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Weather: Sunny. Highs around 80. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph.
Friday Night: Clear. Lows in the upper 50s.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 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.
Town of Marineland Commission Meeting, 65:30 p.m. for the CRA portion, 6 p .m. for the regular meeting, in the main conference room at the GTMNERR Marineland, 9741 N Oceanshore Boulevard, St. Augustine. See the town’s website here.
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Central Park, from noon to 2 p.m. in Central Park in Town Center, 975 Central Ave. Join Bill Wells, Bob Rupp and other members of the Palm Coast Model Yacht Club, watch them race or join the races with your own model yacht. No dues to join the club, which meets at the pond in Central Park every Thursday.
‘Sense and Sensibility’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, with a Tuesday, April 15 performance at 7:30 p.m. Oh the story of the impoverished Dashwood family! Based on Jane Austen’s novel, this play follows Elinor and Marianne who become destitute upon the death of their father, who leaves his estate to their half-brother, John. Due to his wife’s interference, they must survive on a meager allowance.
Byblos: In an otherwise gripping essay on Emerson that peels off the fluff of admiration that too easily sticks to the Concord philosopher after shallow readings (Emerson’s essays, he writes, “so exciting in their broad attack and pithy sentences, they end, so often, disconcertingly in air, and fail to leave an imprint of their shape in the mind”), John Updike–a Harvard alum, by the way–nears his conclusion by describing a trip he took to a hospital, to him the exemplification of modern-day America. We’re going along, not yet clear as to why Updike chooses to tell the story of this hospital trip in the middle of a meditation on Emerson, but aware that in his sure hands the payoff will be worth it. Until we hit upon-or are struck by–this sentence, here in its full context: “Though it was autumn, the weather in New England was lingeringly warm, so the crowd summoned to the hospital was lightly dressed, in bright colors, in sandals and jogging shorts. Nubile, merciful nurses and brisk, sage physicians moved in angelic white…” It’s the first detail in the essay where men and women are differentiated. He could not help it. He just could not: the difference had to be sexist. The nurses had to be not only nubile–the first cliche, the first reduction to a sexual object–but “merciful.” Sexism and paternalism. The physicians are not only implicitly male, as if the staff of Massachusetts General in October 1983 could not possibly have had female physicians, but those males are, of course, “brisk” (as nubile nurses, too busy langoring about their boobs and hips this way and that) and sage. It’s a throw-away phrase, seven words in a thick paragraph near the end of a muscular essay richer in insights than some of Emerson’s flightier pages. But the inevitable leer of Updike’s imagery, the moment it’s confronted with a scene where men and women mix, couldn’t help cheapen the passage with what, to Updike, must have seemed just another routine, cleverly titillating description. The only color missing was the candy striper’s, though Updike 20 years earlier had filled in those colors with another brief scene inside a hospital, in “The Morning,” a story about a man musing about his mistress, who happened to be a nurse (not, of course, a doctor. A doctor would have been too much competition for Updike): “He loved her in her uniform, and on the occasions when he had ventured into the hospital for a glimpse of her he felt in the corridors of identically uniformed women as if he were raiding a harem, or a cloister of the lascivious nuns who populate French pornography.” Cliches are the last thing we think about when we think about Updike’s style. But the style masks ideas that are nothing if not cliches, just as when his male hero reads Kierkegaard while his wife “tinkled the supper dishes in our tiny kitchen.”
—P.T.
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“Men, they were able to conjure it up immediately, that was one of their powers, that thunderous splashing as they stood lordly above the bowl. Everything about them was more direct, their insides weren’t the maze women’s were, for the pee to find its way through.”
–From John Updike’s Witches of Eastwick (1984).
Ed P says
Good for Harvard. They did it “their” way.
Ever hear that everyone has a price?
Will the 2.2B in public funding be theirs?
Ask yourself this, if Harvard Tuition was around $3000 dollars in 1980, why is it now worth $57,246 today plus another almost $40,000 for housing, books, and meals?
Pogo says
@The speck in others’ eyes
… versus a beam in one’s own:
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=hypersensitive+emotion
And too
https://www.google.com/search?q=emerson+on+opinion
Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.
— David Gerrold
https://www.google.com/search?q=David+Gerrold
Laurel says
Thank you, Harvard, for retaining your spines!
Sherry says
The government should NEVER be “controlling” the curriculum at ANY school, much less universities! Good On You Harvard for not allowing the trump administration to bully you!!! Other schools are banding together to resist the partisan federal government forceful “take over” of what students learn in school. FIGHT FASCISM!!!
Sherry says
Just So Presidential. . . NOT:
Trump on Wednesday railed against Harvard in a lengthy social media post after the university refused to agree to his administration’s demands.
“Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders,’” Trump wrote, adding that “Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds.”
Sherry says
Hey Maga. . . Errr Gestapo. . . Is this really what you are so very proud of :
The abductors wore masks because they do not want their identities known. On Tuesday evening, Rumeysa Ozturk exited her apartment building and walked on to the street in Somerville, Massachusetts – a city outside Boston – into the fading daylight. Ozturk, a Turkish-born PhD student at Tufts University who studies children’s media and childhood development, was on her way to an iftar dinner with friends, planning to break her Ramadan fast.
In a video taken from a surveillance camera, she wears a pink hijab and a long white puffer coat against the New England cold. The first man, not uniformed but wearing plain clothes, as all the agents are, approaches her as if asking for directions. But he quickly closes in and grabs her by the wrists she has raised defensively toward her face.
She screams as another man appears behind her, pulling a badge out from under his shirt and snatching away her phone. Soon six people are around her in a tight circle; she has no way to escape. They handcuff her and hustle her into an unmarked van. Attorneys for Ozturk did not know where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the US homeland security department that has become Trump’s anti-immigrant secret police, had taken the 30-year-old woman for almost 24 hours.
In that time, a judge ordered Ice to keep Ozturk, who is on an F-1 academic visa, in Massachusetts. But eventually, her lawyers learned that their client had been moved, as many Ice hostages are, to a detention camp in southern Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles (1,600km) from where she was abducted.
In the video, before she is forced into the van, Ozturk looks terrified, confused. She may well have thought she was being robbed by street thugs; she did not seem to understand, at first, that she was being kidnapped by the state. She tries to plead with her attackers. “Can I just call the cops?” she asks. “We are the police,” one of the men responds. Ozturk remains imprisoned; she has been charged with no crime. In the video of her arrest, a neighbor can be heard nearby, asking: “Is this a kidnapping?”
FU$%^&* GESTAPO! GESTAPO! GESTAPO!
Ray W, says
Earlier today, when asked in the White House by a reporter how long should Americans expect to experience higher prices because of his trade policies, President Trump replied in part:
“You have gasoline that hit $1.98 yesterday in a couple of states.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I have long maintained that the modus operandi of one of our two political parties is to lie in hopes that the gullibly stupid among us will launder the lie.
I have been following crude oil, gasoline and diesel fuel prices for more than a decade. I have commented perhaps beyond the endurance of some FlaglerLive readers about those prices.
But, here, I will rely on CNN’s factchecking.
– “That [Trump’s comment] is not true. No state had an average gas price even close to $1.98 per gallon on Wednesday. The two states that were tied with the lowest average gas price on Wednesday, Mississippi and Tennessee, were both at $2.70 per gallon, according to data supplied by AAA.”
– “The national average was about $3.17 per gallon on Wednesday, per the AAA data. And Wednesday drivers were unlikely to find even an individual gas station selling a gallon of gas for $1.98 or less.”
– “GasBuddy, a firm that tracks prices at tens of thousands of gas station around the country, found zero stations selling for under $2 on Wednesday, said Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis. The lowest price GasBuddy found on Wednesday was $2.19 per gallon at a station in Texas. Of more than 500 metro areas whose prices are tracked by AAA, the one with the lowest price, Abilene, Texas, was at about $2.57 per gallon.”
– When CNN asked the White House about Trump’s claim, spokesperson Harrison Fields added a second lie to Trump’s initial lie. He told CNN that its reporters, being stuck in a “big city bubble”, should “visit the Middle America, where gas prices are at record lows.”
Since I remember buying gas for $1.50 per gallon at BJ’s during the Shale Revolution that took place during the Obama years in the White House (I was in the midst of an ongoing debate with a conservative co-worker about gasoline prices, so I called and texted him as gas prices dropped, penny by penny at the time), it is easy for me to know instantly that the White House spokesperson is doing what my mother repeatedly warned all of the Warren children against, i.e., he is “talking to hear his head roar.”
According to GasBuddy’s Mr. De Haan: “Gas prices aren’t near record lows in a single state. Current prices are far above record lows.”
This is for the gullibly stupid FlaglerLive commenters among us. Your purpose in the political scheme of things is to launder lies spread by the professional lying class of one of our two political parties.
Ray W, says
Barron’s reports that, according to a newly released J.P. Morgan report, oil demand in the U.S. is dropping due to a decline in international tourism into the country.
“Travel to the U.S. fell 11.6% in March from the year before, according to the International Trade Association. And car trips by Canadians to the U.S. fell 32% in March, after dropping 23% in February. Goldman Sachs has estimated that the drop in tourism could reduce GDP by as much as 0.3%, or about $90 billion, in a worst-case scenario.”
A recent Oxford Economics report said: “Policies and pronouncements from the Trump administration have contributed to a growing wave of negative sentiment toward the U.S. among potential international travelers.”
“Daily international flights outside the U.S. hit a new all-time high last week, 7% above 2019 levels.”
According to J.P. Morgan, U.S. gasoline demand has dropped 3%, or 230,000 barrels per day, over the last three weeks. Some of the drop may be due to reduced Canadian travel into the U.S. The J.P. Morgan analyst wrote: “We believe this reduction in travel activity has spread into April, feeding into decreased U.S. gasoline demand.”
Worldwide, gasoline demand has dropped by 150,000 barrels of gasoline thus far this year. That means gasoline demand is rising elsewhere in the world, but the U.S. decline is dragging the overall demand down.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
President Trump did not have to describe international trade discussions over tariffs as a series of nations lining up to kiss his ass. No matter. He said it anyway, as if compelled to do so. Now, it may be that international travelers are kissing our ass goodbye.
I have repeatedly cited to reports from industry sources that overall crude oil production is rising all over the world, due to OPEC+ increasing its group production, due to Brazil opening another offshore crude oil transfer facility, due to Guyana ramping up its own offshore oil output, and due to Kazakhstan increasing its crude oil output above limits previously set by OPEC.
U.S. crude oil production remains high, but lower than the record set last year before Trump took office. Drill! Baby! Drill! may be happening elsewhere, but it doesn’t seem to be happening here, according to industry data.
According to the laws of supply and demand, when supply steadily increases and demand plummets, prices almost inevitably trend down.
Thus far this year, West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices have dropped 11% to $64 per barrel. J.P. Morgan projects that WTI will drop to $54 per barrel by the end of 2025.
Remember, one of the regional Feds recently released a survey of American shale oil industry executives, who told Fed analysts that the breakeven point for profitable oil exploration is $65 per barrel, below which threshold drilling slows down.
DL_in_PC says
Thank you Harvard for getting off the public dole.
Laurel says
DL_in_PC: How do you feel about private schools, and home schooling getting on it using tax money intentionally budgeted for public schools?
Sherry says
@ Laurel. . . great question. Won’t be holding my breath for a reasonable response though. LOL!