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Foreign Policy has the headline: What do the Virginia Tech slayings say about South Koreans?

I’ll tell you what it says: don’t write stupid blog posts.

What a stupid headline. FP might conclude that there isn’t a question in relation to South Korean students, but the whole question shouldn’t have been put in the first place, and certainly the arguments that there’s something wrong with South Koreans shouldn’t have seen the light of day, full stop.

For starters, the chap is suppose to have been in the US for over 12-13 years, since he was a child. Secondly, just because there was a massacre in 82 in South Korea doesn’t mark an entire nation of people as nuts.

If you want to draw any sort of thing from this whole thing, its that US gun laws are stupid, that the proliferation of gun ownership in the United States makes these sorts of things more likely to happen in. That’s the logical conclusion.

I’ll reprint Crikey’s subscriber email from yesterday, judge as you may, I’m right of centre politically, maybe more libertarian than conservative, but when it comes to guns I don’t like them, and I don’t believe every man and his dog should have one:

Virginia state gun laws. Frequently asked questions:

Is a permit required to purchase rifles, handguns and shotguns? No.

Is registration required for rifles, handguns and shotguns? No.

Is licensing required for the owners of rifles, handguns and shotguns? No.

Do you need a permit to carry rifles and shotguns? No.

Is a permit required to carry a handgun? A permit is required only if the weapon is concealed.

Is there a one-handgun-per-month limit on gun sales? Yes

Are there limitations on assault weapons and magazines? No

May police limit the carrying of concealed handguns? No

Must child-safe locking devices be sold with guns? No

Are background checks required at gun shows? No

Are minors restricted from possessing guns? In part

Is a licence/permit required to buy handguns? No

Are all guns registered with law enforcement? No

Is safety training required for handgun buyers? No

Is it illegal for holders of concealed-weapon permits to carry guns into schools? Yes

I like this guys logic:

“Beer is the basis of modern static civ?Ǭ?ilization,” began Bamforth, Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Brewing Science at the University of California, Davis. “Because before beer was discovered, people used to wander around and follow goats from place to place. And then they realized that this grain [barley] could be grown and sprouted and made into a bread and crumbled and converted into a liquid which gave a nice, warm, cozy feeling. So gone were the days that they followed goats around. They stayed put while the grain grew and while the beer was brewed. And they made villages out of their tents. And those villages became towns, and those towns became cities. And so here we are in New York, thanks to beer.”

It’s published in the Scientific American, so it must be true 🙂

It’s days like this I miss owning The Blog Herald…if only so I could be higher up the list 🙂

Dipping into the Blogpond has put together a new list of Australia’ Top 100 blogs, and I’ve made in at #8, all for a site which I don’t even really try on, seriously needs some template fixing (anyone for black links!) and probably could do with a little bit of promotion. Maybe next week 🙂

I’m going to have a Dave Winer moment here and ask the question: is there any way to pull this data into say an OPML file of feedurl’s or similar so I can subscribe to all of them at once?

(in part via Trevor Cook)