Brwhat?

Apparently, people in the UK are tired of being in the EU. Stock markets are in a panic. Oh, noes! This leaves me wondering whether the EU will survive. If Britain's gone, who's next? I saw some talk a while back about kicking Greece out.

I'm also wondering if this wasn't all staged ahead of time. The U.S. congress votes on many bills. They never take a vote without knowing how everyone is going to vote. There's at least one person in each party who polls every member of congress in advance to see how the vote will go. If there aren't enough votes, that's when the dirty, backroom deals get made.
Sometimes a reporter will ask a congressman why a particular bill didn't come up for a vote, because the American people deserved to at least get it voted on. The answer is generally something like "it didn't have enough votes to pass". It's all known ahead of time.

Politicians poll the populace to find out how elections will turn out. This tells them where and to whom to campaign. Was there a decision among the global leadership that the EU is going to fail and something new is needed? It's an interesting question. I wouldn't be surprised by that. It's been having problems for a while. Perhaps, this is a "European Spring".

Here's an excerpt from my upcoming YA book:

     Following the dissolution of the European Union after the Great Collapse, most of the southern countries in the old EU had merged into the Mediterranean Union, a region covering roughly the same territory as the ancient Roman Empire. The newly created Eastern European Union had absorbed Germany and nations north and east of it, including northern France. The whole thing had formed along economic lines with weird anomalies like Scotland and Ireland being in the EEU while England and Wales joined the MU.

      Keelia only paid attention to it in school because Bible prophecy teachers following twentieth century traditions had unanimously been caught off guard at the implosion of their prophetic interpretations. The EU was supposed to be the kingdom of the anti-Christ, and now there was no EU. Bible prophecy had been discredited in the world's eyes.

The Great Collapse is fiction for the story, and the names of the unions can be anything. This passage might need some tweaking before the final draft, but the basic information is there. It's futuristic background filler for most readers. Only Bible prophecy students will pay attention to it. I based this on the idea that for decades prophecy "experts" have been telling everyone that the EU is a fulfillment of a prophecy that the Roman Empire will rise again. This is the EU. And this is the Roman Empire. Obviously, these don't match. There's a lot of overlap, of course.

The Mediterranean Union is closer to covering the territory of the old Roman Empire. Actually, the map has changed a lot since the last time I looked at it. It didn't used to have the northernmost countries on it. It was mostly centered on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea much like the old Roman Empire.

The Anti-Christ will have a kingdom. Revelation 16:10 And the fifth angel poured our his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, It would make sense for it to cover the territory of the old Roman Empire. What we're seeing with this Brexit vote, as with the Arab Spring, might be that kingdom falling further into place. A lot of that territory is Islamic. Europe is begin Islamicized. Daesh has declared a caliphate. We might be seeing a caliphate coalescing around the Mediterranean whether Daesh survives or not. It would need a political leadership and not just a trade alliance.

Prophetically, I thought the Brexit vote was interesting enough to share, although I wish the YA book had come out before that so I could look like a prophetic genius. ;) The Bible predicts ten kingdoms that will arise and rule the world. We're seeing it falling into place. The global government has been creating unions to rule the planet. North American Union, South American Union, European Union, ASEAN, African Union, etc. Based on that, Britain will not be allowed to stay outside a union. If the Brexit really goes through, they will be forced to join something. The closest union to them that's not the EU is the Mediterranean Union. It'll be interesting to see what happens with that and how political leadership changes.

Looking at a Tree Again

The morning of my uncle's funeral my mom hurt her back while getting ready to go. I had to help her with that situation. Neither of us made it. I was disappointed but not devastated. It was too early in the morning and too long a drive anyway. It would have been a hardship. We're planning to visit the grave one day

I have some Christian books I read when I have a few minutes. One of them is this one that I got for free. I started it a while back and read a few pages at a time, when I'm waiting for my cat to come back inside. It has a lot of stuff about the Greek gods and such. I've never been into Greek literature. I figured out in elementary school that the stories were all the same with no satisfying endings. That's when they lost me forever. At one point the book mentions one of the Vanderbilts. That got me curious. In my family tree I have a Phebe Vanderbilt(1731-1793) daughter of Jacob Vandr Bilt(1692-1760) and Neeltje Denyse(1689-1770). Phebe married Christopher Garrison(1729-1810), and they had a bunch of kids with Bible names such as David, Ephiram, Adonija, Sarah, John, Ebeneser, Thomas, Darius, Elezabeth, Eleanor, Mary, Hanna and Jedediah. It turns out the Vanderbilt in the book is a descendant of Jacob, too. That was neat. It also turns out they're the rich and famous Vanderbilts. Ah. That's fun.

This was all before the Vanderbilts became rich and famous. It's suspected the Garrisons are from the Netherlands, but they might be from France or possibly from England before moving to France to avoid persecution. It depends on which family tree you look at. There are several ministers in the Garrison line, the opposite of the Vanderbilt in the book. No wonder they lost touch over the centuries.

What does this have to do with anything? I don't know. It's fun to play around with. If you haven't looked at your family tree, check it out. You'll find all kinds of neat little things. I have this one line that goes back to France to Judhael Berenger(891-930). They eventually became the Green family, and one of the Greens married into the Hatcher family, etc., and then here I am.

So anyway, around election time the press will dig into family trees and "discover" how the presidents are pretty much all related to each other in some way. This is how it happens. If they married early enough in American history, the connections are there to find. It's not a big deal. It just makes for a good news story.

One of my grandmothers was a Dodson. The Dodsons go back to John Dods(1599-?). He was one of the survivors of Jamestown. He wasn't rich or famous, so he's never mentioned on TV, when they talk about it. A lot of them died that fateful winter of 1609-1610. Some survived by cannibalism. I feel very, very, very strongly that John Dods was undergoing a process of finding himself at that time. Perhaps, he was questioning what he really believed. 1609 was very, very, very likely the year he decided to experiment with vegetarianism. He very, very, very probably didn't eat meat that whole winter. I suspect he only began eating meat again late in the summer of 1610. When archaeologists find human bones in Jamestown with human teeth marks on them, I'm very, very, very sure they don't match John's.

Another Funeral Tomorrow

By last Saturday evening no one had called me to tell me about my  first cousin's funeral arrangements. I started wondering if I'd missed it and searched online to find out it was Sunday. Remember how in some posts I mention it feels like no one really cares? This was one of those times. I was able to go anyway.

Something good happened on the trip. I was at a convenience store and found something I thought was no longer made, a Skor bar. I haven't seen one of those in years. I bought one. It had too many calories and salt to eat at once, so I enjoyed it over a few days.

After the funeral I went to the street my grandmother used to live on. She died in 1982. I think that was the last time I went to her house. It's long gone. The street's almost completely different. It's paved now.
I went past the house one of my uncles used to live in, which was across the street from where the first cousin we buried lived in the early 80s. Where the cousin lived is long gone. I wouldn't have recognized the uncle's house. The yard looked so much smaller than it did when I was little. It was so big back then.
They all lived in a small town. Some of it's the same. Some has changed with the times. I could feel the weight of years.

There's good news about the first cousin on my mom's side of the family. The cancer is treatable but not curable, since it's in her bones. It can be beaten down with chemotherapy and will require maintenance treatments periodically, I think every two years.

I was telling someone this week that after the funeral trip my long drives are over for the month. I was wrong. One of my uncles on my mom's side passed away yesterday. His funeral is tomorrow. It's an even longer drive than the one last Sunday. I hadn't even washed the clothes from the last funeral, when I found out he wasn't expected to live out the week. I was able to get them cleaned before he left us.

I did some more work on the "studio". It wasn't much, just more cleaning in that room, which is pretty clean by now but has a few things left to do.
I didn't get a lot done on the book this week.

Mars Speculation

My first cousin passed away yesterday morning. One wrong nurse at the wrong place at the wrong time really can make a difference in people's lives. I'm still waiting to hear about funeral arrangements.
There's nothing new about the other first cousin with cancer.

Space
An interesting article appeared this week. SpaceX wants to launch people to Mars in 2024. They've already announced an unmanned launch to Mars in 2018. Starting then, they want to launch a rocket there every 26 months. It's also been announced that Elon Musk is going to be sharing SpaceX's Mars colonization plan at the end of September at the International Astronautics Congress.

It may sound ambitious, but they've recovered four rockets already. That's the main cost of a launch. The fuel for a Falcon 9 is about $200,000(€176,312.43) a launch. Prepping a recovered rocket costs single digit millions of dollars last time I saw a quote. Considering their increasing launch rate(increased profitability), sending used rockets into space will be very cheap for them, basically free. Getting to Mars is trickier than launching, of course.

I was texting to someone about this, when I had what may be an epiphany. SpaceX does a lot of testing. Going to Mars is risky. They'll need to do a test run to show it can be done. They can simulate landings on earth. They can test spacecraft under water. What would be a real technology demonstration? Sending a team of astronauts to the moon and back. SpaceX could do that fairly easily and cheaply.

If I'm right, a manned trip or trips to the moon will be one of the announcements in September. They can learn things with boots on the ground they can't with unmanned capsules. If I'm wrong, they must consider the unmanned flights in 2018, 2020 and 2022 to be the only demonstration tests they need.

The really sad part of all this is that, in my opinion, all of 2024 is during the Tribulation.

Book Stuff
The software I needed for the YouTube series I wanted to start after the 21st has been delayed seven week until August 9th. I was wondering how I'd be able to maintain progress on Book 2 if I had to do more prep work for the series. I guess I don't need to worry about that any more.

I've seen less Book 2 progress this week than I wanted. Part of it was the stuff with my cousin. Part of it was an infection I've been fighting. It's really drained my energy, though I'm feeling better.
YouTube videos have been delayed, too. Imagine waking up after a full night's sleep and feeling dead tired.