This is the email I sent:

Club Penguin Christmas parties are always one of my favorite parties of the year. They help me get into the holiday spirit, which,
in my opinion, is the best part about Christmas. However, I have noticed that lately, many of the parties have exclusive members-only
rooms and features. I know you need money to run such a huge and complicated game as Club Penguin, but I would very much appreciate
it if you had no such members-only features on this year's Christmas party. Christmas is supposed to be un-commercial, and available
to everyone, and making things that are only for the people who pay would take this away.
I hope you take this suggestion seriously and at least consider it. 

This is what they replied:

Hello, 

Thanks for taking the time to contact us. We always enjoy receiving emails from our enthusiastic penguin friends on the island.
The Christmas Party is so 'fin'tastic! The Christmas Party is most certainly one of my favorite parties also!
I will definitely pass on your suggestion to our design team. Also do you have any cool ideas for themes for future parties?
If you have any future questions, comments or suggestions please feel free to send them in.  

Stay cool and happy waddling!  

Ashley
Club Penguin Support 

There really isn't much to comment on, other than their cheesy "fintastic" joke, which, by the way, was very cheesy.  

Hi there,

Thank you for writing in.  We believe that every penguin deserves to play in a fun and safe environment.  Club Penguin is all about a great community and meeting new friends to waddle around with!

In order to keep making cool new things for every penguin, we require a source of funding.  Most websites use advertisements, which we do not believe our users should be subjected to.  In order to keep Club Penguin advertisement free, we decided to offer a special membership package.  This is an available option for any player that’s interested in experiencing everything that Club Penguin has to offer.

With all of the help from our member penguins, we can provide some great fun on the Island, that every penguin can enjoy!  From exciting parties and mini-games, to free items for any penguin to collect.

That is why we have chosen to add more value to our memberships.  So that every penguin can benefit from the growth of Club Penguin, and keep on having a new adventure everyday!

If you have any further questions or concerns regarding our site, please let us know.

Kind regards,

John
Club Penguin Support

—

Of course, the usual “we need money for CP” response. I’ve been really busy and had flaky internet lately, so all I had time to do was write a rough draft I didn’t have time to finish. By now, it would be too late to send.

Is this the reason that CRU's data has been "lost"?

The UK Times reports.

Excerpt:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

[...]The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

[...] Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.

The Washington Times reports on some of the hacked e-mails that talked about data “loss”.

Professor Phil Jones, head of the CRU and contributing author to the United Nation’s IPCC report chapter titled “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes,” says he “accidentally” deleted some raw temperature data used to construct the aggregate temperature data CRU distributed. If you believe that, you’re probably watching too many Al Gore videos.

Mr. Jones is the same professor who warned that global-warming skeptics “have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”

The worst part of this mess is that taxpayers footed the bill for all of this “research”. In effect, the government was distributing taxpayer money to “scientific” lobbyists.  These “scientists” then put out suspect data in order to trick the public into voting for increased government power over individuals and businesses – all to “solve” a completely made-up crisis. It’s depressing. The only thing to do to solve this is for the public to vote for smaller government and lower taxes. Everything needs to be privatized.

For the past few days an email has circulated with a letter reported to be from Chief Boatswain’s Mate Harold B. Estes who served onboard the USS Missouri and other posts during World War II.

We have learned that Chief Boatswain’s Mate Estes is a real person who does, indeed, reside in Hawaii. He is a well-known figure in Hawaii having a record of service to his community after service to his country.

Read Article

An incredible revelation

I’ve been watching the news unfold about the E-mails and documents that were somehow pilfered (or leaked) from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) last week.  I have been reading everything that I can find on the internet about the subject, including the E-mails themselves and some of the programmer comments embedded in the CRU software.

I have been stunned.

So it appears that either a) the science behind anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is dubious, or b) the entire global warming panic has been an outright fraud perpetrated by politically-motivated scientists against an unsuspecting, and largely gullible, world population.  I tend to believe the latter.

Not only am I stunned, I’m also livid.  At the same time, however, I’m also relieved that the priests of global warming now have serious reasons to be worried…if not afraid.  And now I hope the Senate will have more reason to look at the pending cap and trade debate with more skepticism.  Given the current–and very real–economic crisis, we don’t need Congress levying additional taxes with the intent of thwarting a crisis that doesn’t even exist.

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong

I am an AGW denier.  I have always been a denier.  I am proud of the fact that I never fell for what, in my mind at least, always came across as being specious bullshit.  I’m so, so grateful that I’m not among the millions and millions of gullible idiots who took the bait hook line and sinker.

Up until now the term “denier” has been used as a pejorative by global warming adherents to describe skeptics.  But now one is led to ask the question: Who exactly are the real deniers?  Those of us who refuse to believe alarmist prognostications of imminent climatic doom, or those who refuse to recognize and consider evidence that sits before their very eyes?  Again I say the latter.  They are the ones in a deep state of denial, after all.  But why?

Because (probably subconsciously) they simply cannot bring themselves to admit that they have been wrong all along…they cannot admit that they have allowed themselves to be duped.  They have been fooled by perhaps the most outrageous con job of all time, and they cannot bear to face up to that single, pitiful, ignominious truth.  They are sheep, pure and simple.

Case in point: Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:

Stop hyperventilating, all you climate change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week — portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories — does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

If I’m wrong, somebody ought to tell the polar ice caps that they’re free to stop melting.

That said, the e-mail episode is more than a major embarrassment for the scientists involved. Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real — a necessary prerequisite for the kinds of huge economic and behavioral adjustments we would have to make to begin seriously limiting carbon emissions. But consensus on the nature and scope of the problem will dissipate, and fast, if experts try to obscure the fact that there’s much about the climate they still don’t know.

[Goes on to outline the UEACRU E-mail hacking scandal in some detail.]

It would be great if this were all a big misunderstanding. But we know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we know the planet is hotter than it was a century ago. The skeptics might have convinced each other, but so far they haven’t gotten through to the vanishing polar ice.

Yep.  There’s that “denier” word again coming from the mouth of a denier.  It doesn’t get funnier than that.  And you’ve got to love Mr. Robinson’s flippant comment about melting polar ice caps.  This is especially humorous since researchers have shown that the volume of the polar ice caps stabilized in 2007 and has  been expanding ever since.  In his opinion piece, Mr. Robinson also declares that “climate science is fiendishly hard” to study.  Well, no kidding.  But unicorn science is fiendishly hard to study, too…BECAUSE UNICORNS DON’T EXIST ANY MORE THAN ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING DOES!

Yes, it’s problematic to study something that simply isn’t there, isn’t it?

But let’s name a few of the other dupes that got sucked into believing the AGW myth, shall we?

• Barack Obama
• Just about all of the members of the Obama administration (most notably the eco-fascist Carol Browner)
• Gordon Brown
• Tony Blair
• Angela Merkel
• Nicolas Sarkozy
• The European Union
• The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Many members of the U.S. House of Representatives
• Many members of the U.S. Senate (to include John McCain)
• ABC
• NBC (see: General Electric)
• CBS
• MSNBC (see: General Electric)
• CNN
• BBC
• PBS
• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• The San Francisco Chronicle
• The Los Angeles Times
• Too many other U.S. newspapers to count
• Too many U.S. corporations to enumerate

I didn’t mention Al Gore because he’s among the “dupers,” not among the ”dupes.”  He’s just one of the dudes making hundreds of millions of dollars off of the global warming hysteria scam.

Actually, the list of dupes goes on and on and on and I don’t have time to list them all.  But the scariest dupes of all are the ones who are supposed to report the news and keep the public informed (see all of the television networks and newspapers above).  Most of the news sources listed above are being notoriously silent about the ClimateGate scandal.  This in itself is terribly insidious, given the fact that the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress seem intent on foisting a cap and tax scheme on the American people that will greatly damage businesses in the United States and increase energy costs for all.

Yet, the mainstream media, cognizant of its humiliatingly supine complicity in an apparent world-wide con scheme, remains silent.  They are worthless now.  They have been worthless.

And now we hear that President Obama, despite the revelation of the UEACRU E-mail and document disclosure, intends to attend next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen anyway, where he intends to promise that he will commit America to reducing greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time forfeiting transferring billions of American taxpayer dollars to an apparently fraudulent international carbon blackmail tax scheme.

Good luck, Mr. Obama.  We’re watching you.

The American public is watching you.

As an aside, I wonder if Mr. Obama and his family will watch “The Day After Tomorrow” on DVD this weekend.  Maybe it will help build up his courage to travel to Denmark and betray the American people.

Note

Some of the bloggers at the Telegraph have, indeed, been covering the CRU E-mail story.  Here’s Gerald Warner:

At the more domestic level, the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs, so supinely accepted in this servile state of Britain, is now provoking a huge backlash in America. US citizens do not like the government coming into their houses and putting their lights out. Voters may not understand the cut and thrust of climate debate at the technical level, but they know when the Man from Washington has crossed their threshold uninvited.

The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is “game-changer”. For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as “You can be sceptical, not denial.” Gee, thanks, guys. In fact we shall be whatever we want to be, without asking your permission.

Good to see a Brit taking a position on this travesty.  James Delingpole (from the same paper) has been doing superb work, too (actually, it’s been Delingbore–as some of Delingpoles’s detractors call him–who has done the yeoman’s work on this story at the Telegraph).  Well done, Sir!

Honolulu Advisor, Thursday November 25, 2004

Harold B. Estes is a real person. According to a report by Navy League of the United States, in September of 2003 he was the inspiration for a weekly television show to be produced in Hawaii highlighting service at sea. It seems they have even honored him in the Fore and Aft publication.

Chief Boatswain’s Mate Estes hosted a Southern-style Thanksgiving day dinner for the crew of the USS Russel in 2004.

In 2005, he was honored by McNeil Wilson Communications at Hawaii chapter of the International Association of Business Communications awards. I believe he served on the Iowa-class battleship U.S.S. Missouri which was the site for the surrender ceremonies between the United States and Japan.

For those of you who have not served in the Navy, you should be aware that there are jobs that surface for awhile, then are combined with others or die out all together. The Boatswain’s mate is a rating that can never die. They take care of the ship and much of its peripheral equipment. To make Chief during World War II was a tremendous honor.

It is not a stretch to imagine that a man of valor such as Chief Estes might have, at least, mentioned the things in this letter if he did not directly dictate it. It would be interesting if one of the news networks would pick up on this and see if the White House received such a letter.

Now Hear This! It’s Show Time for East Oahu Council
Frisco-Online.com

Zelda and I made it! We finally saw New Moon! Yesterday we went to the premiere here with a couple of friends and Mama Soul. We saw some people wearing Twilight-shirts, a couple of Twimoms and even a Twidad. I didn’t even know they exist until yesterday… And a lot of girls wearing plaid. Coincidence? A subtle tribute to Rob? Who knows? (I do!) Our premiere outfit? A blue blouse just like book-Bella, Ray Bans like Edward and the original Bella-bracelet from Italy (Great story concerning that one, I’ll tell you soon in another post!). So today we’re gonna present you our New Moon review part 1. Part 2 will follow soon… and include a lot more details cause we’re gonna see the movie about 23 more times before writing that. Just in case you haven’t seen the film yet (You better got a good excuse for that!) and want to have the real surprise when watching it for the first time: SPOILER ALARM! Starting now and ending at the end of this post. So here we go:

Taylor Lautner sometimes wears a shirt in New Moon...

First of all, down with Cathy the Cougar! Chris Weitz, do you want to marry me? What an enormous improvement in comparison to Twilight! I’m not going as far as to say it was the perfect movie, but honestly Chris, you’re so down with the kids! Or rather the Twilight-fans. Or Zelda and me. This is how vampires should look when they sparkle! Like diamonds and not that ringing and tinkling in the woods crap. Two minutes into the movie and I already love Charlie so much. How sweet when he almost started to sing, or when he came to look after Bella when she was screaming in her bed. We even got the names of the months after Edward left. Something I had really been hoping for!

... but most of the time doesn't, because he shouldn't!

And the e-mails for Alice idea to show how Bella feels, what an incredibly clever move of you, Chris! And I loved that Harry Clearwater, the king of homemade fish-fry, died as a hero trying to protect Charlie from Victoria. And oh how Rachelle looked awesome with her flaming red hair. Zelda totally liked the cliff diving scene. When Bella first sees Victoria under water and then there’s Edward beside her… epic! And the funny stuff, like the cinema scene or the “You like older women, huh?”. Not exactly as funny as the spider-monkey line but still… And Jasper and Emmett were so much… uhm, cooler, cuter? Whatever, better anyway!

Ok, there were a few things that were kind of strange and I think we got to mention them as well in order to try and stay honest. Sometimes it was a bit too cheesy. Cheesier than the books. I even felt kind of 2nd-hand-embarrassed for Edward being so hardcore romantic. I noticed that Edward’s abs seem to have looked a lot better on the pics from the set we saw a few months ago. In the actual Volterra scene, they were barely visible. So what happened there? I mean, isn’t Edward supposed to have at least a six-pack? Jacob even got an eight-pack, so in comparison to that… sorry to say Rob, but Taylor wins this one!

Caius Malfoy and his Volturi friends

Did anyone else think Marcus and Caius looked like Denethor, Faramir’s dad from Lord of the Rings, and  Draco Malfoy’s older brother? Did the Volturi fight scene between Edward and Demetri remind you of the Gandalf vs. Saruman battle in the LOTR?

And there’s another thing. Not your fault Chris, this is just how Stephenie Meyer wrote Bella and the reason why this girl sometimes annoys the crap out of me in the books: Who do you think you are, Bella “don’t hurt him, kill me instead” Swan? Why should the Volturi treat Edward’s life against yours? You’re nothing but a weak clumsy girl, okay? Sorry to say, but deal with it!

All in all, we got everything we wanted… Well, almost. Taylor Lautner wore a shirt in at least three scenes. BIG FAIL! Sorry Chris… But don’t worry, Zelda and I enjoyed the movie a lot. We’re probably going to watch it over and over again for the next few weeks… Only because of important blog journalism of course so that we can present you a more detailed review soon. Wanna know what Mama Soul said about New Moon? She made so many great hilarious comments that she will get her own post this week. Don’t miss it! There’s no better way to watch this film than sitting in between her and Zelda. We’ve got enough stuff to write about for at least four weeks, so keep coming back to check what else we got in store for you!

a

Off to call Zelda and ask her when we’re going to the cinema again

Saveyoursoul

a

PS: We rate New Moon 4 out of 5 Heineken bottles

How did you like New Moon? Do you wanna marry Chris Weitz as well? Because I do… Which scenes were your favorites? Could the movie live up to your expectations? Any details or thoughts you want to share? Leave a comment or write an e-mail!

(images: google and me)

This is another email making the email rounds. I am posting it to let you know it is unverified. If you can verify it, please feel free to comment. Even “Snoops” does not know.

This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body, he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now. He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president.

Dear President Obama,

My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don’t believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos’n Mate. Now I live in a “rest home” located on the western end of Pearl Harbor, allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.

One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.

So here goes.

I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.

I can’t figure out what country you are the president of.

You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:

” We’re no longer a Christian nation”

” America is arrogant” – (Your wife even announced to the world,”America is mean-spirited. ” Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of our war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and hopelessness.)

I’d say shame on the both of you, but I don’t think you like America, nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.

After 9/11 you said,” America hasn’t lived up to her ideals.”

Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn’t mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around, because we stand for freedom.

I don’t think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.

Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man.

Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don’t, I’ll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue. You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don’t want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts, who was putting up a fight? You don’t mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don’t want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.

One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you’re the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you’re not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you’re thinking of.

You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president.

You’re not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That’s not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now.

And I sure as hell don’t want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.

Sincerely,

Harold B. Estes

TCU Nation

Se você costuma visitar com alguma frequência este blog, já deve ter percebido que não é diária a inclusão de textos. Por quê? Costumo analisar, avaliar, ponderar as correspondências que recebo, textos que leio, experiências que vivencio…

Não querendo ser chata, nem, menos ainda, candidata a Academias de Letras, deixando o texto prolixo, vamos ao ponto. Você já parou para avaliar, analisar os emails que recebe? Já percebeu a quantidade de mensagens que recebe e deleta sem ler? Por que é que tem tanta gente que encaminha mensagens de que gostou, sem nem ao menos se dar ao trabalho de, primeiramente, eliminar os endereços eletrônicos (e-mails) copiados na mensagem? Aí, não contente com isso, ainda acrescenta seus endereços pessoais, profissionais, emocionais aos já incluídos na mensagem a ser encaminhada.

Você entendeu? Em uma única mensagem, encaminhada a você pela décima vez (veja a quantidade de FW: no texto), são divulgados endereços que viram armas ou vítimas na mão de gente mal intencionada.

Vamos combinar uma coisa? Antes de encaminhar uma mensagem, veja a quantos dos seus contatos ela REALMENTE interessa. Aí, então… elimine os endereços alheios (alguém tem de preservar a segurança, não?) e tome o cuidado de colocar os seus como CCO. Para quem não sabe, são cópias ocultas. Assim, os endereços dos seus amigos não serão divulgados. CCO é uma sigla para Com Cópia Oculta.

Aliás, encerrando o assunto: por curiosidade, coloque seu nome no Google. Veja quantas vezes ele aparece, muitas das quais ligado a mensagens que você nem lembrava que enviou. Mas a internet, my dear, registra tudo. Até o que você não quer.

Até breve.

Hello, my name is Pililoni! I joined CP in August 2007. Recently, I’ve noticed a lot of things members-only. Like the new fire ninjas. It seems awesome being a fire ninja, but it was members only and I was quite disappointed. Plus the member badge. It’s rather “In your face”. Ever since it appeared, I’ve noticed most members only judging people by whether or not they were a member and how long they’ve been a member. What I mean by that is, example, I was once on CP. An army I was in was having a recruiting session on CP. I was talking with two member penguins, doing my job of trying to recruit them. It seemed like they didn’t want to talk to me just because I was a non-member. They acted like dictators in a tyranny talking to a peasant. They acted like I was total crap. I noticed other members treating nonmembers the same way. I would like to see a little bit less members only stuff. I know you need money to support Club Penguin, but I think this is a bit too far.

According to e-mails hacked and re-posted on public file sharing sites in Russia, there has been a concerted, concentrated, and organized effort by scientists subscribing to theories of global warming to silence any scholarly opposition.

There are two main schools of thought with regard to climate change: the first is that the planet is heating quickly and that human activity is the biggest, and perhaps only, cause of it. The second is that there is some climate change happening, but the causes, effects, and extent of it are not fully understood. There isn’t enough historical data available to know if any change is the result of recent activity, or historical trends… and if the result of recent activity, then what activity, precisely?

The Wall Street Journal reports that scientists who subscribe to the first, ”imminent doom” theory have threatened to “shut out dissenters and their points of view,” going so far as to disallow peer review of scholarly research by dissenters. Phil Jones, an environmental scientist who believes humans are the only cause of global warming, explained to colleague Michael Mann at Penn State that he would “keep them out somehow.”

University of Alabama scientist John Christy, who has asked scientific organizations to allow dissenting opinions to be published in scholarly journals, is alarmed at the contents of the e-mails: “It’s disconcerting to realize that legislative actions this nation is preparing to take, and which will cost trillions of dollars, are based upon a view of climate that has not been completely scientifically tested.”

If the environmental lobbies and politically correct “scientific” orthodoxies continue to hold sway, it appears that such a view will never have the chance to be completely tested. The overly vocal left won’t allow it.

As much as Rush Limbaugh may shout down cogent left-leaning criticism for the sake of the party line, so too do leftist scientists treat colleagues who criticize what climate researcher Mojib Latif calls “a kind of mafia that is trying to inhibit critical papers from being published.”

Environmentalist methodology.