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Weather: Mostly sunny. Highs in the mid 80s. North winds 5 to 10 mph, becoming northeast in the afternoon. Sunday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows in the upper 60s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here. See the drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?). Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here. Check tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here. –>
Today at a Glance:
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email [email protected]
SHINE Mindfulness for Kids Group, 10 a.m., Intuitive Learning Institute, 2 Jungle Hut Road, Suite 1, $15. The program allows kids to have fun while learning mindfulness and positive mindset skills. Designed for elementary school/VPK ages, this group offers a fun and engaging way to develop mindfulness and positive mindset skills through play, movement, and art-type activities. The activities will help kids learn calming strategies, cultivate self-awareness and focus, feel more grounded, and build belief in themselves. Our focus is on nurturing mental health and overall well-being. The skills acquired in this program are not only beneficial for your child but can also strengthen family bonds, improve social skills, and enhance communication within your household. Program Details: Flexible attendance options Continuous enrollment Cost: $100 for an 8-week program or $15 per drop-in class Register online at ShineforKids.org or in person Please note that space is limited, so contact us via text, call, or email to check availability.
‘First Date,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. 7:30 p.m., except on Sundays, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $32.50, including fees. Book tickets here. The 2012 musical takes the audience through the first meeting of Casey and Aaron, two 30-ish New York City singles set up by friends and family. The two have nothing in common: Aaron is a conservative banker, Jewish, and looking for a meaningful relationship, while Casey is an artist and a little too funky for Wall Street. With the influences of their friends and family (played out in their imaginations) as well as the effects of social media (Google, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube personified), this first date seems to be doomed. But with the help of a meddling but well-meaning waiter, Casey and Aaron might make a connection after all. With a contemporary rock score, FIRST DATE gleefully pokes fun at the mishaps and mistakes of blind dates and gives hope that there could be that one perfect moment.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from noon to 3 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Al-Anon Family Groups: Help and hope for families and friends of alcoholics. Meetings are every Sunday at Silver Dollar II Club, Suite 707, 2729 E Moody Blvd., Bunnell, and on zoom. More local meetings available and online too. Call 904-315-0233 or see the list of Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County meetings here.
 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 quality. |
Notably: Clay Jones, our fabulous cartoonist, ridicules Netanyahu’s banning of al-Jazeera in Israel, that increasingly incomprehensible nation (as may be said of the United States since Reagan), but it’s an old habit. George W. Bush had wanted to bomb al-Jazeera too, during the early days of th Iraq war, as was revealed by a memo in 2005, though he’d successfully done so in April 2003, when a missile struck an al-Jazeera office’s generator, starting a fire and killing one of the media company’s employees. Reporters Without Borders back then: “Reporters Without Borders expressed outrage at today’s US bombing of the Baghdad office of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera that killed one of its journalists, cameraman Tarek Ayoub, and wounded another. The nearby premises of Abu Dhabi TV were also damaged.” That was the least of it: “The station said its office in Basra was directly shelled on 2 April. Four members of the Al-Jazeera crew in Basra, the only journalists inside the city, came under gunfire from British tanks on 29 March as they were filming distribution of food by Iraqi government officials. One of the station’s cameramen, Akil Abdel Reda, went missing and was later found to have been held for 12 hours by US troops. The Al-Jazeera offices in Kabul were bombed by US forces during the war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in November 2001.” But you don’t have to go that far: Anthony Blinken, Biden’s Secretary of State, wants al-Jazeera censored, too. From the Carnegie Endowment: “The United States, in particular, has discarded not only the sanctity of international law, but also freedom of the press: during his visit to Doha on October 13, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly asked Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani to “turn down the volume” of Al Jazeera’s Gaza coverage. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, support among Western nations for Israel’s military assault has been nearly limitless. Just as shocking has been the neglect of their own supposedly sacred values, when leaders believe that they do not advance their own interests. The United States, in particular, has discarded not only the sanctity of international law, but also freedom of the press: during his visit to Doha on October 13, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly asked Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani to “turn down the volume” of Al Jazeera’s Gaza coverage. This blatant U.S. request for censorship is not an individual case when it comes to Al Jazeera and their coverage of the Middle East and wider Muslim world. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the administration of former President George W. Bush allegedly pressured Qatar to “close down, privatize, or censor” the channel. Bush’s Secretary of State Colin Powell lodged an official complaint about Al Jazeera’s war coverage with Qatar’s foreign minister, Hamad bin Jassim. Similarly, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sparked controversy when he accused Al Jazeera in July 2003 of biased news coverage that incited violence against American troops. The channel’s Baghdad bureau chief responded to Wolfowitz by noting that they had “been subject to strafing by gunfire, death threats, confiscation of news material, and multiple detentions and arrests, all carried out by US soldiers.” […] While the Biden administration has not used military force against the channel, they have turned a blind eye to Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera journalists and their families. On October 25, Al Jazeera Correspondent Wael Al-Dahdouh lost most of his immediate family in an Israeli airstrike. Al-Dahdouh was then injured less than two months later by a drone strike in Khan Younis, which killed his colleague, cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa. After both incidents, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby denied that there was any evidence that Israel had deliberately targeted journalists. When Al-Dahdouh’s son Hamza was killed by an Israeli strike on January 7, Blinken offered his condolences but refrained from condemning the attack.”
—P.T.
What are the implications of Israel’s ban on Al Jazeera? https://t.co/C6CF2EgEF7 via @AJEnglish
— FlaglerLive.com (@FlaglerLive) May 9, 2024
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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.
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
Jake’s Women, By Neil Simon, at City Rep Theatre
East Flagler Mosquito Control District Board Meeting
Flagler County Commission Evening Meeting
Nar-Anon Family Group
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
County Commission Swearing-In
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Flagler County School Board Meeting
Fall Horticultural Workshops
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
For the full calendar, go here.
Though international media workers rushed to Israel (it has granted accreditation to at least 2,800 correspondents since the war started), none have been allowed into Gaza except on a handful of tightly controlled tours led by the Israeli military. As a result, for the past six months, the world has been almost entirely reliant on the reporting of local Palestinian journalists for on-site information about the impact of the war — along with mostly unverified social media posts that have flooded the information space since its start. The refusal to allow international media to cover Gaza from the inside is just one element of a growing censorship regime that leaves a vacuum for propaganda, mis- and disinformation, and claims and counterclaims that are extraordinarily difficult to verify independently. A CNN report on the so-called Flour Massacre — the deadly aid delivery that the Gazan Health Ministry said killed 100 people and injured 700 — for example, cast doubt on Israel’s version of events. But it took more than a month to piece together that evidence from eyewitness testimonies and after scouring dozens of videos. […] Free access could enable us to better understand whether Israel has deliberately fired on children, which it denies, and the extent of the famine that aid agencies report is spreading through northern Gaza. It would shed light on the killings of at least 95 journalists and other media workers that my organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists, has documented since the start of the war — the most dangerous conflict for reporters and media workers since we began keeping records in 1992. Israel champions itself as a democracy and a bastion of press freedom in the region. Its actions tell a very different story. The high rate of journalists’ deaths and arrests, including a slew in the West Bank; laws allowing its government to shut down foreign news outlets deemed a security risk, which the prime minister has explicitly threatened to use against Al Jazeera; and its refusal to permit foreign journalists independent access to Gaza all speak to a leadership that is deliberately restricting press freedom. That is the hallmark of a dictatorship, not a democracy.
–From Jodie Ginsberg’s “The Israeli Censorship Regime Is Growing,” New York Times, April 17, 2024.
Ray W. says
Here is another random Daily Briefing, to borrow the phrase from Mr. Tristam.
The L. A. Times recently centered an article on carbon dioxide emissions deriving from the most commonly used concrete manufacturing process.
Per the article, concrete formation from mixing several materials in a kiln emits 8% of the world’s carbon dioxide via two processes. Limestone is one of the materials in most types of concrete; it contains within its chemical structure oxygen. During today’s ordinary method of manufacturing concrete fossil fuels are burned to heat ingredients in the kiln, releasing carbon dioxide. The heating process also releases the oxygen from the limestone as its chemical bonds between molecules break down into more usable forms. Some of that oxygen emits in the form of carbon dioxide.
The two proposed solutions to the concrete pollution scenario, according to the author of the article? Use electricity derived from clean energy sources to heat the kiln. Use carbon-free calcium silicate rock instead of limestone to make concrete.
From a different perspective, after concrete is poured and hardens, it apparently absorbs carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
I am reminded of an article that I read during my youth.
Manufacturers place catalytic converters close to internal combustion engine exhaust ports because the catalyzing process that converts partially burned hydrocarbons (carbon monoxide) and unburned hydrocarbons (evaporated gasoline) into carbon dioxide and water works better as the catalyzer heats up. Optimum temperatures range upwards of 750 degrees. But that doesn’t mean the catalyzing process doesn’t occur at lesser temperatures.
According to that old article, a radiator using a palladium/platinum coating on its cooling fins heated to a normal engine operating temperature (around 200 degrees) will also remove unburned hydrocarbons and partially burned hydrocarbons from air flowing through the radiator. Diesel engines run hotter than gas engines and require larger radiators to deal with extra engine heat. If all diesel engines were cooled by catalyzing radiators, truckers would be constantly removing carbon monoxide and volatile hydrocarbons from our air as they deliver goods. Automobiles would also be a possible use for catalyzing radiators, but less efficiently so than trucks.
Since I don’t know the true cost of using carbon-free concrete or adapting radiators into catalyzers, I don’t advocate for or against either scenario. Neither article I read spoke to the actual cost of the changes. But if it is economically feasible to make the changes, then I think we should consider both options in our efforts to reduce harmful chemicals from the air we breathe for a multitude of reasons.
James says
https://ccretetech.com/news/c-crete-technologies-awarded-2-million-by-the-us-department-of-energy-to-supercharge-its-cement-free-carbon-negative-concrete-product/
James says
And also (while I’m at it here)…
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2024/may/09/unlv-team-sets-out-to-find-a-low-emission-way-to-p/
Pogo says
@Welcome to nowhere
And nothing.