It’s the end of an era as the vehicle voted worst car of the millennium has gone out of production.

The Yugo, the car everyone — or almost everyone — loved to hate, is no more.

The last one has rolled of the production line at the Zastava factory in the Serbian town of Kragujevac.

Since it first appeared in 1953, almost 800,000 Yugos have been sold, but an attempt to sell it in North America in 1986 ended disastrously, despite having the lowest list price on the market.

[T]he boxy Yugo was derided by American car magazines “as barely qualifying as a car” and “an assembled bag of nuts and bolts.” U.S. owners complained of frequent engine failures and transmission problems.

The Yugo was the butt of some fine jokes:

Why is the Yugo’s rear window heated?
To keep your hands warm while you push it.

- - -

How do you double the value of a Yugo?
Fill up the gas tank.

- - -

What takes up the last six pages of the Yugo users’ manual?
The train and bus timetables.

Yes, it truly is the end of an era.

In a precedent-setting court case in Labrador, a man who ran a marijuana grow-op in his house has been convicted, not only of drug offences, but also of child endangerment. Two children were living with him in the home.

RCMP seized 37 marijuana plants from the Happy Valley-Goose Bay resident Corey Saunders in November 2007.
[…]
Saunders pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges of cultivation of marijuana, trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking.

But a guilty plea on an additional charge of child endangerment, under Newfoundland and Labrador’s Child, Youth and Family Services Act, has made the conviction the first of its kind, said Cpl. Keith MacKinnon.

MacKinnon told CBC News that police will consider laying charges in similar cases, if they bust a drug operation that is set up near children.

Marijuana grow-ops typically require use of dangerous chemicals and acquisition of extraordinarily large quantities of electricity.  Home wiring must be modified to carry levels of juice it was not intended to carry.

Mr Saunders received a 14-month conditional sentence and is prohibited from owning a firearm for 10 years. The CBC report does not say how old the children are or whether they are still living with him.

So says Datuk Faiza Tamby Chik, a retired high court judge, speaking to an international symposium on comparative law.

Citing the case of Lina Joy’s renunciation of Islam, Faiza said the high court in its decision ruled that a Malay under Article 160(2) of the Federal Constitution remained in the Islamic faith until his or her dying days.

He also claimed that non-Muslims in Malaysia enjoy great religious freedom

He said non-Muslims in the country had wide religious freedom and that the primary limitation on non-Muslims applied to those whose beliefs and religious practices included the propagation of their faith.

Since Jesus told his followers to “make disciples of all nations”, Christians consider evangelisation an essential aspect of the faith and would regard legal impediment against converting to Christianity as a fundamental infringement of religious freedom.  In fact, the case of Lina Joy proves that it is Christians, not Muslims, who suffer religious discrimination in Malaysia. The high court’s refusal to recognise her renunciation of Islam and conversion to Christianity does not change the fact that, in the eyes of God, she resolved to leave Islam and follow Jesus.

I doubt that Malaysian law places any restrictions on pro-Muslim proselytisation.

h/t: Persecuted Church Weblog

The collect for today, the Feast Day of Saint Edmund (841-869), King of the East Angles, Martyr (source);

O eternal God,
whose servant Edmund kept faith to the end,
both with thee and with his people,
and glorified thee by his death:
grant us the same steadfast faith,
that, together with the noble army of martyrs,
we may come to the perfect joy of the resurrection life;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Epistle; 1 St Peter 3:14-18
The Gospel: St Matthew 10:16-22

Edmund was raised a Christian and became king of the East Angles as a young boy, probably when 14 years old. In 869 the Danes invaded his territory and defeated his forces in battle.

According to Edmund’s first biographer, Abbo of Fleury, the Danes tortured the saint to death after he refused to renounce his faith and rule as a Danish vassal. He was beaten, tied to a tree and pierced with arrows, and then beheaded.

His body was originally buried near the place of his death and subsequently transferred to Baedericesworth, modern Bury St Edmunds. His shrine became one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in England, but it was destroyed and his remains lost during the English Reformation.

The cult of St Edmund became very popular among English nobility because he exemplified the ideals of heroism, political independence, and Christian holiness. The Benedictine Abbey founded at Bury St Edmunds in 1020 became one of the greatest in England.

St Edmundsbury Borough Council has posted a history of Saint Edmund’s legend.

Artwork: St Edmund the Martyr, stained glass, c 1420-40. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

An Iranian-born blogger who holds dual citizenship with Canada has been arrested in Tehran and charged with spying for Israel.  Hossein Derakhshan, known as the godfather of the Iranian blogosphere (or “Blogfather”), returned to his homeland about three weeks ago.

A prominent Iranian blogger, nicknamed the Blogfather for spawning Iran’s spectacular blogging revolution, has been arrested in Tehran and accused of spying for Israel.

Hossein Derakhshan, who was last based in London after spending several years in Canada, returned to live in his homeland a few weeks ago.

He wrote that he “LOVES living in Tehran again” in his most recent posting nearly a month ago. He was “frustrated by slow internet connection, but generally impressed”.

Travelling on a Canadian passport, he made a highly publicised trip to Israel in 2006 on a mission to show his “20,000 daily Iranian readers what Israel really looks like and how people live there”. He also wanted to “humanise” Iranians for Israelis.

Mr Derakhshan’s arrest at this time seems odd because his recent blog posts have been strongly pro-Iran and anti-Israel.  If convicted of spying, he could face the death penalty.

In a post from Israel in January 2006, he acknowledged that the visit broke a “major taboo”.

Derakhshan is credited with designing a simple way to display Persian letters online, paving the way for the emergence of Iran’s rich and vibrant blogosphere.  Today, Iran’s percentage of internet users is second only to Israel among Middle Eastern countries.

In related news today, the Iranian government admits blocking access to 5,000,000 websites and censoring several million more.

h/t: Global Voices Online

UPDATE (20 Nov.):  Annie Lessard informs us in the comments that the “generally reliable” anti-mullah blog Iran Resist regards Derakhshan as an agent of the regime.

Men With Facial Scars Are More Attractive To Women Seeking Short-term Relationships — Science Daily, 19 November

Sleep helps people learn complex tasks — Booster Shots (L.A. Times Health Blog), 18 November

A fascinating conversation appeared earlier this week at Apple’s online discussion board. A poster claimed to be a woman who had discovered troubling and suspicious items on her husband’s iPhone. When she asked about them, he claimed to be the victim of an iPhone “glitch”.

I took my husband’s i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account). When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!

Her question attracted 22 replies, almost all of which pooh-poohed her husband’s story. It’s impossible for images to attach themselves to e-mails, and equally impossible for unsent e-mails to appear in the “sent” folder.

Some respondents were hopeful that her marriage could be patched up, but most were not:

Your husband is lying to you. […] Not only is your husband cheating on you, he LIED. TO. YOU. AS. WELL.
[…]
The iPhone does not have this bug. Ditch the creep.
[…]
[T]his aint a glitch, your marriage has a glitch and its him, get rid of it, you are better off alone!
[…]
Your husband is cheating on you. You have the evidence. Now take him for everything he has.

Inevitably, two posters (or one poster using two different names) claimed the glitch had happened to them more than once. They were quickly dismissed as phonies—and perhaps her husband.

h/t: Macworld UK

The British government has announced plans to make it illegal to pay for sex with women who have been trafficked or are otherwise controlled by a pimp. The change is intended to combat human trafficking in the UK.

Men who have sex with women who have been trafficked or forced into prostitution will face prosecution under a shake-up of vice laws unveiled today by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

Ms Smith said the tough new approach will mean there are “no more excuses” for men who use the country’s estimated 80,000 prostitutes.

Under the changes, paying for sex with a woman “controlled for another’s gain” will become a “strict liability offence” in England and Wales, meaning prosecutors will not have to prove that the man knew a prostitute was being exploited in order to charge him.

Ignorance of the woman’s circumstances will be no defence and those convicted will get a criminal record and a fine of up to £1,000.

If a man arrested under the new law knows that the woman has been forced to prostitute herself, he could be charged with rape and given a jail sentence.

The proposed law would also allow arrest of first-time kerb crawlers and give police broader powers to shut down brothels.

According to police estimates, the law would potentially apply to customers of 70 percent of prostitutes now working in England and Wales.

A spokesman for a group called the English Collective of Prostitutes claims the proposals would make prostitution “more dangerous” for women, but offers no suggestions to help rescue women who have been trafficked or otherwise compelled to work as prostitutes.

Australia’s proposed nation-wide compulsory internet filter will cause a major reduction in web access speeds.  Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is the point man for mandatory internet censorship down under.

The key shortcoming is ISP filtering will slow down the web to all Australians by as much as 60 per cent, depending on the sophistication of the filtering program that your ISP has in place.

Australia has one of the slowest broadband delivery systems in the OECD and if Conroy has his way, it’s going to get a lot slower.

There is also solid evidence that the system will be ineffective and unnecessary.

[I]n the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) 2005 report, Kids Online at Home, 50 per cent of parents trusted their children not to head off to the web’s dark corners and 67 per cent of parents reported supervising their children’s internet use to some degree.

The overall view of the report is that there are filters currently in place and that these filters are of the safer, saner type, stemming directly from parental authority.
[…]
The rock spiders who download this [child pornography] material do not Google search their way onto a web site. For the most part, paedophiles operate in sophisticated and complex networks and rely heavily on peer to peer (P2P) technology which ISP filtering cannot prevent.

This is shaping up as another costly and pointless government boondoggle that will have negligible effect on the alleged problem but will impose huge costs on citizens who have done nothing wrong.  Kinda like Canada’s gun registry.

h/t: Andrew Bolt

Iran is seriously ticked off with Canada. That just breaks my heart.

Iran’s foreign ministry sources said on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic should respond to the Canadian-sponsored UN resolution criticizing Iran’s so-called violation of human rights ‘fittingly’.

“Canada has been deprived of positive relations with the Islamic Republic as a result of its anti-Iran resolution and its present approach toward the country,” the source said.

The resolution is due to come to a committee vote this Friday, 21 November. If the committee approves, the General Assembly will vote on it.

A new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that babies conceived by assisted reproductive technology, including in vitro fertilisation, are two to four times more likely than naturally conceived babies to develop heart abnormalities and other birth defects.

The findings applied to single births only, not to twins or other multiples. The defects included heart problems, cleft lip, cleft palate and abnormalities in the esophagus or rectum. But those conditions are rare to begin with, generally occurring no more than once in 700 births, so the overall risk was still low, even after the fertility treatments. Cleft lip, for instance, typically occurs in 1 in 950 births in the United States, and the study found that the risk about doubled, to approximately 1 in 425, among infants conceived with the fertility treatments.

The procedures that increased the risk were so-called assisted reproductive techniques, like in vitro fertilization, which require doctors and technicians to work with eggs and sperm outside the body. The study did not include women who only took fertility drugs and did not have procedures performed.

This study has found an unexplained correlation and should not be taken as proof that IVF causes or contributes to birth defects. Further research needs to be done with larger samples before any causal relationship can be inferred. Still, one would think these results should be discussed with any would-be parents. Informed consent requires full disclosure of all known risk factors.

In related news, the Quebec Liberal party has promised full public funding of up to two IVF procedures for infertile women wanting babies. This reverses the earlier stand of the health ministry that the procedures are not health related, too costly, and have a high failure rate.

News mogul Rupert Murdoch says mainstream media are losing circulation and money because of contempt for readers.

Murdoch, whose company’s holdings also include MySpace and the Wall Street Journal, criticized what he described as a culture of “complacency and condescension” in some newsrooms.

“The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly–and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception.”
[…]
“A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let’s be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.”

Many reporters really do believe they are morally and intellectually superior to their readers. Blogging has potentially given everyone a public voice, and the j-school types can’t stand it.

h/t: small dead animals

William Katz, writing for the American think tank Hudson Institute, argues that multiculturalism has become, in effect, an ideology of the left. For one thing, Westerners are expected—indeed, constantly hectored—to “understand” other cultures, but other cultures are not encouraged to understand ours.

Multicultural ideology is anti-intellectual, amoral, and runs counter to the very idea of civilisation.

One of the building blocks of multiculturalism is non-judgmentalism. All cultures, we are told, have their own validity. And, after all, who are we to question what someone else does? Why, that would be cultural imperialism. The anti-intellectualism and amorality of this position is simply breathtaking, yet it’s a widely held notion. After the 9-11 attacks, the president of Mount Holyoke College, where young women are presumably educated, actually praised her students for being non-judgmental about the people who had just hijacked and murdered. Even college presidents chimed in, informing us that we didn’t really comprehend the cultural factors driving the suicide bombers.

You know, if only we understood German frustration, we could deal with this man Hitler.

Non-judgmentalism violates one of the most fundamental concepts of civilization - that to be civilized means making choices, including cultural choices. The citizen is called upon to judge and evaluate all the time - in elections, in trials, in determining social policy. The basic American history text in Robert Hutchins’s college at the University of Chicago was called “The People Shall Judge,” not “The People Shall be Non-judgmental.” We not only have a right to judge, we have an obligation, and that obligation extends across cultures. We had an obligation to judge apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States. We had an obligation to judge the Gulag in the Soviet Union. We have an obligation to denounce the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia.

Champions of multiculturalism are loathe to talk about the failings of non-Western cultures because that would require discernment and exercise of judgment.

Mr Katz’s biography indicates a wide range of experience. A graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and former editor at The New York Times Magazine, he has also worked as a CIA officer, political aide, and writer of novels and television comedy.  Currently, he blogs at Urgent Agenda and Power Line.

From The New York Times to blogging. Some journalists and journalism professors would regard that as traitorous.

Home Depot today announced that its third-quarter profit was down 31% over the year before.

Home Depot Inc reported a 31% drop in quarterly profit on Tuesday as consumers put off big-ticket projects amid a deepening economic crisis.

But Home Depot’s fortunes are sure to improve beginning this week.

Home Depot set to open 60,000-square-foot store in New Minas

New Minas, a leisurely 30-minute drive from Nova Scotia Scott headquarters, bills itself as the “Shopping Mecca of the Annapolis Valley”. The town has no mosques, so apparently the strip malls and box stores will have to do.