I have only one question for you: You gonna light that pipe?

Design Observer has a slideshow of Tom Manning’s spam cartoons, short strips inspired by (and consisting of) the text from spam mail. Turning spam subject lines into comic strips is nothing new, but Manning’s art is the only I know that uses the whole shebang. The work is some beautiful stuff.

Joseph Sullivan of The Book Design Review has released his 2007 list of favorite book covers. There is still time in 2007 for new releases, but even if one or two more greatly designed books are released, the list remains a nice bit of eye-candy. For even more book cover design, see Fwis.com’s frequently updated Covers

I will admit that xkcd can sometimes be…a bit much, and the latest strip is definitely one of those times, but may I present to you 1337: Part 3, in which we learn of how super-hacker Elaine “helped start a movement among teen girls, a culture of self-taught female programmers and musicians, coding by day and rocking out by night — Riot Prrl.”

Italian Spiderman - “Shut your mouth, pussycat, and find me a macchiato, pronto.”

Somehow, even with all the publicity surrounding how frequently employers use Facebook to check on employees, some people still post Halloween party pictures after requesting off from work for a family emergency. (Cool wand.)

Oobject.com is like a “Billboard charts for gadgets”, with top whatever (10, 15, 20, 22, etc.) lists of a variety of different gadgets. Sometimes mundane (mobile media devices), sometimes stunning (*cough* ray guns), but always fun (time machines).

If you find yourself alone in the woods with nothing but an onion, some Gatorade, and a dead iPod, don’t worry. Household Hacker has you covered in this week’s episode: How to charge an iPod using electrolytes. Then again, maybe you’re more interested in creating a speaker for under $1 out of a paper plate, aluminum foil, and a penny.

See For Yourself is an online gallery of perceptual illusions provided by Duke University’s Purves Lab. The site is so well done that, honestly, it makes me want to do research there.

Make A Cylon Jack-O-Lantern - Just in time for Halloween! Cylons, of course, are those war machines from Battlestar Galactica with the panning red laser eye. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.

And… um… also just in time for Halloween… candy corn dildo! Fun for the whole family!

Similarly, everything you don’t want to know about your kid’s sex life:

To figure out what teens are up to when their parents aren’t watching, we gave 53 boys and 47 girls from four Manhattan high schools a series of 37 questions designed to tease out exactly how far they go. Then went after 100 parents…and put them to the test, with one difference: We asked them to guess their own teens’ answers. As you’ll see, the high schoolers and the parents live on fairly different planets.

Erik Blevin’s Kick Ass Movie Pitches:

You know how some movies get sold on one idea or sentence (or a sentence filled with an idea)? Idea #1: What if the Internet turned into a Were-wolf?

The Walt Disney Co. on Thursday said it took “appropriate action” against employees at its Paris theme park who were caught simulating sex while dressed as Disney characters in a digital video that has received wide attention on the Internet.

secret wall tattoos - You never know when you’ll spend a night in a hotel, only to find some secret graffiti hidden behind the generic paintings.

From the department of useful internet tools: Ridester, “the dependable way to rideshare between cities in the USA”.

Best best best best photo description ever: SF Gate: galaxies colliding. “Is that a red giant or are you just happy to see me?” Those looking for a more academic description can head over to Astronomy Picture of the Day: October 24 and learn more about the Antennae galaxies in collision.

New York Changing - A gallery of New York, then and now. Some of the changes are more noticeable than others.

David Plain - “At last, a decent episode of David Blaine’s “Street Magic” has found its way to the Internet. Amazing! (Strong language.)”

Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table has been named the best science book ever written by the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

Shuttle launch seen from ISS - A couple images, via comic-writer-extraordinaire Warren Ellis, of a space shuttle launch as seen (supposedly) from the International Space Station. However, the ISS is at an altitude of about 360 km (according to Wikipedia), and these pictures look to be taken from an altitude more like 15 km…. so you be the judge.

vNES - An online NES emulator. In other words, you can play the original Nintendo right in your browser. Huzzah!

AskMeFi: Metafilter, “magazine” of the future! - An interesting discussion comparing Metafilter to high-brow magazines (Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Economist, etc.). There are clear distinctions between link aggregators like Metafilter and full-blown magazines like The New Yorker, but an interesting discussion none-the-less.

Ambient Devices, makers of the ambient orb and ambient umbrella, has created a clock which combinesGoogle Calendar and analog timekeeping. Following their inventive name scheme, it’s called an ambient clock.

onegoodmove: Jack Bauer Justice:

What is it about the right-wing’s penchant for TV justice. Last night it was the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore. “You know what this is really. It’s Jack Bauer justice … he should run the CIA” to which Bill Maher responds, “you do realize it’s a TV show,” but Rep. Barney Frank (D) Massachusetts got to the heart of the matter when he said, “It’s not terrorists we’re talking about, it’s people accused of terrorism.”

40+ ways to make money on the internet - I might have to look at this more closely.

My friend recently (as in three months ago) informed me of a development in book publishing. It seems that for a small price (not much more than a regular book), you can design and publish your own book in any minute quantity you want. Normally publishing a book requires printing a whole bunch of them, so this is pretty cool. Self-publishing for the win! Lulu and Blurb are two such companies.

The Department of Olllllllllllld but if you’ve never seen it before, it’s new to you!:

The Powerbook Prank - He wanted a Powerbook. We gave him a P-P-P-Powerbook!

George Washington - “Washington, Washington, six foot eight, weighs a fucking ton.”