BB pal Vann Hall spotted this great headline at The Register. It's no joke, either. Walter L Wagner and Luis Sancho fear that firing up the new Large Hadron Collider could create a black hole that might suck the Earth into a parallel universe. So they've sued to delay the LHC from being switched on. "And people claim we live in a too-litigious society!" says Vann. Link

There are many things to like about this 1972 Ideal toy commercial:

1. The Jean-Jacques Perrey background music.

2. The black set.

3. The announcer's voice.

4. The name of the toy: Bing Bang Boing.

5. The toy itself, which is a brightly-colorted DIY Rube Goldberg kit with lots of fun parts that you can set up in different configurations.

It's got to be a Marvin Glass creation. (Thanks, Richard!)

I've got no idea what the story is with this awesome CGI Flash woman, except that she appears to have been created by a Brazilian design firm, and that she has made every person I've shown her to say, "Oh. My. God." Link (via Kottke)

The New York Times has a loving profile of Mad magazine idiot gang member, Al Jaffee, who at age 87, recently completed his 400th Mad Fold-in!

“When he brings in fold-ins now, a lot of times, it’s, ‘Geez, this guy’s painting better than ever,’ ” said John Ficarra, Mad’s editor.

And Sam Viviano, the art director, seems in awe of Mr. Jaffee’s old-school technique. “I think part of the brilliance of the fold-in is lost on younger generations who are so used to Photoshop and being able to do stuff like that on the computer,” he said. “It’s matching the colors and keeping the sense of what exists at two levels, the original image and the folded-in image. We’ve never actually known anyone else who could do that.”

Mr. Jaffee does have a computer, but its main benefit, he said, has been to make the typographic tricks in the fold-in easier to create. He doesn’t draw with it, which leads to another surprise: the master of the fold-in never actually folds.

“I’m working on a hard, flat board,” he said. “I cannot fold it. That’s why my planning has to be so correct.”

“The computer would make it so much simpler,” he added. “But I think I’m going to remain a dinosaur.”

Link | Interactive Fold-In gallery (Thanks, Coop!)

Porsupah, "You might recall the 'OS-tan' series of manga style characters depicting various operating systems. Here's a similar concept, portraying the various countries surrounding Afghanistan similarly cutely: meet Afuganisu-tan, Kyrgyz-tan, Pakisu-tan, Meriken, and more. Each strip offers a little adventure for the characters, whilst the accompanying text explains some more of the history of the region's countries, rulers, would-be conquerors, and myriad factions." Link (Thanks, Porsupah!)