McDonald's Cards

Today I went to McDonald's and learnt they are providing a new game. They are supplying prize cards with some of their menu items. The idea is you collect the cards and build up the collection and when you get 4 of a kind, you unlock a prize. It is a bit like playing bingo. You also win food items with some of the cards in a pack, you get 4 of them at a time. I think you can also swap them if you get duplicates. 

I recall a while back they were supplying a slightly smaller licensed version of the Uno game with their happy meal. I thought it was very clever because people of all ages like to play card games. Cards are quite cheap to produce and they're light weight and take up a small space so distributing it as a toy for a children's meal is very clever in my view. 

I think it's  good to play card games because it gets your mind thinking. They don't use electricity. 

I like the way I can accumulate points and rewards and trade them in for free food items. 

Harman Kapoor Incident

I recently learned that a restaurant owner opted to only serve non halal meat in his restaurant. Groups of Muslim youth were harassing his restaurant and throwing eggs at his restaurant because of his choice. The first thought that came into my head was they have too much time on their hands, they probably don't work full time. Sometimes people see my blog and tell me I have too much time on my hands and that pisses me off because I have have to compromise because I don't have time, I only get 20 minutes to draw the sketches, I would like to add detailed pencil shading to my drawings but I don't get the time, I just quickly do a rough pen sketch on an A4 sheet of paper, then I get 5 minutes to scan the sketch and send it to my digital gallery. Then I write the blog while I'm traveling to work and I have to look away every 10 minutes to stop me from getting motion sickness. By the time I'm nearly at work I am rushing and sometimes grammar  errors slip through, sometimes I leave them there so people will know this was written by a human being. 

The second thought I had is people should have the freedom to chose their diet, some people don't want to eat meat from an animal that slowly bleeds to death, I'm vegetarian, I don't even eat meat. If they don't like the way his food is prepared, they can eat elsewhere.  The police used a quick fix, they arrested the restaurant owner to calm them down. I don't know if the Sargent was sympathetic to the mob or they were under staffed and pressured to make a bad decision. The mob is wrong so they should be arrested for causing a public disturbance and damage to property, not the restaurant owner that is trying to defend his business and family. 

There are even silly fools calling Harman Kapoor "Far right", a title used for Natzis that tried to exterminate minority groups. If he wants to serve meat that is non halal, that's his choice and he has a right to that choice. If you don't like his restaurant, eat elsewhere and leave him alone. And let the police do the hard decision and arrest the mob. The problem is the intolerant mob with too much time on their hands. Stop being layabouts and do some work.

Ancient Chain Reaction

I was wondering if it were possible that actions taken by creatures that lived millions of years ago is affecting events that are happening today. I can give you an example. 

A dinosaur living 75 million years ago sees a dismembered leg on the floor and it smells a bit off but the dinosaur is hungry so it eats the leg. The next day the dinosaur feels sick and weakened and that caused a hunt to fail. A herbivore dinosaur that was earmarked to be eaten survives and it lays 5 eggs, 3 of them hatch and survive for more than 12 years. One of the juvenile dinosaurs dislodges a boulder and it rolls down a hill and a stone breaks off the boulder, it is then  buried under sediment. 

75 million years later. 

The dislodged stone is exposed  by erosion and a passer by thinks it looks like pastie, he later names his new dog Pastie because the name got stuck in his head. Someone hears the man calling his dog pastie and that inspires him to open a bakery. Then later the bakery is bought by another person and he turns it into a pub. He called and pub a "The  bakery". Friendships are formed and relationships started and even fueds start off under the roof of the pub. 

All of those events that happened in this scenario hinged on the dinosaur getting sick. If the dinosaur decided not to eat the festering leg, it would have full strength the next day and eat the herbivore. The juvenile dinosaurs would never be born because their mother was eaten before she could lay eggs, the juvenile dinosaurs were never born so one of them didn't dislodge the boulder and the stones were never exposed to human eyes. The pedestrian doesn't name his new dog pastie because he doesn't see a stone that looks like a pastie. The neighbour of the pedestrian doesn't decide to open a bakery because  he isn't triggerged by hearing the pet name. The site where the pub is, is just a house and all the events that would happen in the pub, all the friendships and relationships  never happened because the pub isn't there, it is just a normal home standing in its place. 

The event that are triggered by the pub never happened because the pub isn't there. It isn't there because of a decision made by a dinosaur 75 million years ago. 

I wonder if the whole world works like that, someone reading this blog article now does something different because of the blog and the chain reaction lasts for eternity forever changing events around the whole world. 

Careful Flower

One of the most beautiful sights in my world is seeing the Daisy flowers emerge. There is more to them than what meets the eye. They are a welcome sight at the start of spring. The plant that sends out the flower is being careful, it is trying to make the flowers visible to the insects but only just enough because the weather in spring is unpredictable so the plant may need to send more than one flower. If the grass is long, the stem of the flower is long, if the grass is short, the stem is short. It doesn't want to stick out too much because it may be eaten, so it has to be perfectly balanced, not too visible but enough to get the bees attention. They are little worlds, little living islands; they have a yellow forest of micro flowers in the middle of the pod. Tiny creatures may spend their whole life living on the flower, little mites and microscopic beings.  I don't touch them, I just stop to look at them. The white petals of the flower are like a tiny paper valley, bright and carefully balanced. 

I will never get tired of drawing them. They were around before I was here and they will continue to emerge from the grass after my time is up in this world. Their purpose is always the same, gather pollen from insects to make seeds of a plant that is good at staying alive. 

Our lives change every year but they stay the same, a familiar sight, the longer you look at them them the calmer a person could feel. The strong early spring flower, the daisy. The careful one. 

Scratch Card Syndicate

If I ran a work place syndicate, I would run a scratch card one. I would set up a post box with a lock on it, people would buy a scratch card and put it in an envelope with their name on it. Every week the post box would be opened and the scratch cards would be checked. 

My model would work best because you wouldn't need to play every week. Only when you feel like it but the winnings would be divided up by all the people named on the submitted scratch cards for that week. No chasing payments, no complications. 

If the winnings are low then more scratch cards can be purchased and submitted for the following week. You could set a threshold, if the winnings are less then £50, then use them to buy more scratch cards for the next week. 

Betelgeuse Detonation

 The giant Star Betelgeuse  is at the end of its life and is about to detonate into a supernova?  I was wondering what would happen to the companion star when it does. They recently discovered there is a smaller star about the size of the sun orbiting it. I wonder if the debris from the star detonation would add to the mass of the companion star. I also wonder if it could go from being a red dwarf star to being an orange or yellow dwarf one. Do companion stars do that when they're near a supernova? It's also possible that Betelgeuse has already detonated but the light hasn't reached earth yet. 

On the NASA Website, they mentioned that the Japanese space agency were using the international Space station to launch a satellite, it will last for 4 months and then burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. They left hollow spaces inside the satellite to add trash to the satellite so when it burns up, it burns up the rubbish from the space station, empty food containers and things like that. The same bay was also used to bring supplies. They said they used a robot arm called the Canada arm to launch the satellite. 

Chain Reaction

Everything in this world is a very very long chain reaction. The term people often coin is the word butterfly  effect, the theory that something as small as flap of butterflies wings could trigger a hurricane elsewhere. 

An example I would give is you read a book and it talks about a place that is nice to go on holiday. You got the book from a charity shop because a coloured glass was placed in the window and it caught your attention, you decide to get the mystery book instead of the glass. 

You go on holiday to the place mentioned in the book and you see a bakery that sells quiche as an extra line and think it is a good idea and that causes you to set up your own bakery. Then two customers meet in your bakery and they start a relationship and have a family and children. 

The question would be, if the charity shop keeper decided not to put the coloured glass in the shop window, would all the other events not happen, do they hinge on that one event?