The Heirs Of Rube Goldberg

Hey, wouldn't it be cool to make a cannon that can shoot a potato a couple hundred yards?

And wouldn't it be cool to put a motor on a shopping cart and see how fast that sucker can go?

And wouldn't it be really cool to hook up your living room couch to a device that makes it shake whenever there's an explosion on the TV show you're watching?

If your answers to those questions are "yes!" and "awesome!" and "duuuude!" the chances are good that you are:

a) male

b) gloriously immature and

c) a potential reader of Make magazine.

Make is the quarterly publication that tells its readers how to do all those things -- and much, much more!

"Make is a new magazine dedicated to showing how to make technology work for you," editor and publisher Dale Dougherty wrote in the premiere issue, which appeared in February.

Anybody wondering just what Dougherty meant could turn to Page 50 of that issue to find a 33-page article that revealed how to build a gizmo that takes aerial photographs using a disposable camera, a kite, rubber bands, Popsicle sticks, fishing line, a toothpick and Silly Putty.

Silly Putty?

That's right. It's used, believe it or not, in the contraption's timing mechanism.