Apple-1 #82, handmade by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, is up for auction at Christie's. It's expected to sell between $159,800 and $239,700:

According to the auction Web site, this version of the Apple computer is number 82 of those made, and was hand built by Steve Wozniak and then “despatched from the garage of Steve Jobs’ parents’ house – the return address on the original packaging present here.” (The Christie’s catalog uses a British spelling of dispatched. )

The version for sale through Christie’ths includes “the original packaging, manuals, cassette interface and basic tape, early documentation and provenance, and a commercially rare letter from Steve Jobs.”

Link via CrunchGear | Photo: Christie's

Miguel Soto bought a sandwich at a deli and walked home. While on his way, he was shot twice. But Soto didn't let that problem distract him from having his meal:

Police say a 25-year-old Connecticut man who was shot twice after buying a sandwich at a New Haven deli went home and ate his lunch before going to the hospital. Miguel Soto said he was leaving the deli Tuesday when he heard three gunshots. One bullet hit him in the left leg, another in the groin. Police said he went home and ate the sandwich before asking his father to take him to a hospital.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iKPEG_V9I9253mTkRQuT6XY7geGA?docId=9acfe9efb3d647018205df1479bd895c via Stuff | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user Bradley Gordon used under Creative Commons license

Many squid are able to change the appearance of their skin in order to camouflage themselves when they encounter predators. It's been suggested that the polarization of light on the skin of squid may be a form of communication. Now, for the first time, researchers have uncovered evidence for this property among the longfin inshore squid:

While the notion that a few animals produce polarization signals and use them in communication is not new, Mäthger and Hanlon’s findings present the first anatomical evidence for a “hidden communication channel” that can remain masked by typical camouflage patterns. Their results suggest that it might be possible for squid to send concealed polarized signals to one another while staying camouflaged to fish or mammalian predators, most of which do not have polarization vision.

Mäthger notes that these messages could contain information regarding the whereabouts of other squid, for example. “Whether signals could also contain information regarding the presence of predators (i.e., a warning signal) is speculation, but it may be possible,” she adds.

Link via Make | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Sharife used under Creative Commons license

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Sumalee and Kasem are two baby otters that live at Longleat, a wildlife park and zoo in Britain. In this video, Beverley Allen introduces them a large wading pool. Allen says:

I started off putting them in the sink with a little bit of water when they were about nine weeks old. Then they progressed to my bath, where I could make the water a bit deeper to let them practice their breathing. Now they're splashing around quite happily in a paddling pool, with a few toys to encourage them to play.

Link via Hell in a Handbasket

Frank Kachanoff, a psychology researcher at McGill University (Canada), conducted an experiment on the emotional responses of people to images of meat. He discovered a positive correlation between meat encounters and a calmer disposition:

Kachanoff recruited 82 men and asked them to punish an aide with various volumes of sound each time he made an error while sorting photos, some with pictures of meat, and others with neutral images. The researcher had anticipated participants who watched the aide sort meat photos would inflict more discomfort on him, but he was surprised when those pictures did not provoke aggressive behaviour.

“[W]ith the benefit of hindsight, it would make sense that our ancestors would be calm, as they would be surrounded by friends and family at meal time,” Kachanoff said in a press release.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo by Flickr user Naotake Murayama used under Creative Commons license

Shawn Thompson and his friends spent three years making an amazingly detailed set of Halo armored suit costumes. At the link, you can view pictures that show how much effort and skill went into molding, casting, sculpting, and painting the components.

Link via DVICE

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Defense contractor SPAWAR System Center Pacific has developed a system that turns a stream of seawater shot into the air into a functional antenna:

As the pillar of water is squirted through the current probe, a magnetic field is created and signal comes through to a hooked-up communication device.

Plus, depending on the height of the stream of water, you can get UHF, VHF and HF broadcasts, all from the same jet of H2O. You can even set up multiple jets of water, at different heights, to broadcast on different bands simultaneously. Handy.

The idea could prove particularly useful for ships, which struggle to find room for all the antennas on board. US Navy ships already have upwards of 80 antennas on deck, meaning real estate for extra towers is hugely limited. Instead, the sea water device can be placed anywhere on the deck.

Link via Ace of Spades HQ

American actor Dick Van Dyke claims that his life was saved by porpoises. Van Dyke fell asleep on his surfboard one day, and when we woke up, he could no longer see the shore. He asserts that porpoises pushed him back to land:

"I woke up out of sight of land ... and I started paddling with the swells and I started seeing fins swimming around me and I thought, 'I'm dead!'", he said

"They turned out to be porpoises [and] they pushed me all the way to shore. I'm not kidding."

Link via The Agitator | Photo by Flickr user Alan Light used under Creative Commons license

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CG artist Maxime Luère made this short film. It depicts the life of man, from his foolish teenage years to his growing maturity, and ultimately, his death of old age. Luère's medium is a series of Facebook updates.

via Urlesque | Official Website

Two years ago, Peggielene Bartels, a US citizen and resident of Maryland, received an early morning phone call. Her uncle, the king of a village in Ghana, had died. Bartels was the next in the line of succession, and so she became king of Otuam:

Nana Amuah-Afenyi VI is Bartels' new title, but she is better known as King Peggy. This straight-talking, 57-year-old is the first woman in her fishing community of 7,000 people in Ghana's Central Region to be anointed a king, or "nana."

She now juggles two lives — from the palace in Otuam and from a modest condo outside Washington, D.C. Since the 1970s, Bartels, a naturalized U.S. citizen, has been a secretary at Ghana's Embassy in Washington where she still spends most of her time, running royal affairs back home in Otuam over the phone and on trips to Ghana.

"So, when they told me, I was a little bit reluctant to accept it, because it comes with responsibilities. And here is a secretary in the United States, I have my own obligations, bills and stuff and becoming a king, you have to be really rich," she says.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130902212 via View From The Porch | Photo: Eric Don-Arthur/NPR

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During the Cold War, the Swedish Air Force wanted to be able to land its fighter jets on roads and short airstrips throughout the country. The Saab Viggen fighter was therefore designed to land and take off from very short runways. As you can see from this video, this fighter can land, turn around backwards, and take off in under a minute.

via reddit

Her name is Sparkles, and she (he?) will bring hearts and other metal objects together at 370°F. This My Little Pony mod was created by Matt Pinner.

Link via Make | Photo: Crash Space

Luxury home furnishings designer Windisch Nameek made a toilet brush and holder that's plated with 24-carat gold. The vendor suggests that the advantage to gold is that it won't pit, tarnish, or corrode. So it's a practical choice.

Link via J-Walk Blog | Photo: Pioneer Linens

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Filmmaker François Vautier put an ant colony inside a scanner and took a picture once a week every week for five years. This time-lapse video shows the colony gradually filling and eroding the machine.

via GearFuse

Harvard University's Putnam Gallery has a collection of historical scientific instruments. Pictured above is Benjamin Martin's cometarium, which dates back to about 1766. Here's what it did:

This apparatus was designed to demonstrate how the speed of a comet varies in its orbit according to Kepler's law of equal areas. The comet Benjamin Martin chose for this instrument is Halley's Comet, which goes around the Sun every 75 1/2 years. Martin began producing cometaria before Halley's Comet made its predicted return, and so was betting that Halley would prove correct in his theory.

http://dssmhi1.fas.harvard.edu/emuseumdev/code/emuseum.asp?collection=120&collectionname=CHSI%27s%20Putnam%20Gallery&style=single¤trecord=67&page=collection&profile=objects&searchdesc=CHSI%27s%20Putnam%20Gallery&sessionid=C2E2B76B-E06A-4F9D-8DD1-8AECE2978F18&action=collection¤trecord=68 via CrunchGear | Photo: Harvard University