How could they we have turned back?

At the dawn of the Age of Exploration, China stood ready to play a leading role. Fleets of exploration had been sent out through the 15th century, under imperial sponsorship. Yet the Chinese stopped these efforts, and turned inwards.

In hindsight, one wonders how this could have happened. But are we in the same position now? That is what I wondered, reading Instapundit's commentary on China's present-day enthusiasm for pushing new frontiers, and the contrast to the present-day West's ennui.

It's not so much if you don't pay 'em

Police in Brazil have finally caught up with a serial speeder who owed $1.9m (£1m) in traffic fines.

Sao Paolo police who pulled over Armando Clemente da Silva were shocked to discover he had clocked up nearly 1,000 violations, local media report.

Mr da Silva had accumulated the fines for speeding and running red lights over a seven-year period.

The driver, 36, said he had not received any penalty tickets because he had been too busy to register his car.

From the BBC.

Bringing back the extinct tortoises of the Galapagos

An extinct Galapagos tortoise species could walk again, scientists believe.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report finding relatives of Geochelone elephantopus alive and well.

Cross-breeding these living tortoises might re-create the extinct species - though it could take a century.

From the BBC.

Taken for a ride

A friend just passed along this bit of NY Times muckraking, and it's shocking:

To understand what it's like to work on the railroad -- the Long Island Rail Road -- a good place to start is the Sunken Meadow golf course, a rolling stretch of state-owned land on Long Island Sound.

During the workweek, it is not uncommon to find retired L.I.R.R. employees, sometimes dozens of them, golfing there. A few even walk the course. Yet this is not your typical retiree outing.

These golfers are considered disabled. At an age when most people still work, they get a pension and tens of thousands of dollars in annual disability payments -- a sum roughly equal to the base salary of their old jobs. Even the golf is free, courtesy of New York State taxpayers.

With incentives like these, occupational disabilities at the L.I.R.R. have become a full-blown epidemic.

Virtually every career employee -- as many as 97 percent in one recent year -- applies for and gets disability payments soon after retirement, a computer analysis of federal records by The New York Times has found. Since 2000, those records show, about a quarter of a billion dollars in federal disability money has gone to former L.I.R.R. employees, including about 2,000 who retired during that time.

Keep reading the article, and it just gets worse and worse. A more brazen fraud is hard to imagine, yet it's been going on for years.

Giant diamond found

Miners in Lesotho have discovered a huge gem stone . . .

The stone weighs 478 carats and is the 20th largest rough diamond ever found, said Gem Diamonds.

The company said the uncut rock was recovered recently from the Letseng mine, owned by the company in Lesotho.

The diamond, which is as yet unnamed, has the potential to yield a 150 carat cut stone, and could sell for tens of millions of dollars, the company said.

From the BBC.

Dating Stonehenge

Archaeologists have pinpointed the construction of Stonehenge to 2300 BC - a key step to discovering how and why the mysterious temple was built.

The radiocarbon date is said to be the most accurate yet and means the ring's original bluestones were put up 300 years later than previously thought.

The dating is the major finding from an excavation inside the henge by Profs Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright.

The duo found evidence suggesting Stonehenge was a centre of healing.

From the BBC.