When gold prospectors first ventured to California, the equivalent of a hot tub meant farting in a zinc trough full of tepid water. Today it means an object reminiscent of CERN's LHC particle detectors, with several hundred jets, built in 40 inch plasma TVs and seating for ten.We put this list together largely because there is something fascinating and supremely gadgety about the variety of arrangements of body shaped molds and strategic placement of jets, that when laid out side by side, in a gallery, seems particularly impressive. This type of space ship like hot tub design seems like something unusual enough to define a time and place, like fins on 50s cars or undulating water beds from the 70s.

The best current ebay auctions for oobject heads, including a Mickey Mouse that has been in space, a $4000 armor dress and some great vintage computer gear including an original Altair 8800b. vote for your faves.

There is something fantastically hellish about fiery steel manufacture, nothing seems more gigantic or obviously dangerous looking. The instruments used to transfer molten iron, steel and slag are massive solid items made of the same thing they contain in liquid form and are objects of wonder.Particularly interesting are the torpedo ladle railroad cars, which transfer hot metal from blast to oxygen furnaces. They are dramatic and interesting enough that despite their obscurity they are available in several forms for model railroads. Vote for your faves.

Comic book ads are the nadir of capitalism, where the ability to blatantly deceive through advertising is exacerbated by the fact the audience is young children. Here are some classics.

This week, the overall value of everything created by American companies since 1997, the year Steve Jobs returned to Apple, as measured by the stock market, was valued at $0.Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and started a decade long period of corporate innovation and development: changing retail and product design; inventing new entirely new products and form factors such as the iPod; reshaping the music industry through iTunes; the cellphone market with the iPhone and delivering the worlds most sophisticated computing platform with OS X. Since nothing shows pace of change better than technology, to demonstrate what Apple have done while the entire marketplace has theoretically done nothing, here is a retrospective list of our favorite Apple moments over the last decade, under the helm of Steve Jobs. Vote for yours.

Suits for hazardous materials are serious business and high tech., but look ridiculous. They come in several varieties: Splash Suit, Gas Suit, Turnout Coat for different levels of contamination. Their look ranges from giant pink translucent condom like outfits, to oversize Tasmanian Devil shaped suits. From the examples in this list, standard training procedures include washing down while standing in a regular inflatable kids paddling pool and basketball dribbling.