Beautiful quote

I was studying for my Human Lifespan Development exam and I just stumbled across this beautiful quote about happiness. A lot of people have told me that they believe the main point to life is to attain happiness. While I haven’t personally believed in this same way, I’m starting to find that it might be more fulfilling than my current viewpoint–contribution to humanity. Possibly, I’m looking at it in the wrong light. Maybe the two viewpoints (pursuit of happiness and contribution to humanity) aren’t opposing, mutually exclusive perspectives. Rather, it is possible that the true point is the synthesis of the two; feeling happiness through contributing to humanity.

Anyway, here’s that wonderful quote:

“The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it.”
                   –Al Batt

|:| Zach |:|

Defeat again on the O2 front

Last week I talked with the people at Hondata and found out that the cause of my check-engine light and the AFR failure is that my O2 sensor doesn’t match my ECU. They said I needed to buy the primary O2 sensor out of a base-model RSX (or 2004 Civic Si). So I did, and last night I wired it in. Still no AFR, and still the P1166 CEL.

The worst part is that I dished out a lot of money, and I can’t return the part. I know there’s something wrong with the wiring, but apparently I’m not smart enough to figure it out.

|:| Zach |:|

Computers and syllogisms

After looking all through the character map for Arial Narrow in Windows, and various other fonts on my Linux boxes, I realised that several fonts are missing an incredibly vital syllogistic symbol! The therefore symbol, which looks like a triangle of three dots ( &there4 ) can’t be found within many popular font maps. To top it off, there really isn’t a universally accepted ASCII code for it either.

You may be asking yourself “when the hell would I actually use this thing?” That’s a good question, and I’m glad you asked… well you really didn’t ask, but I asked for you. 🙂

The “therefore” symbol is often used in philosophical debate shorthand, specifically when syllogisms are being utilized. A syllogism is simply an Aristotelian form of logical flow in which there is a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion from the synthesis of those two premises. For instance:

A: Timmy is taller than Jonathan.
B: Jonathan is taller than Eric.

Following these two premises, one could offer a concluding statement like “Therefore, Timmy is taller than Eric.” That would be an example of a syllogism. As you can see, I used the word “therefore.” That would be a perfect time to use the shorthand symbol!

In essence, the syllogism would then look something like this:

A: Timmy is taller than Jonathan.
B: Jonathan is taller than Eric.
&there4 Timmy is taller than Eric.

See how much more concise (and not to mention stylish) the latter is over the former? 🙂

|:| Zach |:|