Tiny Planet

The Japanese market is apparently embracing more eco-friendly hybrid vehicles at a much greater rate than the US, largely due to a more wide-ranging incentive scheme. The sale stats don’t lie, as we can see (I’m including the hyperlinks from the original article to make it easier to follow up on what’s going on):

In Japan, where hybrids are now tax-free and gas prices are 78 percent higher than in the U.S., a hybrid (Honda’s Insight) topped the charts for vehicle sales for the first time ever in April. And Toyota’s gen-3 Prius, which took the crown last month, is doing well enough that the company has reportedly brought back overtime and started recruiting workers from other Toyota factories to keep up with booming demand. Chief Prius engineer Akihiko Otsuka told the New York Times recently that he expects hybrid sales to “push up the entire car market.”

Yet a Honda executive has just announced that the company expects to miss its sales targets for the Insight by as much as 33 percent this year in the U.S. That’s partly because of relatively low gas prices — they’ve dropped as much as 35 percent in the last year. As J.D. Power and Associates powertrain analyst Mike Omotoso told us recently, “When gas is cheap we tend to buy large vehicles without too much concern for the environment.”

China has executed the leader of a bogus scheme for breeding ants to make aphrodisiacs that conned investors out of 3 billion yuan ($439m, €346m).

Stop laughing that the guy’s name is Wang.

The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is blaming them on groups from neighbouring countries. I’m a bit cynical: it’s an easy claim to make and by shifting the focus abroad it’s a quick way of being seen to be making progress. There are, after all, a number of separatist and insurgent groups that have been active in the country for years.

One also has to wonder, if the groups are from other countries and the Indian government knows this within hours of the attacks, thereby implying intelligence on the attackers, why did it not take some preventative measures? Or was it genuinely taken by surprise? The attackers had military-grade explosives, which indicates access to substantial logistical support.

The standoff has some time to go, but the Times of India is doing a good job of keeping readers up to date.

This shot of wind tower in Jaipur is one of my favourite photos of recent times. And it certainly helps take one’s mind off the carnage that’s going on in Mumbai.

While on the subject of great photographs, here are ten of Hubble’s best before it gets decommissioned in 2010.

Say phooey to that digital alarm clock and get a pin one instead.

Although given its recent track record (read “Vista”), Microsoft has got a fair bit right.

Could newspapers have survived the web?

The credit crunch/economic meltdown has thrown up all sorts of new financial terms. Just to add one: apparently Nokia refers to “synergy-related headcount adjustments”, better known to you and me as redundancies.

Hypermiling might be the word of the year but I prefer topless meeting. Only it’s not what you think.

Fine Gael’s economic ‘plan’ dissected in far better fashion than I can muster.

Greenland goes to the referendum booth to seek greater self-rule powers.

Take that you spammy feckers.

If we could resurrect neanderthals by cloning, should we?

The town where no one is allowed to die.

China’s output per head of population is smaller than Albania’s. Except China could probably buy swathes of the planet.

Wooly mammoth DNA decoded. Am I the only one who wants to see this species roam the Earth again?

A gallery of the greatest conspiracy theories.

Prices at Dubai’s Palm developments are down 40% to a paltry $2.7m.

Vive la France (in digital library terms at least).

It seems 21% of Americans can’t find the Pacific Ocean on a map. On the plus side, 94% can find the US.

The fakir who was buried alive for 40 days.

I kid you not.

Das Kapital, the manga version, is due to hit bookstores across Japan next month with its complex ideas ambitiously repackaged into digestible comic format.

The appearance of the famous economic treatise in the form of a comic is the latest sign of a resurgence of left-wing literature in Japan as the world’s second largest economy sinks into recession.

Microwave an instant chocolate cake in a mug. Tiny Planet accepts no responsibility for things going wrong or it tasting like crap, though.

People are giving up their pets because of the credit crunch.

Blogger gets 20 years for posting a picture of Burma’s military leader.

Dirt + manure = energy.

Meanwhile, the Maldives is trying to buy land in case the islands are swamped by rising sea levels.

Why would you shock yourself for the sake of good posture?

This is a very sad story but one that highlights, if highlighting were needed, the repercussions from the meltdown.

The global financial crisis is taking its toll in India’s cities as some despairing investors and stockbrokers seek refuge from their losses and debt in suicide.

A wave of financially related deaths over the past month has sparked concerns about the vulnerability of unsophisticated investors and borrowers encouraged by rising markets and easy credit in one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Is faith in reincarnation playing a part in this? In another terrible statistic, the FT story says that about 1,000 farmers kill themselves every month because of crop failure and debt.

While the world continues to cheer the election of Barack Obama as president of the world’s most powerful democracy, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck has been anointed king of the world’s newest, Bhutan.

Apparently you can accidentally steal a car.

Gorillas need surgery too.

Companies are turning to blogging as a way of reporting layoffs, rather than letting them get picked up by the traditional media.

It’s a beard off!

Cleantech is growing in silicon valley.

The Mars lander is guestblogging on Gizmodo