Winckel

:-) - Winckel

Sorry Google is already doing that. - CW

Also known as autumn :-) - Winckel

What is Heart attack? Heart attack is a typical disease of the heart that leads us to death. - sonal chauhan

You re so right sonal - Winckel

Slightly unnerving - Winckel

Want! - Valentina Quepasa

Love it - Winckel

Me too, and listening to her brings back memories of the 90s. :-) - Maitani

High risky but high profitable. Interesting thought :-) - Slavomira

Though perhaps not so good for the body and mind....:-) My sole experience is smoking one joint with friends on holiday - Winckel

:-)) - eliokir

"Organic vegetables box business Abel and Cole has been sold to the makers of Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings, Hull-based William Jackson Group. The deal, for an undisclosed sum but thought to be worth tens of millions of pounds, ends years of uncertainty for the veg box delivery company, which nearly went bust at the height of the financial crisis with consumers unwilling to pay premium prices for organic food. It is the second time the founder, Keith Abel, has sold the company in the last five years. William Jackson, a 180-year-old family-owned business based in Hull, has no plans to lay off any of the 450 staff at Abel and Cole and the company will continue to be run by Abel. He said: "With our new partners we have the security and stability we need to grow and flourish. By joining a family business, which respects and understands us, we can carry on delivering the best veg boxes imaginable to our wonderful customers." Last year the company made a pretax profit of £2.5m on sales of £9.3m, compared with a £13.8m pretax loss in 2010. Abel and Cole managed to turn around disastrous losses of £27m in 2010 to underlying profits of £4.6m in the 12 months to August this year. It is the first time William Jackson has ventured into the organic vegetables market and ends an eight year absence from the retail sector after selling its Jacksons convenience store business to Sainsbury in 2004. Abel started his company in 1988 selling potatoes door-to-door in south Londonand grew it into a multimillion-pound business worth nearly £40m in 2007. He sold a stake to private equity firm Phoenix that year, but profits plunged and in 2010 control of the business passed to Lloyds Banking Group in a debt-for-equity swap. Abel bought back in shortly after and managed to turn the business around again." - Winckel

A pity. Abel & Cole are simply the best, wonderful fruit and veg and wonderful pies. - Winckel

My respect to their strong entrepreneurial spirit for the organic food production and trade ( For me-"organic food"- it was just traditional, for the country, vegetables and fruits, grown under conventional conditions and less interventions -gene,sort,used chemical products. Pity, but do not exist today on our market.) - Slavomira

:-) - Winckel

:) - Mahdi

If I were suspicious-minded I would say they weren't saucy taciturn girls but bots with an impatience algorithm. - Winckel

I've found some bots now tell jokes though, relatively sophisticated interaction. Also, memo to self, don't talk to christians - Winckel

better than kamerad. - Steven Luckymen VMF-214

:))) - Ouistitis

"One-two-THREE! CONTROL! … and relax," Ma Jian urges. The 78-year-old author is addressing a few dozen men clustered around a stage in Guangzhou, but he aspires to a much bigger audience. "China has more than 2,000 years of sexual history and culture and skills. It has sexual experience which western countries have never known. I want to introduce its expertise to people here and people overseas and make all men happy," he said. "I want all women to benefit. I take guys who shoot in three minutes and teach them to hang on for 30. That's long enough." Until 10 years ago this evangelist was, he said, "an underground worker", toiling in strictest secrecy. He grew up in the sexually repressive society created by Mao Zedong. The chairman of the People's Republic may have shared his own bed with numerous women, but under his rule bodies were disguised in shapeless suits and holding hands in public was shocking. Even in the 80s, after liberalisation had begun, a man was executed for organising orgies. Now Ma rattles off his advice – swimming increases sexual desire; pee in short bursts, not a stream – at a convention co-hosted by family planning authorities. More than 30,000 visitors thronged last weekend to the 10th national (Guangzhou) sex culture festival to watch pole dancers, buy 007-brand condoms and browse porn in a resolutely unerotic exhibition centre. Couples take happy snaps with giant virility figures, and unabashed shoppers fondle realistic sex dolls (though not, this year, inflatable Obamas). The wealthiest can even choose a 100,000 yuan (£10,000) solid gold "pleasure object" – the kind of high-class product that appeals to shoppers usually found in Louis Vuitton or Dolce & Gabbana, a sales assistant said. Men photograph semi-clad models on a catwalk at the fair. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian But the shots of "artistic nudes" are tame by western standards. And though hordes of men photograph furiously as semi-clad models strut to a disco version of the Old Spice theme, there's no pouting or lip-licking. These days, sexual experimentation and puritanism sit side by side in China. Qiu Shuang, a lesbian activist and sex toy saleswoman, argued that repression had only kindled passions. "Maybe we seem very conservative, but we have the biggest desires," she said. China has an estimated six million sex workers, yet nudity is unacceptable in the cinema and there are periodic anti-porn crackdowns. Women have hymen restoration surgery so their husbands will believe they are virgins. Two years ago, an academic was jailed for hosting sex parties. It is no coincidence that the official denunciation of the disgraced politician Bo Xilai accused him of improper sexual relationships with several women. "People still frown on serial dating … [but] there are 200,000 sex shops and these huge sexual expos. Are they prudish about sex or are they incredibly liberated?" asked Richard Burger, whose new book, Behind the Red Door, chronicles the history of sex in China. He argues that for centuries China's leaders have swung between sexual openness and repression. In the Tang dynasty, prostitutes were registered; the late Ming saw explicit novels such as The Plum in the Golden Vase. At times, homosexual love has been celebrated. At other times, erotic books have been burned. In the west, the sexual revolution was part of a wider movement of personal liberation and challenges to authority. But in China, the post-Mao shift from procreation to recreation was driven not by the Beatles and Lady Chatterley but by the Communist party. Sex dolls on show in Guangzhou. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian "After the Cultural Revolution, the government's control [of people's lives] started loosening, and at the same time the one-child policy meant people could have sex lives that weren't for the purpose of giving birth. They could have sex for pleasure," said Pan Suiming of Renmin University, one of the country's leading experts on sex. Li Yinhe, another researcher, said: "In the past, women were not allowed to like sex – sex was only for giving birth to children, or serving men. Now they can enjoy sex." When the magazine Popular Cinema dared to print a romantic clinch in 1979, it sparked a national controversy. The publication of the kiss – a still from a Cinderella movie starring Richard Chamberlain – was "decadent, capitalist, an act meant to poison our youths", complained an irate local propaganda official. But thousands more picked up their pens to support the magazine. But puckering up lost its subversive edge – even if the average age for a first kiss remained at 23 just a few years ago. These days premarital sex is very common and has spread to rural areas too. Yet even now, most assume that sexual relationships end in marriage. Half the men Pan surveyed in 2007 reported only one sexual partner – and even younger and more experienced men have double standards, as a group of female students at the festival testify. "There's a long way to go. People do think a woman is a slut [if she has had multiple partners]," said Emily Mai. "We have a right to chose premarital sex," added her friend Yee Bai. "It's freedom. We can't stand to have only 'pure, spiritual' love." Sun Zhongxin of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh says the sexual revolution has benefited different sexes and sexualities to different degrees, and that both men and women may face new pressures, feeling inadequate when faced with a single and sometimes more westernised standard of sexiness. Tens of millions of men will not find wives or long-term partners at all, because of China's "missing" women: illegal sex-selective abortions have caused the gender ratio at birth to rise from the natural rate of 106 boys per 100 girls to 118 boys. Many more men are migrant workers who may see their spouses once a year at best. "They can use sexual toys to let their desire out. It's better than going to have sex with prostitutes," said the event's deputy director, Zhu Jianming. But as Sun pointed out, the sex industry is not just the fruit of changing attitudes; it has been aggressive in pushing "liberalisation". A local law enforcement official touches a statue at the fair. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian The results can be alarming. One stall in Guangzhou is advertising a sex doll designed to look like a very young girl. Zhu dismissed concerns: "It doesn't encourage people … You can't criticise a sexual fantasy." But he adds that he too worries that some people "have been influenced by western ideas about sex, are out of control and indulge themselves sexually". He insisted the show was designed to encourage sexual morality and positive relationships, not just sexual knowledge. Though the festival clearly caters primarily to straight men, there are several older couples browsing arm in arm. A husband and wife stop to listen attentively as a salesman demonstrates the different groans emitted by a selection of fake vaginas. "In the past, when two people dated, they even had to keep their distance on the street," said 25-year-old Li Bo, sheepishly clasping the sex toy he had just won in a prize draw. "Of course we wouldn't want to go back to the old times." - Winckel

In you want prudish, sex toys are banned in parts of the US (for example, Alabama) - Winckel

Yes, he's the one who banned sex toys in Alabama :-) - Winckel

I really want that statue in my front yard but since the wife has nixed zombie trolls i'm guessing that is a no too. - Steve C, Team Marina

It makes me think of a famous Chinese food: Scrambled Tomato with egg. The taste is sweet and sour. - @Renchin@

:-) Nothing in common with a tomato from tomato plant in the garden.The plant smells nice,too. Garden- at a good geographical location, with enough sun, not modified seed, organic fertilizers, not too much water. Yes,dreams of urbanized over the top of the head citizen. Have to be satisfied with goods at the close local shop and market. :-) Winckel, it is nevertheless recent article about new built high energy passive complex at one UK street, with a small garden for every tenant there. - Slavomira

"The former archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, has accused David Cameron of "plundering" the institution of heterosexual marriage to promote same-sex marriage rights. Allowing gay marriage would cause deep divisions in society "without giving gays a single right they do not have in civil partnership", he said. At a Coalition for Marriage rally on the fringe of the Conservative conference in Birmingham on Monday, Carey joined David Burrowes, the backbench MP for Enfield Southgate, and former MP Ann Widdecombe in protesting that neither the Lib Dem nor Tory 2010 manifesto included a pledge to legalise gay marriage. Carey claimed that in some countries where same-sex marriage had been made legal – including Mexico, Brazil and the Netherlands – it had led to unforeseen consequences such as three-person marriages. Asked about opponents of gay marriage being described as "bigots" – on one occasion by Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister – Carey said: "Let us remember the Jews in Nazi Germany. What started against them was when they started to be called names. "And that was the first stage towards that totalitarian state. We have to resist them. We treasure democracy. We treasure our Christian inheritance and we want to debate this in a fair way." Widdecombe said: "This is not an anti-gay rally. It is defending marriage." Outside the town hall rally, attended by about 400 people, gay rights protesters accused the platform of promoting "marriage apartheid" by denying the right to marry on equal terms. Cameron has joined the US president, Barack Obama, in endorsing same-sex marriage and is poised to report on the results of a 12-week consultation before proceeding to legislate. All main parties, including the SNP government in Edinburgh, now endorse the change. Burrowes urged ministers to stage a referendum on the issue, as has been done in 32 US states with mixed results. He said there had been no pressure for a change to civil partnership before the election – "no letters, emails or tweets" from voters – but MPs' postbags were now full of the controversy. "If the government can think again about pasties and caravans it can certainly do so about the important issue of marriage," he said. Widdecombe, a former Home Office minister, said such consequences would include the replacement of cherished liturgy and names such as "mother" and "father" with "progenitor A and progenitor B" or "partners to the marriage". François Hollande, the French president, was proposing to use the word "carers", she said. Carey argued that teachers, doctors and other professionals might be forced out of their jobs if they refused to embrace the proposed change to the law, an intolerant restriction on free speech that Widdecombe said could make the Church of England force disestablishment. "I know, David Cameron, that is not the sort of Britain you want," she said.Carey hinted that the prime minister might have conceded the policy on "pragmatic" grounds to sustain his coalition with the Lib Dems – "the very worst of reasons". Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of gay rights group Stonewall, said: "We're deeply saddened that Lord Carey seems to be resorting to student union abuse. The reality is that gay people are very well aware of the consequences of the Holocaust, for obvious reasons, and when someone descends to this level of rhetoric it suggests they don't think they have very powerful arguments to rely on. "Lord Carey is perfectly entitled to his view and we respect that. It's the view of many people of his generation and we accept that, but to compare Cameron to Hitler is just sad as well as being entirely inappropriate. "It's extraordinary that he should resort to this sort of invective and profoundly unchristian. There will be gay people of faith who are very disturbed by what he has said. "The argument is lost already but that doesn't mean the battle won't be a rough one when the time comes. But it is surprising they couldn't come up with a more persuasive argument for this, the apex of their campaign for which they have had had plenty of time to marshall their arguments."" - Winckel

I like these elderly white male homophobes. The claim to Shoah-style persecution is nice too. History will roll over these guys and crush them into oblivion. And I look forward to hastening their demise. This is a fight I like. - Winckel

listening to Yo-Yo Ma. Autorepeat. All day. Very relaxing to work to. - Winckel

"Every major scientific society has affirmed that all our knowledge of biological science convincingly supports evolution by natural selection and cannot be understood without it. At the same time, these societies have carefully avoided offending religious groups by assuring that evolution does not conflict with religious beliefs. (See, for example, National Academy of Sciences. Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1998, p. 58). In fact, this attempt by scientists to convince the American public that evolution poses no threat to faith has largely fallen on deaf ears, perhaps because it is simply untrue, and believers can see this clearly enough. A 2010 Gallup Poll found that only 16 percent of Americans believe in "Naturalist Evolution," defined as the view that "Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life [and] God had no part in the process." This is exactly the same percentage of Americans who declare themselves unaffiliated with any religion. It may be that the only Americans who accept naturalist evolution are those who do not participate in any organized religion. Of 34 developed nations surveyed for their acceptance of evolution, defined as humans and apes sharing the same ancestor, only Turkey was lower than the U.S. So, what is it that the Americans who do participate in organized religion believe? The Gallup Poll found that 30 percent of all Americans agree with "Theistic Evolution" defined as "Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation." And, an amazing 40 percent adopt the "Creationist View" in which "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." This is despite the fact that only 26.3 percent of all Americans belong to Evangelical churches where the Bible is taken literally. This suggests that almost half of the churchgoers who reject evolution do so not because it disagrees with the Bible, but because it disagrees with their personal view of humanity's place in the scheme of things -- that humans are special. Darwin is remembered as a great thinker because he saw that pure random variation was enough to allow natural selection to work. If he had said that supernaturally guided variation created the biological world, nobody would know his name today because that theory has no explanatory power. It just pushes the puzzle off into the never-never-land of the supernatural. The evidence that Darwin began to marshal and that other scientists have accumulated over the nearly 150 years since he published The Descent of Man not only shows how humans descended from ape-like ancestors by a combination of random variation and natural selection. It also implies that the specific outcome of the human species, or any species for that matter, came about by chance. Humans evolved due to luck, not divine purpose. This fact is fundamentally destructive to what every religion teaches about humanity. In his 2003 book Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, paleontologist Simon Conway Morris claimed that evolution converges on certain solutions. However, it's a huge jump from simple convergence, which is the most the data imply, to the inevitably of humans that Conway Morris claims in his title. Convergence is fully consistent with basic Darwinism (See Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True). Several prominent biologists are devout believers as well as articulate defenders of evolution, although they are part of a small minority. In 2005, a federal court in Dover, PA, ruled that the teaching of intelligent design in the Dover public schools was unconstitutional. One of the star witnesses for the plaintiffs was biologist and Catholic Kenneth Miller. In his 1999 book, Finding Darwin's God, Miller argued that God could still be behind the randomness in evolution. As I point out in Quantum Gods, however, Miller's god is a "God who plays dice" that bears no resemblance to the Abrahamic God who plays a very active role in the universe and in human lives. Likewise, the current director of the National Institutes of Health and previous administrator of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, also sees God as the author of evolution. In his 2006 bestseller The Language of God, in a section on "Theistic Evolution," Collins writes: God, who is not limited in space or time, created the universe and established natural laws that govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God chose the elegant mechanics, of evolution to create microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts. Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise to special creatures who would have intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will, and a desire to seek fellowship with Him (pp. 200-201, first edition). He doesn't tell us how he knows all this. Most scientists and science organizations in America wish to stay on good terms with the believing majority, and so the fundamental incompatibility between random evolution -- which is what science says happened -- and divinely-guided evolution -- for which no evidence exists -- is kept under wraps. However, the time has come for scientists and their societies to face up to the fundamental incompatibility between naturalist and theistic evolution." - Winckel

LOL. Squared. :-) - Winckel

"As part of Pulpit Freedom Sunday, religious leaders across the country will endorse political candidates — an act that flies in the face of Internal Revenue Service rules about what tax-exempt organizations, such as churches, can and cannot do. The IRS says tax-exempt organizations, or what they refer to as a 501(c)(3), are prohibited from participating in partisan campaigning for or against political candidates. Yet, despite what's in the rules, the agency continues to struggle to do anything about those who defy the law. Though the regulation has been in place since 1954, in 2009, a U.S. District Court in Minnesota ruled the IRS no longer had the appropriate staff to investigate places of worship after a reorganization changed who in the agency had the authority to launch investigations. New procedures for conducting church audits have been pending since 2009, which has left the IRS virtually impotent in conducting any kind of new investigations. The IRS did not respond to questions. Despite the lack of manpower, organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal ministry that first launched Pulpit Freedom Sunday in 2008, say they take the IRS restriction seriously — even as they disagree with it. "Every pastor and every church has the right to decide what their pastor preaches from the pulpit and to not have that dictated to them by the IRS," said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly the Alliance Defense Fund." - Winckel

I love the response to this - "we can do what we like, irrespective of the law, and you have to subsidise us too" - the arrogance of these people is breathtaking. This is a fight I enjoy. - Winckel

Just managed to get myself on Twitter, hwinckelmann , and expecting Twitter's servers to groan under the strain of traffic. Or not. But it's been fun today reading Dawkins' tweets :-) - Winckel

LOL. My first tweet was to Nick Clegg, our deputy PM. - Winckel

He doesn't seem to be engaging in a lot of conversation there. - Stephan Planken

He isn't the most popular person at the moment...I imagine he's a bit sensitive about that... - Winckel

Here’s the thing. When you use Google Maps, if you zoom in or out, Google downloads new maps to show you the tiles. These are called raster graphics, which are bitmaps because they correspond bit-for-bit with an image displayed on a screen. If you’ve ever seen a file with a .BMP extension, that’s an example of raster graphics. But Apple uses vector graphics. Unlike raster graphics, vector graphics don’t come in files that correspond bit-by-bit with the same image seen on a screen. Rather, vector graphics are made up of mathematical expressions that tell iOS 6 Maps how to draw the map. And since vector maps allow you to scale by any amount without degrading quality - Winckel