Sunday Links

Gudelon Castle : Building a 13th-century castle in France, using period materials and techniques.  I'm not sure what their plan is for when it's done (make it into a sort of museum?), but the website has a lot of information on it about the history and such.  However, you can also see that what they are interested in is very specifically the construction techniques - why not include some historical information about all the people who went into building a castle, especially in comparison with what those trades are like today?

Defining Prosperity Down : One person's theory that the government, rather than making it a priority to find/create jobs (who the hell cares about the deficit when so many people are unemployed, I mean christ), will define it as a structural issue out of its control, and high unemployment will become the new norm

5 Myths about the Bush Tax Cuts : I think the biggest point of this, and many others who aren't proponents of tax cuts, is that they are disproportionately skewed towards the highest earners, in terms of how much money you actually save.  Additionally, as a way to stimulate the economy, they fail because higher earners are not very likely to put that money back into the economy - they have the flexibility to take that extra money and save it, whereas people in the lower and middle classes often do not.  As an economic thing, unemployment benefits come much closer to a 1:1 ratio - every dollar spent = a dollar put back into the economy (without a job, you should have to use all this money to cover expenses, not save - this theory is obviously a lot more effective in a situation with high unemployment, such as now).

King Tut's Chariots  : Marvels of ancient engineering...

Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling : On paper at least, this is very eloquent.  It's funny, because I can relate.  I may have been salutatorian of my highschool, but I came out having no idea what I wanted to do, partly because the only thing I knew I was passionate about was horses, and that had already been damned as a career choice.  Looking back I know that I was lucky with the teachers I had, but I'm still glad I found some postprocessual historians and anthropologists/archaeologists at the colleges I went to.

New Zealand's Next Top Cat Model  : Just Awesome - I linked to the video because it's pretty funny.