Miscellaneous linkdump Nov 11

• Orioles bring back the cartoon bird!  Tom Scocca approves, but grumpily.  What word describes my formerly retro hat that is now no longer retro?
• Old Skull was a punk band of Madison 9-year-olds that opened for Sonic Youth and got airtime on MTV in the late 1980s.  The rest of their story is pretty damn sad.
• The Inverse Symbolic Calculator, aka “The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, but for real numbers” works a lot better than it did a few years ago.  (Via the Notices)
• It’s interesting to read a 1987 version of the New York Times’s annual “Asian-Americans:  why are they so mysteriously good at school?” article; in some ways it’s exactly the same article they might run today, but it’s somehow tonally very antique.  For instance, I think in a 2011 article Sylvain Cappell would not be identified as “Professor Cappell, a Jew.”
• Memories of William Sleator.  If you have a child age 10 or up whose outlook on life is too sunny, make sure they read House of Stairs and The Green Futures of Tycho right away.

Linkdump, September 2008

• If you’re tired of politics, relax and enjoy the glory that is the Muppet Show theme song in Hebrew (.mp3 link) courtesy of WFMU.
• Or if you’re tired of politics but want to let out your aggression instead of relaxing, listen to the amazing John Peel Punk Rock Special from December 10, 1976, featuring in-studio performances from the Damned, at Infonistacrat. The Peel Session versions of “Neat Neat Neat” (.mp3) and “New Rose”, which I’ve had since I was 16 on an ancient cassettte mix with most of Ramonesmania, are as close to perfect as punk ever got. (To be fair, it mostly wasn’t trying.)
• Finally: I bought a lot of tomatoes this week. Here they are.