We Politely Request That All Off-Topic or Political Comments Be Directed to the Thread Directly Below This One, Which Will Serve Officially as the Current "Active Conversation" Thread for All Discussions Not Related To This Topic.

-- Sincerely, the Fascist MGMT

Baking a traditional cake is a exercise in futility for me. No matter what, it's usually too dry, lopsided, simply ugly, or the filling is a catastrophe.

So I just don't do it.

But cheese cake is different. It's almost impossible to dry it out, the technique is trivial, the ingredients are easy to find, and it's so damned rich that a large cheese cake can feed 12 people.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:09 PM | Comments (149)
Post contains 564 words, total size 4 kb.

San Francisco (a 12-4 team) has to play Green Bay (an 8-7 team) at Lambeau because Green Bay won their Division.

Which is real retarded sir.

Anyway, it's cold. -5. See previous regarding "minus" and temps.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 12:36 PM | Comments (556)
Post contains 44 words, total size 1 kb.

San Diego at Cincinnati. It will be -1 in Cincy tomorrow.

Temperatures should not be minus.

UPDATE: I was informed there is a two cheerleader minimum on playoff posts.

Ok. My bad.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:53 AM | Comments (350)
Post contains 40 words, total size 1 kb.

For non-book related stuff.

And below the fold, Willie Robertson shoots poor, innocent creatures with a crossbow: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:02 AM | Comments (25)
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

First, a quick thanks to Dave in Texas for filling in for me for the last couple of weeks while I was traveling. Now on to the gun chitchat ...

More Guns, Less Crime

Be sure to check out Ace's post and the discussion on the podcast about the latest study that shows (SHOCK!) proponents of gun control are wrong about pretty much everything:

The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).

The history of gun control in the US is relatively short and littered with failure. But remember, the left just wants to "do what works" and enact some "common sense gun safety laws" or whatever poll-tested euphemism for banning guns they're using these days.

Related: Obama Proposes Firearm Background Check Changes

Dick Metcalf, Boo F'n Hoo

Speaking of proponents of common sense blah blah blah, the New York Times has a piece profiling poor Dick Metcalf this weekend.

“I’ve been vanished, disappeared,” Mr. Metcalf, 67, said in an interview last month on his gun range here, about 100 miles north of St. Louis, surrounded by snow-blanketed fields and towering grain elevators. “Now you see him. Now you don’t.”

There was a lot of discussion about "scalp hunting" or whatever around Metcalf, but a comparison to the brouhaha around the A&E/Phil Robertson incident is instructive.

First, there's no shortage of gun magazines and gun writers to read, not to mention websites to frequent. The publishers of Guns & Ammo were rightly concerned that having an editor who thoroughly misunderstands the second amendment (the NYT elided over the problems with Metcalf's argument, which Maet handled well on the blog) is bad for business. Meanwhile, A&E apparently briefly forgot that there was only one Duck Dynasty, leaving the Robertsons holding all the cards. So as an economic decision, G&A made the right one ... as, ultimately, did A&E.

As far as the content of the speech goes, Metcalf's out-of-the-blue support of gun regulations would be like Phil Robertson renouncing hunting and announcing that all proceeds from Duck Dynasty would henceforth be donated to PETA. Decrying consumers who understandably vote with their feet and wallets Because Free Speech!!11! ignores the simple fact that they chose to read the publication in the first place and they can just as easily choose to stop.

Now if you'll pardon me, Mr. Metcalf, I have a tiny violin to tune.

Gun Of The Week

(answer below)
more...

Posted by: andy at 06:00 AM | Comments (128)
Post contains 723 words, total size 6 kb.

New and improved for 2014.

Posted by: andy at 04:04 AM | Comments (243)
Post contains 13 words, total size 1 kb.

This Painting Is Full of Homoerotic Imagery. Can't You See It?

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the award-winning AoSHQ's prestigious Sunday Morning Book Thread.

Everyone is Gay, Especially Famous Dead Guys

OK, so there's been some brouhaha going on this week over Norman Rockwell, American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, a newly published biography of the American artist by Deborah Solomon. She manages to find homosexuality, pedophilia, or some other repressed sexual subtext underneath everything Rockwell ever thought, wrote or drew in his entire life. It's like finding animals in clouds or patterns in Rorschach ink blots that say more about the psychology of the observer than snything else.

For example:

Her take on Freedom of Speech is that the man standing is ‘unattached and sexually available. Unbuttoned and unzipped.’

Yeah, right. Solomon probably just should have titled her book, 'The Queering of Norman Rockwell', and be done with it, but that would have narrowed its appeal down to only a handful of moonbat academics and killed any sales potential. It's so bad that the family of Norman Rockwell has issued a statement denouncing Solomon's book as the work of an ignorant hack:

She has neglected or misused the sources which she cites. Her use of Norman Rockwell's autobiography, My Adventures As An Illustrator, is highly selective. As Professor Patrick Toner of Wake Forest University states in his online review on First Things.com, ‘Solomon has a pronounced tendency to either distort or simply ignore evidence to the contrary’...sex is a major theme of the book and her phantom theories color and distort everything, including Rockwell’s entire character and her interpretations of his art.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:04 AM | Comments (276)
Post contains 1204 words, total size 9 kb.

That first wild-card game was a real barn-burner.

Let's see if the Aints can pull a win out in the cold weather against the Iggles.

Posted by: Code Red at 04:09 PM | Comments (362)
Post contains 41 words, total size 1 kb.

Here's a time killer until the NFL thread goes up.

This fella has much too much time on his hands.

While were shooting the breeze here, take a look at this photo. It seems this baby doesn't much care for Miss Mccarthy. Who can blame him?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:14 AM | Comments (190)
Post contains 60 words, total size 1 kb.

Alright, you morons with the frozen pipes? Don't do this! House fire caused by tenant thawing frozen pipes.

Keep an eye on the sun. Big ass sunspot 1944 is rotating into geoeffective position for Earth directed CME's. In fact, there was some activity with M-Class flares earlier today with a CME. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:42 PM | Comments (749)
Post contains 424 words, total size 5 kb.