Does anyone else out there enjoy listening to Gregorian chants?  Or is it just me?

Palm Bay, Florida:

A homeowner stopped an alleged burglar by beating him into submission with a football helmet. Kevin Williams, 44, of Palm Bay spotted a man outside his window at 3:15 a.m. Monday using a screwdriver to pry at the screen door, Florida Today reported.

"I had to protect my home . . . I wasn't sure what in the world he would do, rape my wife, steal something, I didn't know," Williams said. "I got my son's helmet from the garage, went out there and hit him several times. I started from the head and worked my way down to the body."

Should have used a hammer.

Fortunately for the home owner, the invader apparently wasn't armed.

Some new research into an ancient computer (bugmenot):

The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers was able to decipher many inscriptions and reconstruct the gear functions, revealing, they said, “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.”

The researchers, led by Tony Freeth and Mike G. Edmunds, both of the University of Cardiff, Wales, are reporting the results of their study in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions and the gears were a mechanical representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course across the sky, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.

[...]

Historians of technology think the instrument is technically more
complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterward.

I know I haven't done much gun-blogging lately.  I've been in kind of a slump, I guess.  But I have something in the works which I should be able to finish this weekend.  It just involves a lot of scanning and uploading, so it's somewhat time consuming.  Another item of half nostalgia and half historical interest that I accidentally found several days ago.

Modern political correctness and rampant nannyism is revising history.  Many contemporary renditions of Santa Claus have removed the pipe.  I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone re-writes "The Night Before Christmas" to remove the stump of a pipe clenched tight in his teeth.

"The 25 Days of Santa" will be a series of old portrayals of Santa Claus, one each day through Christmas Day.  No commentary, just pictures.

The first item up is from 1901.

Why do I keep getting spam written entirely in the Cyrillic alphabet?  I haven't the slightest inkling of what they're saying.  As usual, no links to whatever they're supposed to be advertising, but I think this time there's a phone number in it.  Maybe it's a phone number.  I can't really tell since I can't read any language written in Cyrillic.

I suppose it's even possible that it isn't spam.  I have no way of knowing, I'm just assuming.  So if it isn't spam, here's a tip:  I can read English fluently.  I can't read any Cyrillic language.

Whatever it is, it has a very well-ordered and detailed bullet list.