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Weather: Palm Coast and Flagler County are under a tornado watch until 3 p.m. today. Showers and thunderstorms likely before 3pm, then showers and possibly a thunderstorm between 3pm and 5pm, then showers and thunderstorms likely after 5pm. Some storms could be severe, with damaging winds and heavy rain. High near 79. Windy, with a south wind 17 to 23 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible. Tonight: a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly before 7pm. Some of the storms could be severe. Partly cloudy, with a low around 59. Southwest wind 11 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 21 mph. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
In Court: The trial of Marcus Avery Chamblin enters its third day at 9 a.m. in Circuit Judge Terence Perkins’s courtroom, Room 401 at the Flagler County courthouse. Chamblin, 29, is one of two co-defendants facing first degree murder and attempted second degree murder charges in the 2019 shooting death of of Deon O’Neil Jenkins and the wounding of another man, S.T., as they sat in a car at the Circle K on Palm Coast Parkway early the morning of Oct. 12, 2019. Chamblin’s co-defendant, Derrius Bauer, is to be tried in September. See:
- Firearms, Circumstantial Evidence and ‘Eclipse Time’ Punctuate Jury Selection in Circle K Murder Trial
- Marcus Chamblin’s Defense Loses Almost All Key Motions It Sought Ahead of Circle K Murder Trial
- Circle K Murder Trial of Marcus Chamblin Is Set for April 8, With Co-Conspirator’s Trial Soon to Follow
- 2 Arrested in ‘Targeted’ Circle K Murder in 2019 Following Extensive Investigation of 15 Months
- Search Warrant in Palm Coast’s B-Section Suggests Target In Sight in Circle K Murder Investigation
- 2 People Shot in a Car on Palm Coast Parkway, 1 Killed, 1 Wounded, Assailant at Large
Drug Court convenes before County Court Judge Andrea Totten at 10 a.m. at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 South 2nd Street in Flagler Beach. Watch the meeting at the city’s YouTube channel here. Access meeting agenda and materials here. See a list of commission members and their email addresses here.
2024 MedNexus Innovation Challenge, 5 to 7 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE. The University of North Florida, in partnership with the City of Palm Coast and Flagler Schools, is hosting the 2022 MedNexus Innovation Challenge. The pitch competition is open to the public.
Evenings at Whitney Lecture Series hosted by the University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience at 6 p.m. Tonight: “Sea Turtle And Marine Mammal Health Assessments: Insights Into Marine Ecosystem Health,” presented by Annie Page. The talk will cover health assessments of wild sea turtles, dolphins, and whales, and will include examples of current and recently completed research projects from our Marine Wildlife Veterinary Medicine & Research Program at FAU Harbor Branch. Dr. Annie Page is an Associate Research Professor & Clinical Veterinarian at Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. She also serves as the Harbor Branch Associate Director of Education and is Co-Director of the Marine Science & Oceanography Master’s Program. This free lecture will be presented in person at the UF Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium, 9505 Ocean Shore Boulevard, in St. Augustine. Those interested also have the option of registering to watch via Zoom live the night of the lecture. Go here to register for this month’s lecture.
The Palm Coast Democratic Club holds its monthly meeting at noon at the Palm Coast Hotel and Suites, 120 Garden Street North in Palm Coast. (Note the recent change of venue.) The “Gathering,” as the club prefers to call it, is open to all like-minded people, so please join in. If you like what you hear, become a dues paying member. The gathering begins with a brief business meeting, followed by a discussion or a guest speaker. For further information, please contact Palm Coast Democratic Club’s President Donna Harkins at (561) 235-2065, visit our website at http://palmcoastdemocraticclub.org/ or Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/palmcoastdemclub/permalink
 Keep Their Lights On Over the Holidays: Flagler Cares, the social service non-profit celebrating its 10th anniversary, is marking the occasion with a fund-raiser to "Keep the Holiday Lights On" by encouraging people to sponsor one or more struggling household's electric bill for a month over the Christmas season. Each sponsorship amounts to $100 donation, with every cent going toward payment of a local power bill. See the donation page here. Every time another household is sponsored, a light goes on on top of a house at Flagler Cares' fundraising page. The goal of the fun-raiser, which Flagler Cares would happily exceed, is to support at least 100 families (10 households for each of the 10 years that Flagler Cares has been in existence). Flagler Cares will start taking applications for the utility fund later this month. Because of its existing programs, the organization already has procedures in place to vet people for this type of assistance, ensuring that only the needy qualify. |
Afterlives, I: The opening page of the always lovely historian Henrik van Loon’s 1921 Story of Mankind, with his own just as lovely illustrations, imagines a bird sharpening its beak on massive monolith once every thousand years. “When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by,” van Loon writes. Eternity is a dangerous concept–dangerous to think about, because the more you think about it, the deeper the abyss you’re staring into, maybe even–for some of us, though I’m not sure I’d include myself just yet–the more seductive the abyss becomes, if only to get it over with. At the heart of all eternities’ paradox is the one Augustine’s dour and dismal Catholicism has never resolved: if it’s so horrible to be a human being, as Augustine believed, and it’s so wonderful to be in paradise, as Augustine believed, then why aren’t we all following Jim Jones in our own little Guyanas? Why bother with this purgatory? Archimedes–he of eureka moments–is said to have estimated the number of grains of sand it would take to fill the universe, at least the universe as it was known in his day, which was something like the distance between two houses in the P Section compared to what we know it to be today–on that scale, it would be closer to the size of the planet, though I suspect even now we are undercounting by the size of a few eternal universes. At any rate, he put the number of necessary sand grains at what today would be termed 10 to the power 63. Going from that principle, I try to imagine the entire known universe going back to its original recesses those 13 or 14 billion years ago. I fill it all with sand. Then I count: one grain of sand every billion centuries, and apply the van Loon principle: each grain of sand would be one day of eternity. Poetic? Esoteric? Or just awful, or awfully irrelevant? What, about eternity, can possibly be so attractive, even if it were–especially if it were–a paradise of sorts? What is this “rage to want to prove, this arrogance to want to measure the infinite and make it tangible,” as Flaubert put it (“… la rage de vouloir prouver, l’orgueil de vouloir mesurer l’infini et d’en donner une solution”). Who would want it even even a fraction of a grain of sand? Who could stand it? Who wouldn’t ant to rebel? As I let my treacherous mind wander down these paths I find myself sympathizing with the fallen angels, as if Satan was onto something: paradise was unbearable. Satan had to make it interesting, and did so. Isn’t that what we do here and now, on a daily basis? Sabotage ourselves, fuck up our lives, our family members’ lives, our jobs, our fortunes, just to make it interesting? If there is an eternity, it would, for sanity’s sake, have to be disinvented.
—P.T.
@jeschneiderx Bertrand Russell 1959 Interview – There Is No Afterlife #bertrandrussell #afterlife #death #lifeafterdeath #god #faith #heaven #hell #religion #christian #atheist #christianity #atheism #atheisttiktok #christiantiktok #allah #islam
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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.
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
There is nothing stranger in the history of religion than the sight of Buddha founding a worldwide religion, and yet refusing to be drawn into any discussion about eternity, immortality, or God.
–From Will Durant’s Our Oriental Heritage (1935).
Pogo says
@Eternity explained
Ray W. says
Hello Pogo.
Mr. Tristam ventures into the damning ambiguities of philosophy and you have to hurl art into the mix.
Thanks to you both.
Ray W. says
Eternity, infinite, perpetuity, epiphany, aeon, paradise, purgatory, abyss; each depicts the frailties, the limitations, the boundaries of the capacity of the human mind to understand the world around us. Does a child understand color until it learns a word for a color? Is grass green before one understands the meaning of green in all its variations?
I have openly conceded my belief that I lack the capacity to make sense of a $27 trillion GDP. Perhaps someone else can, but I have never met any such person or even read of such a person’s existence. The sum is simply too vast to be comprehended in its plethora of iterations. Yet, we all must try to comprehend such a sum to make a semblance of sense of our economic world.
We employ statistical models to filter the vast data derived from a $27 trillion national economy. We accept new and better models until even newer and better statistical models until new and better statistical models come along. But a statistical model gives only a glimpse of the truth, a vignette, a window into a truth. Since that glimpse is better than the anecdotal stories on which we so often build our prejudices, the statistical models often turn out to be our best explanatory tools, but which ones to use when we cannot comprehend the enormity of the task?
Do we use monthly calculations of inflationary pressures on a national economy? If the Fed relies on annualized rolling averages of monthly calculations of inflation rates, but only that derived from the use of core CPI, as opposed to the use of the more volatile non-core CPI, should we do the same? Should we rely on anecdotal inflation stories based on regional economic conditions? How about county-wide economic conditions as a guide to understand a national economy? In the last two months, many hundreds of homes have been approved for future construction in Flagler County! Does that mean the national building industry is sound? Should we go into Publix and conclude that inflation is exponentially rising because beef prices are up arithmetically, due to drought? Each statistical measure gives a different perspective! What of the jobs created data? The rise and fall of the stock market? The continued unexpected strong growth of national GDP? That national hourly wages (annualized rate of 4.1%) are rising faster than inflation (annualized rate of 3.5%)? That the dollar as a commodity is stronger against almost every other national economy? That the national unemployment rate has been below 4% for a very long time? What does “strong” mean anyway if a too strong jobs market puts pressures on inflation, according to the Fed? Will the Fed postpone reductions in lending rates until the jobs market weakens?
There are so many statistical tools, so many models! Anyone can pick and choose from the accumulation and still be wrong about an understanding of a $27 trillion national GDP. Does the fact that currency traders all around the world spend accumulated billions to develop modeling tools that allow one or the other to most quickly assess the smallest of changes in currency rates mean that they understand the international currency marketplace? If they make millions in a day for their employer, does that prove they understand the marketplace or that they understand the model? I learned as a teenager that a failing voltage regulator would change the amount of light produced by a headlight. That a gas gauge would give a false reading if voltage rose. That gauges do not always accurately tell you how much air is in a tire. Voltages must be checked. Gauges must be calibrated.
Socrates, in his The Cave, posited that all people are born shackled to a post. A fire casts light from behind the posts, so that people only see the flickering reflections of light on the wall in front of them. Were a person to break free from the post and wander upwards away from the reflective lights towards the mouth of the cave, towards the natural light, he or she might come to understand truth. To Socrates, the only way to know truth was to become educated in philosophy. If one ever came to see the light, to see the truth, and he or she were to return to the cave to tell the others still chained to the posts, they would not understand, because they had never seen the light, only reflections of light.
To our founding fathers, many of whom being educated in the Scottish Enlightenment method, understood that only by the exercise of reason could they ever see the light, see the truth. In academia, their time is known as the Age of Reason. To our founding fathers, the pestilential partisan member of faction was incapable of exercising reason as they understood it. The pestilential partisan member of faction remained chained to the post, seeing only the flickering reflective shadows from the artificial firelight cast on the walls in front of them.
Pogo says
@P.T., Ray W
Thank you both.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… History repeating?
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
– Confucius
More recently:
Life’s Tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.
– Benjamin Franklin