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Win Lose Is More Like It

I was reading a sports news article about 10 mins ago and came across that hackneyed old saying:

Its a Win – Win situation!

What a lot of tosh. Its not possible to have a Win – Win situation. Any given situation always has a down side. Its not possible for both sides to Win.

Sales people spin this line to confuse prospective customer and persuade them, they’re gaining something and not losing anything.

Rubbish!

Some one buying a new car will gain that pretty shiny new set of wheels alright, but he’s gonna lose around £20,000 in the process. So where’s the Win – Win in that?

Your bank balance is down £20,000? That’s a loss in my book, not a gain. So where’s the Win?

Next time you hear some old croak regurgitating the line, feel the bile rising and know he’s throwing out bait and waiting for a sucker to bite.

In every situation, if there is a winner, there is a loser. Always, without exception. Whenever there’s a gain, there’s a loss to balance it.

There has to be. Its nature’s way.

Your Gonna Pay. We’re Gonna Profit.

Here in the UK we have National and Local phone numbers, that many companies and services use as their main contact number.

These numbers are often used by banks, insurance companies, doctors surgeries, the inland revenue, and even the NHS (National Health Service).

They profit from using 0845 or 0870 by charging three or four times more than the cost of a regular call.

If you need to call 0845 or 0870 numbers, there’s a free alternative. Go to www.saynoto0870.com and enter the 0845 / 0870 number you need to call. It will list a regular land line number, which is charged at the lower call rate of 5 pence a minute.

BT made £24 million pounds profit on these numbers last year. Read this Guardian article for more info. The article suggests BT is dropping charges for some premium rate numbers.

Timeline Overview

Billion Years
15 – Big Bang
4.7 – Solar System Sun Planets
4.5 – Earth
4.0 – Liquid Water Rain Protein
3.5 – Bacteria Viruses
3.0 – Oxygen
1.0 – Air

Million Years
500 – Fish
300 – Reptiles Seeds Plants Invertebrates free from water
250 – Dinosaurs
200 – Fruiting Plants Mammals
150 – Birds
050 – Primates Grasses Horses
003 – Recent Ice Age Homo Erectus

Thousand Years
700 – Fire
200 – Neanderthals
100 – People (Homo Sapiens in Africa)
011 – Nomads Farmers
006 – Cities
2.5 – Buddhism
002 – Christianity Roman Empire

Years
550 – Renaissance Colonialism
500 – New World Discovered
450 – Copernicus
350 – Science
250 – Industrial Revolution
060 – Penicillin
050 – DNA Space Exploration Atomic Bomb
030 – The Internet

We don’t know how or why the Universe began.

The Big Bang released radiation particles and atoms. Gravity condensed the atoms into galaxies and stars were created.

Stars created new types of atoms when they grew old and exploded as Supernova. New atoms were released back to the galaxy and formed cosmic dust. New stars like our Sun formed from these, in spirals. The cosmic dust formed planets like Earth.

Life appeared on Earth and evolved into bacteria. Single cells appeared along with plants such as algae and animals like protozoa. The single cells formed colonies which created more complex algae and animals.

Vertebrates such as fish appeared when plants started living on land. Invertebrates appeared soon after. Amphibians evolved and started living on land. Reptiles dominated for millions of years. Flowers, bees and mammals evolved soon after.

Humans appeared on the scene very recently. They dominate the planet.

The Sun will eventually burn up the Earth.

The Universe will end by cooling and expanding into empty space.

And Live To Tell

What’s it like to have a stroke? Neurologist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, had a unique opportunity to discover what her patients experience when she suffered a massive stroke, one morning in 1996.

She survived the ordeal and gave a revealing lecture relaying her moment-by-moment experiences. What she felt, what she thought and the associated emotional turmoil.

Strokes occur when a there’s insufficient blood and oxygen pumped to the brain, resulting in extensive damage to the brain structure. Here’s the Wikipedia intro to stroke:

A stroke also called acute cerebrovascular attack is the rapid loss of brain function due to a distrupted blood supply to the brain. Causes include ischemia (glucose & oxygen deficiency) thrombosis, embolism or a hemorrhage. The brain malfunctions, causing the inability to move limbs, understand speech, and partial loss of the visual field.

The lecture was recorded and available on Youtube.

Also with Spanish sub-titles in two parts. Part 1 and Part 2

Funny and educational.

Runtime: 20 mins

Its Like This…

Quotes from Ramana Maharshi. Great Indian Saint.

• There is no greater mystery than this, that being the reality yourself, you seek to gain reality.
• You think there is something binding your reality and that something must be destroyed before the reality is freed. This is ridiculous.
• A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your efforts. What is there to realize? The real is always as it is.
• You have realized the unreal, in other words, you regard the unreal as that which is real. Give up this attitude and you will attain wisdom.
• There is nothing new nor anything you do not already have which needs to be gained. The feeling that you have not yet realized is the sole obstruction to realization.
• In fact, you are already free. If it were not so, the realization would be new. If it has not existed so far, it must take place hereafter. What comes will also go, what can be gained can also be lost.
• If realization is not eternal it is not worth having. Therefore what you seek is not that which must happen afresh. It is only that which is eternal, but not now known due to obstruction.
• Remove the obstruction. That which is eternal is not known to be so because of ignorance. Ignorance is the obstruction. Get over the ignorance and all will be well.
• The ignorance is identical with the ‘I-thought’. Find its source and it will vanish. Then the Self alone will shine as it always has, in the stillness of being.

Oh No… Not Me. Why me? Argh!!!

I finally restored all the old posts. Slowly over the last couple of weeks, I managed to reconstruct the blog posts the were lost when I did the upgrade.

I was running Wordpress 2.6 and hit problems, and decided to upgrade to Wordpress 2.85. Things didn’t go as smoothly as planned.

I made a backup of the 2.6 MySQL database that contained the blog text, but when I restored the database file, several errors occurred. Next problem was theme formatting was lost. Then images didn’t display and I couldn’t access the dashboard. Enough is enough.

I installed Wordpress 2.85 which runs fine. The problem remains, getting the data out the old MySQL database and into the new. I decided to recreate the posts in the new version.

I had all the data and images saved, so it wasn’t such a big job to copy and paste each post as a new entry. The only thing I lose are the date entries, but I can live with that, as I added an original date entry at the bottom of each post.

Let this be a lesson to all you bloggers out there. Back up your data.