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Weather: Showers with a chance of thunderstorms. Windy with highs in the upper 70s. Chance of rain 80 percent. Tuesday Night: Mostly cloudy in the evening, then clearing. Showers likely with a slight chance of thunderstorms. Windy, cooler with lows around 50. Chance of rain 70 percent. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
Qualifying period for Flagler Beach and Bunnell municipal elections: The qualifying period for both municipal elections, to be held on March 19, is this week, from Monday, Jan. 8 at 9 a.m. to Friday, Jan. 12 at 5 p.m. in Flagler Beach, noon in Bunnell. In Flagler Beach, the mayor’s seat and one commission seat, that of Eric Cooley, are up. One candidate has filed so far for the mayor’s seat (Patricia Louise King), two have filed for the commission seat (Robert Cunningham and Doug Bruno O’Connor).
The Palm Coast City Council meets in workshop at 9 a.m. at City Hall. The council will hear the Florida Department of Transportation’s five-year work plan in so far as it relates to Palm Coast. It will discuss a concession lease agreement with Redefined Food Co., the company that will provide food and drinks at the new Southern Recreation Center and tennic courts off Belle Terre Parkway. It will discuss yet again some safety proposals for Florida Park Drive. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here. The full agenda is available here.
The Community Traffic Safety Team led by Flagler County Commissioner Andy Dance meets at 9 a.m. in the third-floor commission conference room at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. You may also join by zoom. Meeting ID: 823 5444 1058, Passcode: 565882
The Flagler County School Board meets at 3 p.m. in workshop to go over the items on its upcoming school board meeting two weeks hence. The board will discuss the Carver Center agreement with other local government agencies. The agreement was supposed to have been adopted. But the school board asked for a halt as it wanted to re-write portions of the agreement. The board meets in the training room on the third floor of the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Board meeting documents are available here.
The St. Johns River Water Management District Governing Board holds its regular monthly meeting at its Palatka headquarters at 10 a.m.. The public is invited to attend and to offer in-person comment on Board agenda items. A livestream will also be available for members of the public to observe the meeting online. Governing Board Room, 4049 Reid St., Palatka. Click this link to access the streaming broadcast. The live video feed begins approximately five minutes before the scheduled meeting time. Meeting agendas are available online here.
The Flagler County Planning Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. See board documents, including agendas and background materials, here. Watch the meeting or past meetings here.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
In Coming Days:
Saturday, January 13: Keep Palm Coast Clean: It’s a Litter-ALL Effort: You can make a difference and be part of the collective effort to keep our city litter-free. Join the City of Palm Coast for the “Keep Palm Coast Clean” litter pick-up event on Saturday, January13th, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Volunteers will meet at the Public Works Department located at 1 Wellfield Grade, just off US-1. Multiple roadways are designated as focus areas for the event. See the list here. There will be awards. The city will provide: Litter-Ready Gloves, Eco-Friendly Trash Bags, Refreshments to Fuel Your Effort, Safety Measures for a Litter-Free Day. The schedule:
8 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. Briefing & introduction along with location assignments
9 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. On-site cleanup
12 p.m. – Closing Ceremony to Celebrate a Litter-Free Victory
The event is FREE to participate in and we’re actively seeking volunteers, like you, who want to make a difference in our community! Individuals or groups interested in volunteering can send an email to [email protected].
Notably: As racism is race-based prejudice, what then would we call planet-based bigotry? Because I am that bigot: I am bigoted against gas-only giants, like Jupiter. I like my planets, like the ground beneath my feet, like the hardcovers between my hands, like the silken hair of my lovely, to have that certain solidity, the certainty of it being key. But Jupiter, Saturn, and 1,770 more planets of the kind discovered so far, are just gas: “A gas giant,” says promethean NASA, “is a large planet mostly composed of helium and/or hydrogen. These planets, like Jupiter and Saturn in our solar system, don’t have hard surfaces and instead have swirling gases above a solid core. Gas giant exoplanets can be much larger than Jupiter, and much closer to their stars than anything found in our solar system.” OK, there is that solid core, but too far down to matter, to ever be something reachable, touchable, like whatever core there may be at the center of our sun, that other mystery of life-giving nuclear reactions (the ironies never cease: we owe everything we are and everything we will ever be to an endless nuclear holocaust). But really: if you have no surface for us anthropomorphic pricks to walk on, are you really a planet or just a giant space fart? I am not diminishing the wonders of the latest captures from Io, that volcanic beauty of a moon in spacecraft Juno’s latest sort of selfies: at least Io is all solid, lava-spewing, real. It puts Jupiter to shame in solidity. So does Pluto for that matter. Planets must be walkable, like neighborhoods around shopping districts. Otherwise, they’re just space sprawl, taking up space but not being of it. I remain a planetary bigot.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
July 2025
Tourist Development Council Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
One-Stop Help Night on Range of Social, Medical and Legal Services at Flagler Cares
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Palm Coast Concert Series
For the full calendar, go here.
The first direct photographic evidence of a planet circling another star outside Earth’s solar system has been found by a team headquartered at UC Berkeley. The planet is a bloated gas giant half again as big as Jupiter, but with only 63% of Jupiter’s mass, astronomer Geoffrey Marcy and his colleagues revealed Saturday. Marcy, his collaborator Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and other astronomers have previously produced a variety of indirect evidence hinting at the existence of at least 28 other planets circling distant stars. But Saturday’s finding marks the first time a planet itself has actually been photographed. Planets orbiting distant stars are normally too dim to be seen from Earth, even with the finest telescopes. In this case, however, astronomer Greg Henry of Tennessee State University was able to photograph the gas giant passing in front of the star HD 209458, producing an eclipse-like image. The planet is scheduled to pass in front of its star again today and Henry hopes to capture further images of the extraordinary find. “This is the first independent confirmation of a planet,” Marcy said. “And it also gives us the first-ever measure of the size of one of these planets.”
Although most cosmologists are convinced that planetary systems are common throughout the universe, proving it has been difficult. The best evidence to date has been provided by observing “wobbles” in distant stars. Although we generally think of planets as orbiting suns, a planet and a sun actually orbit a common center of mass. Because the sun is so much bigger than the planet, its orbital motion is much smaller. Nonetheless, researchers have now observed many stars whose motion suggests that they are being orbited by a large planet.
–From “First Photo Taken of Planet Outside the Solar System,” by Thomas Maugh II, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 14, 1999.
Bill C says
Netanyhu’s dialog bubble should read “That’s exactly what I was going for”.
ASF says
The people that Little girl should be addressing her painful concerns to are the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and auxillary terrorist proxies like the Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah–as well as the Iranian Mullahs and the Qatari Royal family which support and fund them .
Pierre Tristam says
And Netanyahu who knowingly piped the money their way. Welcome back.