenario B would be like a soldier who gets in a fight at a bar.

Scenario C would be a football player committing a major crime--such as murder or rape.

Scenario D would be a soldier committing a major crime.



I think this actually opens up quite a few questions. What do you guys think?

• To what extent should football players and/or soldiers be held to a different standard, as a result of their institutional training, which teaches them to be violent? Should the standard be one of reduced or increased culpability?



• It's clear that a soldier murdering another person, totally unrelated to his military service, should be classified in D. But how would you classify a soldier killing an enemy combatant? Is it low intrinsic violence, because killing an enemy combatant isn't "wrong" in some important sense? Low institutional violence, because it is expressly condoned, even encouraged by the institution? Or is it simply another Scenario D--the fact that the person being killed is classified as enemy having no bearing on the culpability of the killer?



• When comparing Scenarios A and B, who has less culpability--the football player or the soldier? Does the solider have less, because the institution is more violent and so it is more "expected" to cause ancillary violence? Or should the soldier be held up to a higher standard, because his violent institution also emphasizes discipline--that because he is trained to use a great deal of violence and force, it is even more important that he only use it in a proper way?



• Does anyone think there might be a different model to analyze this than the four scenariosI laid out?

I know this is pretty long-winded and abstract, but thanks for reading if you got this far. Let me know what you think!

nothing in particular

it's been awhile since my last update...

is kind of a meta statement--too self-referential to be really meaningful.

so that's not how i will open this post
I can't believe I'm leaving Paris so soon--1.5 weeks, and I'm back in NYC, back in school, in a world so totally different from the one I now inhabit that i can barely comprehend it. Change is an interesting thing--sometimes we yearn for it, want nothing more than a change of scenery, are totally ready to plow into the unknown and experience something completely different, no matter what it may bring. Other times, like scared children, we cling to the present, or the past, unwilling to release the bird in our grip for the potential two in the brush.

Change is the genesis of transformation.

The only real question is, "are you ready?"

And the answer, as always, is elusive.

__________

All of my friends went on vacation at pretty much the same time, leaving me in a bit of a difficult spot. A social person, I feel somehow empty inside--maybe the word is lonely--when i don't have others around to share my experience with. Being suddenly without the group of friends I hang out with primarily makes me feel somewhat confused. Too often, my entire identity is defined by how other's perceive me. WIthout that mirror to hold myself up to, without others to communicate with, it's almost as if I don't really exist at all...

Of course that's not literally true. I continue to think, to be, even to strive. But when the meaning my actions contain is only the meaning I assign to them, it's as if the cup is half empty.

If hell is merely other people, then heaven is, too.

__________

I went out tonight with Chris, a friend I met recently, and who just moved to Paris 13 days ago. He's trying to get a job, but the French code makes it very difficult for a non-EU worker to get a work visa, so he might have to move back to Berlin if he can't find an employer who's willing to help him get one. We got a couple beers and talked Philosophy while sitting in the courtyard outside of the Centre George Pompidou, then went to an Irish pub for a couple pints of Guiness.

I spoke English with someone for a change, and got into topics so abstract that they are really impossible to communicate in a language one isn't fluent in. I found it refreshing to have an intellectual conversation with another person who was just engaged in it as I was. It's always a recurring theme for me--the best times I can remember all involve one other person, and an infinite number of ridiculous tangents going off into no-one-knows-where, in-depth examination of the very world in which we immerse ourselves. Thinking back, it makes me nostalgic for similar times I've shared with friends in the past.

__________

Well, this has turned into a bit of a silly post, with lots of nonsensical introspection and not much content.

Cheers.

Insert Title Here

I'm not going to write about airports anymore. It's no longer interesting or funny. But, suffice it to say, my return to Paris was far more arduous than it should have been, and when I finally got back to my flat, I was utterly exhausted and slept for 12 hours straight.

My stay with Oiwi was excellent. He showed me all around Oxford, we hung out at some cool pubs, including this amazing mediterranean place where we drank mint tea and got drunk on sangria while eating tapas. We also went to the Musem of Natural History in Oxford, which while not nearly as large as the one in NYC, was quite amazing in its own right, with some very good animal and dinosaur displays, as well as a some very detailed and intriguing anthropological exhibits and antiquities. Above all, though, it was just nice to reconnect to an old friend.


_________________

Asked whether the glass is half empty or half full, I'm beginning to realize the glass may just not be living up to its full potential...

_________________

So, I sort of jumped back into this blog a few weeks ago, and I posted more in the month of July than I had the entire last two years combined. I don't really have a coherent vision for where this thing is going, so I'd love some feedback from anyone who's been reading. I know there are at least a few of you. Leave a comment if you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see--maybe more or less of something, or even a specific topic you'd like to see me write about.

In this post, I ramble on about nothing in particular...

Finished reading 'arry Potta today--It was pretty damn intense. Won't say any more than that--I know I'd have punched someone who made me read a spoiler 24 hours ago.
_________

I got my first foreign speeding ticket in France. Apparently I got nailed by a traffic camera, b/c it showed up in the mail. I was going 83 km/h in a 70 zone. According to the letter I was sent, my infraction translates as: "Exceeding the speed limit by less than 20 km/h while driving a motor vehicle in an area with a speed limit greater than 50 km/h." I thought about just skipping the country, but I paid the 45 € fine instead.

Fuckers.
__________

Better news also came in the mail: British Air finally ponied up for the guitar they smashed on my way here from NYC. Received a check to the tune of 460 €. Still not happy about the whole situation, but at least I'm no poorer for it.



Rest in peace, old friend.

_________

And music news on a lighter note(har-har): Last night, i went to this crazy jam session place near Montmartre called 'The Garage' with Hady, Tony, and Hady's little brother. Tony and I brought our guitars, Hady's bro his bass, and Hady used the drumkit there--we rented a room for 2 hours and it was fully equipped with enormous speakers, microphones, preamps, everything we could need to rock out. I had to put in ear plugs, because I thought I was going deaf. By far the most fun I've had jamming with people ever--plugging in to some serious equipment makes a big difference.

_________

I <3 running in Parc Monceau

Photo: http://parispassion.canalblog.com

__________


Random thought for the day:

The only difference between a mess of contradictions and a balanced personality is situational awareness.

Trivial Trivialities Trivially Tinkering With Teh Thoughts

In case you were wondering:

The French word, "blague," is pronounced almost identically to the English word, "blog." Translated, it means "joke."

__________

And now, a pseudo-confession:

The truth is, I frequently plagiarize. In fact, everything I ever do or say is plagiarism. I simply can't think a truly unique thought. It's rather unfortunate, but I'm afraid that's just the way my mind works. I mean, all I have to go on are my sensory inputs from the world around me, which are hardly original. Further, they're all filtered through a complex system of language that defines the world I perceive. Add on top of that the rich cultural tradition I am descended from--all the literature, music, art, science and ephemera that a hundred generations past have built, and which fundamentally inform my worldview. It's really no surprise that nothing I ever think is original.

Nonetheless, I do resent the implication that I lift material from Cliff's notes.

__________

And now some pseudo-philosophical ramblings:

Karma

It's just cause and effect. There's no personal identification, although many incorrectly understand it to mean exactly that. There's no such thing as 'the universe taking revenge' on you or anything in that vein. The reason a bad action results in bad karma is simply because it hurts other. It's as simple as that--the cycle never necessarily affects the individual causing the harm. "This is what people mean when they say 'The world isn't fair." Often, people committing 'bad' actions get away without ever feeling the harm they cause. Perhaps they even reap some benefit from of it.

People also sometimes say that whatever harm or good you do will come back tenfold. This is also misinterpreted--the harm or good doesn't come directly back to the person causing it. But the energy, positive or negative, that is created whenever an action is taken, does spread. A person who has something stolen from them is more likely to become a thief. A person hurt often proceeds to cause pain himself. However, an enlightened person will be conscious of the pain cause them, and will avoid continuing the effect.

Some schools of thought hold that the ultimate goal is to completely end all karma--to halt it in its tracks and exist in a state of non-action. That's a little too metaphysical for me, and makes me wonder what point is. It seems to me that one should always attempt to halt the negative karma they encounter, but reciprocate, even multiply, the positive.

But maybe I just haven't acquired a taste for entropy yet.

In this vein, here's a hypo: You see a coat on television, worn by a character on one of your favorite shows. You immediately want it. You look in stores, online, you find it in different places for various prices, but all more than you can reasonably afford at the moment. You decide that once you have the necessary cash, you'll buy it.

The next day, it is out of your mind. You meet a couple of friends. One of them seems to wearing a new coat, similar to the one you wanted to purchase. He shows it to you, tells you he 'found' it in an open car. He didn't break into the car, but the window had been smashed--someone had broken in previously. And in the car, the coat, which he took. He shows you the tag. it is a designer label. It is, in fact, the precise coat you were looking at just a day before.

Later, hanging out as a group, your friend buttons the coat. Some of the other people you are with start laughing a bit--it is far too large for him. He asks you to try it on. You hesitate a moment, but ultimately don the garment. It fits perfectly. He offers to give it to you.


What would you do?

__________

And now some pseudo-US Foreign Policy: We owe it to the world. We must lead by example--we are proponents of a democratic society with a market economy. Our message is, and one which almost all Americans believe, is that it is possible to have an open and free society where people are able to contract for their labor and still live meaningful lives. If we are to take that message seriously, we must lead by example. We have the most money by far, and also the most helpful conditions in general. If we cannot succeed, no nation can. The alternative is a return to the dark ages--fascist rule and the vast majority as peons serving those who brainwashed them. We need to immediately improve our education and healthcare services. No more bullshit elections. A truly progressive tax that requires those benefitting the most from the system to pay something back to those who labor so that they may live extravagant lives. And fundamental respect for life and the right of individuals to live free from oppression.

It's all in the preamble. Seriously.

__________

Point:

It's all about planting a seed.

Counterpoint:

“When you think about it from a native plant perspective,” Oyster says, “Johnny Appleseed was a fucking biological terrorist.”
(From Lullaby, by Chuck Palahniuk)

just a thought

Ask not:
Who am I?

Nor even:
What am I?

But:
What is "I"?

Or more to the point:
What is "is"?

I'm here to kick ass and chew gum. Fortunately, I've still got lots of gum.

Sacre-Coeur, 23 June 2007.

_______

I've been writing a lot more lately, and its making me feel very nostalgic about the website I put up when I was at Wasatch Academy. It feels good to be writing, kind of cathartic. Just putting something onto the screen is somehow liberating.

Enough about that: I'm heading back to OR for Felice, my sister's, wedding in eight hours, and I'm pretty excited to go back to the states for a bit. Even better is the fact that I'll have a few days of vacation, something that hasn't happened since Spring Break. At the end of the school year, I finished the writing competitionon a Thursday, packed up my apartment and flew out on Friday, arrived in Paris Saturday evening, and started work on Monday at 8am. Been going strong since. Needless to say, I'll be glad for the break.

Also very cool, I'll get to see a few people who I haven't for ages when I stay in Portland for a couple nights.

Right now, I'm contemplating an all nighter. It's 4am in Paris now, and my flight leaves at 12:55.pm If I go to sleep when I get to my seat, it will be 4am in Oregon. I can sleep for 7 or so hours, then wake up 3/4 of the way through the flight to Houston, at about 11am, OR time. Then, if I land in OR and don't go to bed until midnight or so, I should be able to get a full night's sleep and wake up without any jetlag. We'll see if it works.

Gotta finish up my packing, so I suppose I'll do that when I'm finished with this post. I'm stoked to be going back to Oregon for a while.

______________

And now, some pseudo-political nonsense:

On the Need for Marijuana Law Reform

The United States prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s and early 1930s resulted in large economic and social costs to the country at large. There were two primary effects of that prohibitions which severely undermined the American economy:

1) A vast amount of taxable income went unreported. As a result, it was not collected. This reduced operating revenue for the Federal and state governments.

2) The organized crime associated with bootlegging caused its own set of losses: First, there were significant policing costs--having to enforce prohibition meant diverting cops to that task and taking them off the street and preventing violent crimes. Further, the criminal organizations responsible for the majority of the bootlegging also perpetrated a variety of additional crimes which both increased the policing requirement(and further reduced funds and manpower available for other tasks) and came at a very high social cost as well.

The prohibition of marijuana is fundamentally similar to prior prohibitions of alcohol. There are related ideological roots and legal precedents. And there are similar associated costs, both economic and social.

Repealing current Federal marijuana laws would have the following beneficial effects:

1) It will allow states to decide how to regulate sales of marijuana, including complete bans if they wish. Allowing states to act as 'laboratories of government,' and try out new policies to determine their effects, the best solutions will eventually emerge. Further, by allowing states to determine whether or not to allow the drug, American citizens will be given better opportunities to live in areas with laws they agree with, thus maximizing choice in what kinds of places they want to live.

2) By heavily taxing marijuana, the Federal government could create a significant revenue source. This is money that could be used for pressing national concerns: education, healthcare, scientific research(from NASA to the National Insitutes of Health to the National Science Foundation), and other badly needed social services.

3) We could free valuable Federal police manpower to deal with more pressing national security needs. This would result in a significant boost to the effort in the war on terror. Further, by legalizing marijuana and allowing it to be sold and grown legitimately, we would take away a major source of funding from the criminal organizations(terrorist or otherwise) that profit from the marijuana prohibition.

The war on drugs has come at a significant cost to our country. Countless individuals have been jailed or otherwise severely penalized for growing marijuana and selling it. The systemic costs of supporting an overcrowded jail system full of non-violent offenders are a drain on resources badly needed elsewhere. We must repeal Federal marijuana laws, allow states to choose whether to proscribe or simply enforce age limits, and we must tax it, turning it from a resource-drain into a source of revenue.
______________

And now a random rant:

The stupid bitch of the week award goes to....
The Checkout Lady in the Express Lane of the Monoprix on Rue de Courcelles

Having never even heard the word efficiency(or, for that matter, efficacité), it's no surprise that this stupid bitch was totally inept. All the other lines were flying by--people with baskets full of groceries were moving far quicker than the sad few in the express line. But I stayed there, thinking that the short line in front of me would soon end. But it was interminable.

There were 3 people in front of me when I got in line. It took the checkout lady 10 minutes to get through the first two. At least three of her coworkers came and talked to her while she worked. And she had to stop everything to respond. She wasn't scanning or making change while they spoke to her--the act of speaking exhausted her mental resources. I inched closer. The line grew longer behind me. The woman ahead of me had 8 items, which she put onto the conveyer. The idiotic checkout lady scanned one at a time, very slowly, putting down the scanning gun between each item as she grabbed the next. Not only was she completely unable to multitask, she even lacked the ability to process single threads at any decent rate. I was the next in line. After the stupid bitch of the week spent 4 minutes checking out a woman paying cash for less than 10 items, I stepped up. I put down my single bottle of wine, and prepared to pay. I'm not going to go into the mind-numbing boringness of standing there: suffice it to say, it was just more of the same. How it could take her 3 minutes to complete the transaction, I will never understand.

Granted, 17 minutes isn't a lot of time, but having to waste it standing in line just because she was too retarded to do her insanely simple job really pisses me off.

I'm not bitter. I just think she should be fired. And possibly imprisoned.

______________

And now, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away:


Tie Fighter: |-o-|
Advanced Tie Fighter: (-0-)
Tie Bomber: (-o-0-)
Darth Vader's Tie Fighter: <-o->

X-Wing: >=[^]=<
Y-Wing: Y (lol)

Light Saber: =*========[&/&:::::]
Doubled-edged light saber: =*=======[:::::&*&::]=======+=

@-_-@ Princess Leia

metaphysical musings of a mellow mind meditating on a momentous mellifluous mural

Musée Marmottan Monet

And now some pseudo-scientific nonsense:

Space-time: an intricate relationship between physical distance and the amount of time it takes to get there.

The Universe's outer limits are defined by how far away light could travel from us in any direction. In this sense, it appears boundless--what could possibly happen to light along the way to make it stop? As far as we know, only a powerful enough gravitational force could ever stop a photon traveling through space(Excepting impact with a solid mass). So in a relativistic sense, the 'knowable' universe is strictly limited in a physical sense by the speed of light, and thereby the speed of the fastest possible information that could reach us.

Just a thought.

And now some pseudo-religious nonsense:

I. In the beginning, there was not much at all.

II. As time progressed, it became quite apparent that 'not much at all' is a little boring.

III. There was light. It emanated from every direction at once, in every direction at once. Everywhere it went it encountered space--it was as if an enormous gravitational pull that had constrained it--not for ages, not for aeons, but for a true, endless infinity, for there was no time before the light--was sudenly released. Immense energy flowed everywhere--to wheres that hadn't even existed a moment before.

IV. As light encountered light it became matter. Purest energy condensed, at first boiling hot into plasma, and slowly, slowly, into swirling masses that begot their own gravitational pull. All of the energy that existed before the Event became, in this way, reconcentrated throughout a newly constituted space-time continuum, and achieved its own light--the bright light of fusion, which, even still, was far paler than the light of the Event itself.

V. With time these stars became out of balance. The resources within them withered--Hydrogen turned to Helium, and Helium into Carbon, and so on, until finally, the very souls of the stars became so corrupt with heavy, immalleable iron, that they consumed themselves, and expired in enormous blasts. The cataclysms resulted in the complete destruction of the being of the stars, but each produced a light far greater than at any other moment in the stars' history, yet a light still far inferior to the first Event.

VI. And these heavier elements eventually recoalesced, forming their own bodies--bodies which could not live without the light of nearby stars. There was one of these bodies in particular, a swirling globe of iron, its core a fiery forge, yet one still far less intense as the cores of the forbearer stars, and is immeasurably less intense than the Event. It's outer crust cooled by the vacuum of space nearby--hydrogen and oxygen formed together to create water.

VII. The perfect mix of chemicals existed, inspiration hit, and life began. And life contained within it a fire, but a fire that burned far dimmer than the core of its planet progenitor. Immeasurably paler than the star that gave it energy on which to exist. And infinitely paler than the Event itself, the precondition for all of space-time.

VIII. This life began to effect the planet around it. It consumed some chemicals. It excreted others. And slowly, slowly, the thinnest, topmost layer changed--it became more and more habitable, and more and more lifeforms emerged--adapting from prior organisms into more and more complex ones. Self-replicating protein strands. Mitochondrian. Prokaryotes. Eukaryotes. Protozoans. Plankton. Multicellular organisms. Algae. Metazoans. Trilobites. Fish. Insects. Amphibians. Ferns. Insects. Reptiles. Dinosaurs. Birds. Viruses. Mammals. Primates. And humans.

IX. And within every human burns a fire. A fire, like all animals', far paler than the Earth's own, even more so compared to the stars, and infinitesimal compared to that which created it. Yet within every human is a fire that apprehends, and that reaches out to understand the universe around it. An intelligence which in its own way, though physically dim, specklike, shines far brighter than anything before it, save only the Event itself.

Alternate ending:

IX. And humans are a vaguely interesting species that really haven't done anything that cosmically significant at all, but have managed to cause some pretty ridiculous problems for themselves in their own little neighborhood.


In other news, Paris is still fun, and I've started a Flickr Account where I'll be uploading some pics.

And now, a roflcopter:

========+:::+========  \
    _ ____l___          --0-- 
   /O/  ___  0\_         _o  \                  
  (=   /_AM__   \_______/ /
(-:_________________lol__/
         \  \
    \____|__|_____

It's actually way faster than it looks.

A Nice Little Bit of Sophistry(From a burned out law student)

This sentence is a lie.

I'll use the following definitions:

TRUTH--Binary 1. Correct as a proposition. Exists.

FALSE--Binary 0. Can be stated as NOT. Negation.
LIE--Opposite of TRUTH. Is the conjunction of mathematical falsity(FALSE) and propositional correctness, i.e. NOT TRUTH.

Beginning from the sentence's internal logic: If the sentence is a LIE, then we can infer that "it is FALSE that it is TRUTH". We rewrite the sentence as: "This sentence is NOT TRUTH" or "This sentence is FALSE".

As the sentence states it is a LIE, but is NOT TRUTH and FALSE*, we can clearly negative it to get a TRUTH, since the opposite of a LIE is TRUTH, and negativing creates an opposite. Negativing "This sentence is a lie," we get "This sentence is a TRUTH."

Since the sentence states that it is a LIE, or the opposite of the TRUTH, the sentence is externally seen to be FALSE as a proposition.

To be FALSE as a proposition is to be the opposite of TRUTH, or a lie. So, we can say with some certainty that it is TRUTH that the sentence is a LIE.

The sentence states that it is a LIE.

Thus, the sentence is TRUTH.

Stop.

Another day, another post... Plus a nice little lorenz attractor.

No stories about bunnies this time.

I'm still reeling from that Matisyahu concert last weekend. It was definitely the best show I've been to in a long time, and I've been listening to Live at Stubb's over and over again at work. Definitely can't wait for Youth to come out. Also, the opening act, Trevor Hall was pretty tight. I bought the CD on a whim after deciding I liked the guy's sound, and it was definitely worth it. Listened to it at least twice yesterday.

I convinced my boss to order a bunch of nerf guns for the office right before we moved and a delivery came today, so I was pretty hyped, thinking they had arrived. Instead, it was just a bunch of wooden blocks that he got for all of my coworkers who have children. Man was I pissed--I wanted toys for me, not toys for real kids. Oh well.


Lorenz attractors are pretty damn cool. The idea of chaos being the dominant force in a system, but the system nonetheless maintaining a high degree of order always impressed me, and I've been thinking about it a lot more lately. The weird thing about self-organizing systems, though, is that the systemic order is always contingent on the right conditions to create the attractors. Small changes in the rules or environment will lead to either uninteresting patterns of completely predictable order(i.e. boring stability, like a checkerboard), or the outright chaos of background noise or brownian motion. Of course there's always the possibility that changes could lead to a new, different set of attractors and an equally unique self-organizing system, and I think that when we talk about creating an evolution in social consciousness or the international politicial landscape, that's the sort of change that people usually want to create. But by their very nature these systems are unpredictable--I find myself... not exactly worrying... but at a sort of low level of constant anxiety over the future of civilization. I know it's kind of a huge thing to be concerned with, and furthermore so abstract as to be almost meaningless, but I guess when you read the news as much as I do that's what you end up thinking about a lot of the time. What's gonna happen as the focus of power shifts away from the US, the world's long-dominant superpower? How are environmental degradation and overpopulation going to affect policies and economics? Will new technology step in to counteract all the negative effects of previous technologies? What the fuck are we gonna do if Iran gets nukes? Lots of of questions, no answers...

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if we get another self-organizing chaotic and beatiful attractor, pure chaos and anarchy as extremism prevails and it's polarizing effects spread unchecked, or the 'boring stability' of total annihilation.

Damn I wish I wasn't such a downer.