I can't believe that came from your mouth!
Archive for July, 2006
Beach Vacation
Jul 31st
Blogging will be a little light this week since I am on vacation and it may be difficult or impossible to find a wireless access point. I am in the North Carolina Outer Banks for a week, to include a stopover on Ocracoke Island. One week of Sun, Pirate Lore and relaxation is just what I need.
One thing I have learned is that when travelling, it is imperative to carry a cooler full of ice with you. Then you stock the cooler with sodas and sandwich fixins. It is awesome to pull over anywhere you want and have an icy Diet Coke or a cold cut sandwich without having to pull off at an unknown exit to hunt for a convenience store. I have seen how some car manufacturers are beginning to include coolers built into the bottom or trunks of the minivans and trucks for tailgaiting. Its a great idea, as tailgaiting is becoming one of those Great American Pastimes.
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Loading ...McCain and Hillary Go Cross-Eyed Together
Jul 29th
Unbelievable. Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton decided to go shot for shot with Vodka on a recent trip to Estonia. Neither of them remember who won. I wonder if either one of them started looking better to the other.
Drudge has the details, but I wont link since he frequently overwrites his flash reports.
On a congressional trip to Estonia, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest!
Delighted, the leader of the overseas delegation, Sen. John McCain, quickly agreed, the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report on Saturday.
The after-dinner game went so well — memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much. McCain later told people how unexpectedly fun he found Hillary to be.
TIMES reporter Anne Kornblut has filed a story on the curious relationship between Hillary and John McCain, newsrooms sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
“One of the guys,” is the way McCain describes her.
You know, these two are supposed to be front runners for their prospective parties in the upcoming Presidential election. I dunno if I want either one if they kick back and get blitzed on cheap Estonian vodka. And as far as Hillary being one of the guys, he’s right. He found that out when she stepped up to that Estonian urinal and pulled out a bigger schwantz.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Randy Jennings: Another Pervert High School Coach
Jul 28th
What is up with High School Coaches getting caught for sending porn to kids? Meet Randy Jennings, a Tennis Coach at East Gaston High School in North Carolina. He is charged with being a pervert by sending pornographic images to what he thought was a 13 year old girl in Virginia.
From My Local News Station, NBC4 here:
GASTONIA, N.C. — Police say a North Carolina teacher is charged with Internet sex crimes, accused of e-mailing pornography to someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl in Virginia.
Randy Scott Jennings, a teacher and coach at East Gaston High School, was arrested Thursday at the school. He’s being held without bond in the county jail pending extradition to Virginia.
Jennings has also been suspended with pay by the school district pending an investigation.
Police in Chesterfield County, Va., said Jennings contacted a detective who was posing as a 13-year-old girl on the Internet about seven weeks ago. Another detective said the conversation soon became sexually explicit.
Authorities won’t identify the Web site where the two interacted, except to say it was a well-known Internet chat service.
Jennings is charged with attempted indecent liberties with a minor and using a communications device to solicit a minor, and distribution of child pornography.
If the courts in North Carolina refuse to let him out of jail, why the hell does the school system continue to pay his salary? Way to go, Randy. You will enjoy registering as a sex offender now that Adam Walsh Law is in effect.
Here is a story of another High School Pervert I wrote about.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Smoking Vaccine Being Tested
Jul 28th
Good news for smokers trying to quit- A new vaccine is in the human testing trials that is supposed to block the nicotine from reaching the pleasure receptors in the brain so smokers can enjoy the rush that comes with smoking.
As a reformed smoker, and going on my 4th year anniversary of not having a cigarette, I can certainly appreciate medical efforts to help smokers quit the habit. But will this “vaccine” be the first in a long line of pleasure suppressants that will aim to cure society’s ills? Will a similar vaccine be able to block the pleasure receptors for opiates? How about Alcoholism? Could we? More importantly, should we? At what point do we simply throw out all personal responsibility?
From the AP here:
Doctors test anti-smoking vaccine
MADISON, Wis. – Doctors are testing a radical new way to help smokers quit: a shot that “immunizes” them against the nicotine rush that fuels their addiction.
The treatment keeps nicotine from reaching the brain, making smoking less pleasurable and theoretically, easier to give up. The small amount that still manages to get in helps to ease withdrawal, the main reason most quitters relapse.
The Food and Drug Administration has granted the vaccine fast-track status, meaning it will get prompt review, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse just gave Nabi a second $4 million grant to finance the study and NicVax’s development.
The antibodies should remain in the system for up to a year; booster shots may be needed after that, but this needs more study, Rasmussen said.
I quit by taking Zyban. It worked for me. Two other smokers, close friends of mine, tried it too, but Zyban didn’t work for them. I think they werent as serious about quitting as I was.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Like OMG! You Can Go to Jail for That?
Jul 27th
You just don’t hear much about female hackers, and in this case, I don’t think the girls were doing as much hacking as much as unauthorized use of a computer account. What is really unusual is that this was a lesbian couple that perpetrated this so-called prank. What started out as a joke looks like it got way out of hand. Two ditsy lesbian California girls are going to the poke. But will they share a cell? No? Awwwww. That’s sad.
From the AP here:
LOS ANGELES – Two students each face up to a year in jail for a prank that involved hacking into a professor’s computer, giving grades to other students and sending pizza, magazine subscriptions and CDs to the professor’s home.
Lena Chen, 20, and Jennifer Ngan, 19, face misdemeanor charges of illegally accessing computers. The pair, both students of California State University, Northridge, are scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 21.
An investigation showed the professor’s network account had been accessed without her permission and grades were assigned to nearly 300 students, prosecutor Robert Fratianne said.
The professor’s campus e-mail was being forwarded to an account established by Chen and Ngan, investigators said.
Prosecutors also alleged Chen and Ngan used personal identifying information found on the university system to order food, magazine subscriptions and a shipment of blank CDs to the professor’s home.
Lena’s Xanga site is here. More digging found both of their online dating sites. Lena is here. Jennifer is here. Jennifer links to her photos of their magical trip to Disney together here, where in her photo captions she states that she is falling for Lena.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Hacker Faces 55 Years for Stealing Medical Database
Jul 27th
Yeah, that HIPAA regulations aimed at privacy sure do have some stiff penalties. You simply don’t mess around with patient and doctor information. A hacker named Bill Bailey swiped the membership database from the American College of Physicians.
From the Register Here:
A man has been charged with stealing the membership database of the American College of Physicians (ACP) for resale as a premium spamming list.
William Bailey Jr, 46, of Charlotte, North Carolina, faces a possible fine of up to $2.75m and a maximum sentence of up to 55 years if he’s convicted of gaining unauthorised access to the database of 80,000 US doctors and medics.
Bailey ran a website called dr-411.com that allegedly peddled the email addresses of members of professional organisations such as doctors, lawyers and real estate agents.
Bailey allegedly obtained this data after hacking into the ACP’s membership database, in disregard of warnings over the sensitivity of the information, between January and May 2005.
This scumbag was going to sell the stolen data to other spammers for mega cash. Now his family is going to be singing that old song, “Won’t you come home Bill Bailey, Won’t you come home?” Hat tip to Steve Gold’s Security Watch for the story.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Deloitte and Touche Screw Armstrong World Employees
Jul 27th
Deloitte and Touche (or is it toilet and douche?) got sloppy with customer data again. Just months after a D&T employee left a CDROM in the seatback pocket on an airplane, another D&T employee allows his laptop to get swiped from his car. Was this employee having drinks at a local pub when his laptop was stolen?
And how much crime is there up in Amish Lancaster, PA?
From the WaPo here:
LANCASTER, Pa. — A laptop stolen from a payroll auditor contains personal information on 12,000 current and former Armstrong World Industries Inc. employees, the company said.
The data include home addresses and phone numbers, Social Security numbers and how much the people were paid. A two-page letter sent by Armstrong last week said the company was not aware of any misuse of the information, and that a password was required to access the information on the computer.
The laptop was stolen from a locked car belonging to a Deloitte & Touche LLP employee, Armstrong said. Deborah G. Harrington, a spokeswoman for the consulting firm, declined to comment.
Armstrong advised employees to watch their bank accounts, credit cards, bills and financial statements for signs of unusual transactions. It also suggested that for three months they place a fraud alert on their credit files.
Lancaster-based Armstrong makes flooring, ceilings and cabinets.
Armstrong makes cabinets. Deloitte and Touch specializes in allowing personal data to be stolen. Will anyone be fired over this? Will anyone wise up and start using encryption on their laptops when dealing with private data?
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...IE7 To Be Pushed to XP
Jul 26th
CNET is broadcasting this headline like its a bad thing. I have been beta testing IE7 for several weeks now, both on XP and on the new Vista Beta platform. IE7 is still not a stable version of the browser, but it has some excellent security features such as big warnings for expired SSL certificates, solid blocking of Active X and Java scripting, and locked down default browser settings.
But CNET trumpets this news as if Microsoft were planning on wrecking PC’s across the country with the update to IE.
From CNET here:
Microsoft plans to automatically push Internet Explorer 7 to Windows XP users when the browser update is ready later this year.
IE 7 will be delivered in the fourth quarter as a “high priority” update via Automatic Updates in Windows XP, Gary Schare, Microsoft’s director of IE product management, said in an interview Tuesday.
“The justification, of course, is the significant security enhancements in IE 7,” Schare said. Microsoft recommends that all Windows users install the new browser when it ships, he added.
IE 7 will be the first major update to Microsoft’s ubiquitous Web browser in five years. Security was the No. 1 investment for the update, Microsoft has said. Critics have likened predecessor IE 6 to “Swiss cheese” because of the many security vulnerabilities in it. A third and final beta of IE 7 was released late last month.
Users will be able to choose whether they want to install it or not, Schare said. Automatic Updates will first notify users when IE 7 is ready to install and then show a welcome screen that presents key features and the choices to install, not install or postpone installation.
I am not going to bash IE too much. I know its still not ready for prime time. But I will say that I am updating this blog with Firefox. And I was forced to download Firefox for Vista just to get a stable way to download larger files without the browser crashing.
All users should download IE7 for the security enhancements, not only to the browser, but for the underlying OS. The new version will likely plug holes in security zones and remove other hooks that could pose risks to XP users. But I would not expect that you can get rid of Firefox any time soon. In fact, they have a new version coming out about the same time too.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Blow to EFF and ACLU’s Efforts to Leak Secrets
Jul 26th
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have been trying to leak national secrets to the press and to America’s enemies by bringing lawsuits against AT&T to get them to divulge what information, if any, it gives to the National Security Agency.
A federal judge last week ruled in EFF’s case to not dismiss the lawsuit in San Francisco. But in Illinois, a judge threw out the case on the grounds of National Security. It will be interesting to see where the appeals courts sit on this issue.
From the San Jose Mercury News here:
Judge dismisses lawsuit over phone records
CHICAGO – Citing national security, a federal judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at blocking AT&T Inc. from giving telephone records to the government for use in the war on terror.
“The court is persuaded that requiring AT&T to confirm or deny whether it has disclosed large quantities of telephone records to the federal government could give adversaries of this country valuable insight into the government’s intelligence activities,” U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said.
Justice Department attorneys had argued that it would violate the law against divulging state secrets for AT&T to say whether it had provided telephone records to the supersecret spy agency.
The ACLU argued that the practice was no longer secret, because numerous news reports had made it clear that phone records had been given to the agency.
But the judge said the news reports amounted to speculation and in no way constituted official confirmation that phone records had been turned over.
In his ruling, Kennelly noted that he had received written statements from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander in his chambers, with ACLU lawyers not allowed to be present.
It is interesting to note that the reason behind the judge’s ruling is secret and cannot be divulged to the ACLU. Ha.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Yahoo Bundles Symantec Security Products
Jul 25th
This is a good move for Symantec, and a likely lifeline that will keep Symantec around for a while. In a response to AOL offering its users total security with a bundled McAfee security, Symantec reached out to Yahoo to allow Yahoo users get 20 dollar discounts on its AV software.
Symantec could have been really bold and discounted it much further or even given it away for free, but it does allow Symantec to get its products out there a bit. There is a free 30 day trial, which is good in that it will allow any user the opportunity to clean their PC from infections and worms.
If Yahoo, which is my favorite web portal right now, had even more exclusive content like MSN or AOL, would have been a better marriage between the two companies. But it is just one more example where Symantec is trying to play catchup in an increasingly competitive space.
The rest of the story is here from PCWorld.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Springfield Man Cuts Off Own Hand For Allah
Jul 25th
This is a bizarre story that I heard on the Sports Junkies morning show while I was driving into work this morning. It seems that a mentally disturbed man walked into a Springfield Arabic and Mediterranean grocery store and used a meat slicer from the butcher’s counter to cut off his own hand. He did this to prove his faith to a bunch of kids outside the store. And he did it in front of his own son. Egads.
From the Washington Post here:
Customer at Market in Springfield Cuts Off His Hand
Igbal Asghar reached across the counter at Super Halal Meat market and passed two butchered chickens to the man with the familiar face. Then he ducked into the walk-in freezer to fetch the customer’s second order, goat meat.
When the butcher stepped out seconds later, the customer’s severed left hand lay on the floor by the meat saw, Asghar said. The customer ran down the Springfield store’s center aisle and into the front parking lot, leaving a trail of blood and yelling repeatedly that he was “not a terrorist.” Outside, another witness said, the man announced that he had used the meat saw to cut off his hand “for Allah.”
“I don’t know what happened to that guy,” Asghar, 45, said as he leaned yesterday against a stack of Pakistan Link newspapers at the small strip mall store in the Franconia area, which caters to customers from India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We are shaking still when we are talking about it.”
In the parking lot were young men admiring a friend’s new motorcycle, Sinsunwal said, when the man walked coolly toward them. The man was holding aloft his bleeding left arm — sliced several inches above the wrist – and using his right hand to hold up a photo identification badge that hung around his neck.
“He said, ‘I did this for Allah’ — God,” Sinsunwal said.
I have eaten lunch at this shop. They have great gyros, greek salads and lots of different types of hummus. They have candy and nuts and dates from all over the Middle East and the Mediterranean, and immigrants from all over Northern Virginia go there to get a little taste of home.
The WaPo article goes on to say how the man with the severed hand chased the teenagers into another store. I can only speculate that he may have sternly disapproved of how the teens were becoming too westernized with their fancy motorcycles. The crazy man wanted to prove to them that Allah was great. Eek.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...US Marines Recruiting on MySpace
Jul 25th
Okay, just so no one ever accuses me of always writing negative pieces about MySpace, here is a bit about the good parts. MySpace is its best when it is used as advertising and networking with other like-minded people. As a staunch capitalist, I worry most about the impact that MySpace’s shenanigans will have on self-promoting bands and on startup businesses that are using the site for free advertising.
But as a patriot and as a fan of the Marines, I think the USMC’s MySpace page is awesome. It is a self-promotion site, has a nifty customized page, and it already has several thousand friends. And it also marks the recognition of MySpace by the US Armed Forces as a potential recruiting tool. And bravo to the Marines for being the first of the military branches to delve into the world of MySpace.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Nigerian 419 Scams are Deadly
Jul 24th
It is hard to believe that people still fall for those emails that claim that some poor Christian lady who is the pious wife of a corrupt politician or oil tycoon needs your help to smuggle millions of dollars out of the war-ravaged and corrupt country that the emailer still lives in.
The emails invariably say that your expertise is the only thing that will help this poor rich widow, and all you have to do is reply to the email and she will start the ball rolling. Of course, its a scam, and I thought everyone knows about this by now. The way the scam works is that the Nigerians or Camaroonians, or some other hellish African country will send faked checks to victims in exchange for cash being sent back in order to free up additional monies. Of course the checks will bounce. Depending on the level of trust that the victim has in the scammer, the scam can then progress to the point where the victim flies to the country the emailer lives, only to be abducted and held for ransom. See here and here for details.
Most recently, however, Mary Winkler, a pastor’s wife, fell for the scam and lost thousands of dollars from their meager annual salary. There was an argument about the loss of cash, and Mary shot her husband in the back with a shotgun while he was sleeping.
From the IndyStar here:
A woman accused of shooting her preacher husband to death after they argued over money may have been taken in by a remarkably common scam that strained their finances and their marriage.
Mary Winkler, who is charged with murder, had gotten tangled up in a swindle known as an advance-fee fraud, or the “Nigerian scam,” in which victims are told a sweepstakes prize or some other riches await them if they send money to cover the processing expenses, her lawyers say.
He was shot in the back with a 12-gauge shotgun as he lay in bed March 22 and was found dead by church members. After the shooting, Mary Winkler loaded her three daughters into the family van and went to the Gulf Coast for what she described as a final beach vacation. She was arrested March 23 in Orange Beach, Ala.
“I had gotten a call from the bank, and we were having trouble, mostly my fault, bad bookkeeping. He was upset with me about that,” Mary Winkler told police, according to a statement read at her bail hearing.
Mary Winkler deposited several suspicious checks from Canada and Nigeria for a total of $17,500, authorities said.
She is in jail, unable to raise $750,000 bail. Her trial is set for Oct. 30.
First of all, she is a horrible person. She murders her own husband and then decides to go to the beach? So in addition to being a gullible idiot, she is a selfish cold hearted killer. Tennessee has the death penalty. Here’s hoping that she gets a date with the needle.
Other well publicized victims of this scam include a lawyer in Florida and a New Zealand politician.
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(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 6) Loading ...Fantasy Football? No Thanks!
Jul 24th
Its that time of the year again. The time when all of your coworkers and friends begin to ask and beg you to join their fantasy football leagues. And its the time of the year when I repeatedly tell them all no, I have plenty of time consuming distractions already. I dont need yet another excuse to park my rear on a bar stool at the local pub and watch 11 feeds from the NFL on Sunday.
Everyone I know who is in a league becomes obsessed with player stats, scores, the draft, the weekly matchups and more. I already have several obsessions that I document in this space, and I really don’t want another one. My rear end doesnt want the extra hours on a bar stool. My liver doesnt want the extra alcohol. My wife doesnt want me spending any additional hours with my nose in my laptop researching football scores.
So to all of my friends and collegues- Thanks, but no thanks. It will be a long enough season already having to listen to all of your endless bragging about how your team is doing and how your QB rating and running back yardage is doing. I just don’t want to play your reindeer games.
And that goes double for college fantasy teams!
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Ride to Benefit Fragile X
Jul 23rd
I am exhausted after a wonderful weekend trip to the tops of Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee to participate in a motorcycle ride to benefit research into a cure for Fragile X.
We stayed right on the Blue Ridge Parkway near the famous Stations Inn Motorcycle Resort and Restaurant at Laurel Springs, North Carolina. The owners and staff of the Stations Inn are great people and fabulous hosts, who are very supportive of the research into a cure for Fragile X.
We went on a poker run on Saturday, winding our way through many small towns and mountain vistas, through forests, pastures and meadows. The weather was perfect and cool along the mountaintops, and the sun remained mostly behind misty clouds all day.
One of the neatest parts of the ride was on the “Stripe-ed Snake” which has three mountains and 489 curves. At the base of the mountain is the rustic Shady Valley Country Store where bikers and automotive enthusiasts gather.
The day concluded with a cookout, an auction and some great rock and roll by the cover band “Skipper’s Wheel.” The day’s events raised thousands of dollars for a great cause, and I am already looking forward to going back again next year.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Superhero Office Space
Jul 20th
Since I was talking about superheroes earlier, I found this funny mashup on Youtube, courtesy of Digg, that has the Superfriends re-enacting the opening of Office Space.
Click on the photo or here to see the movie.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...I See Bad Drivers
Jul 20th
That creepy kid from Spielberg’s horrible movie AI, Haley Joel Osment, wrecked his car at 1 AM. Seems he mistook a brick pillar for a lane on the road and he flipped his car. No word as yet why he didnt avoid the brick pillar or why he wasnt wearing a seatbelt.
The biggest mystery to me is why an 18 year old millionaire and academy award nominee was driving a 12 year old Saturn similar to the one pictured below??
Shouldnt he at least be driving a Lexus? Even a Camry would be an upgrade. See more of the story here at MSNBC.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...US Postal Service is Cool
Jul 20th
A Philatelist is a person that collects stamps. When I was a small kid, my parents recognized that I was kinda geeky, so they started buying me stamp collections. They were really kinda cool, but as I got older and my interests went to comic books and girls, I gradually lost interest in stamps.
I don’t even know where my old stamp collections are- Mom, Dad, if you are reading this, see if you can dig through some of the old junk and locate these stamps. They might be worth something!
The US Postal service is cool because it is the only federal agency that pays its own way, and actually makes a profit. They do this by selling stamps and other items. And have you been to a post office lately? Its turning into what looks like a party store! You can buy baloons, gifts, signed and framed custom stamp prints, and lots more. Plus, you gotta love the cool jeeps they drive around in.
Now look at the new stamps they just issued. Comic Book heroes on Stamps! Its a geeky philatelist’s dream!
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...India Outlaws Criticism of Islam- Bans Bloggers
Jul 20th
India took a huge step backwards in their democratic society. They have ordered their Internet Service Providers to ban access to certain blogging websites that are critical of Islam and its creeping insidious influences on societies around the world.
Any culture that will kill and maim over editorial cartoons, will ban artwork depicting a 7th century warlord and will treat women as cattle should not be allowed to set the standard for speech and expression in a free society.
Here’s to hoping that the people of India will cry out over this censorship.
For full details, you must read this excellent article at the Jawa Report, which is currently on the banned list of India.
An excerpt:
Sadly, there is not a single country in the world where Muslims are a majority that criticisms of Islam are legally tolerated. While Muslims proudly proclaim that they ‘tolerate’ Chrisianity, they do not mean tolerance in the Western sense. They may ‘tolerate’ Chrisitians worshipping in their own churches, but the minute that a Christian steps out in public he is unable to accomplish the ‘Great Commission’ of trying to convert the non-believer into a believer.
Some ‘moderate’ Muslim countries allow Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians to be converted to whichever religion that they may choose. But once a Muslim, always a Muslim. It is forbidden for any missionary of any faith to try to convert a Muslim.
Islam is a one-way street.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Windham Winery
Jul 19th
Sunday was the perfect day in Northern Virginia to go wine tasting. It was sunny and warm, and the standard humidity was gone. We made our way to Windham in beautiful Loudoun County’s rolling wine valley in Hillsboro, VA and tried their excellent wines.
Windham touts the fact that most of their wines earn awards, but then again, many Northern Virginia wines win awards. The climate in northern VA is comparable to France and the Napa Valley, and as such, the wines are rated among the best in the world. And Windham does have some excellent wines.
All of the white wines are among the very best in the region. The Chardonnay has a rich buttery taste from its oak aging. Most surprising was the Riesling. I am used to Rieslings being sweet and used as dessert wines, however, Windham’s Riesling was a dry, refreshing wine that had a slight peach flavor. Their very best, in my opinion is the new wine called Doukenie. It is a blended white with a hint of apple, rose petals and a spicy finish.
The reds were very good and smoother than many in the region. The wine that stood out the most was the new Rasberry Merlot. Windham tossed some rasberries into oak aged Merlot and came up with a smoky, slightly sweet, fruity Merlot that could be used as a dessert wine.
I purchased a bottle of the Doukenie and the Rasberry Merlot. They have an online store at this site, but if you get a chance to visit their beautiful grounds and enjoy a picnic lunch on the back patio overlooking the duck pond.
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