Land O Links

"We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed" -- Charles Caleb Colton, 19th century English writer.

* Bridge's media partner, Mlive.com, is publishing an impressive series this week on self-defense shootings in Michigan. First major point: There are far more of these shootings than the official stats would lead you to believe:

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/06/justified_to_kill_blog_a_diges.html

* The changing trends involving fire safety received extensive coverage in Bridge recently. Blogger Matt Yglesias notes, "It's genuinely plausible to argue that fire-fighting services are less socially valuable than they were 10 or 40 years ago when the state of the built environment made fires a more pressing problem":

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/09/fire_deaths_are_on_the_decline.html

* The Mackinac Center for Public Policy takes a dim view of a proposal in the Michigan House to deal with the school employee pension crisis by prefunding retiree health-care benefits. "The cost of this insurance coverage will not decrease if the state begins prefunding them. Prefunding only allows the state to make accounting assumptions that cause the future costs to appear smaller," writes Mackinac's James Hohman.

http://www.mackinac.org/17058

* There's been plenty of discussion in the Bridge comments about the need for/value of a college education or training past a high school diploma. This chart lends support to the argument that anyone who stops with just a high school diploma these days is asking for big trouble:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/06/chart-of-the-day-1.html

* This chart puts an interesting spin on the question of how best to use money to enhance public health in the United States:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/06/how-much-does-medical-care-matter.html