Announcements

Fascination:  Bruce Hood

Fascination: Bruce Hood

Are you one of the nine out of ten adults who purportedly believes you can tell when someone is watching you from behind? If so, does it occur to you that this is a kind of supernatural belief? Dr. Bruce Hood, Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol and the latest subject of our ongoing series of interviews with notable Makers, has some fascinating theories about how such “routine” supernatural beliefs come about as natural consequences of the normal psychology of child development. He also talks briefly about how his own childhood enthusiasm for the paranormal eventually came full circle in his mature scientific interest in the psychology of paranormal belief. Fascinating stuff.

First Halloween Microchip giveaway happening now

Just a reminder that the first promotional giveaway from this year’s Halloween contest sponsors is currently underway. First up for grabs is a PIC32 Starter Kit, shown above, with a retail value of $50, together with a PIC32 I/O Expansion Board, shown below, which sells for $72. To enter, leave a comment on the announcement page describing what cool Halloween-themed project you’d make with it. The winner will be announced this Friday, October 9.

RSS all over again

Yesterday, our online tech team, ever-vigilante to keep our site ship-shape, updated our RSS templates. Unfortunately, this caused RSS reader applications to think all the entries in the feed were new and downloaded them again. Oops. We’re sincerely sorry for any problems, inconvenience, or hair-pulling this may have caused. We’ll try to make sure it […]

An older human ancestor than Lucy

An older human ancestor than Lucy

Yesterday was a big day for anthropology, seeing the first publication of some 15 years worth of analysis of a 4.4 million-year-old fossil skeleton of Ardipithecus Ramidus first discovered by Gen Suwa, then a graduate student of Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White, in Ethiopia, in 1992. Science magazine has made all eleven papers freely available to […]

The monthly Make: Newsletter is back

The monthly Make: Newsletter is back

Just wanted to make sure that everybody knows that we’ve started publishing the monthly Make: Newsletter again. The new version will have some original columns, exclusive features, special deals on subscriptions and Maker Shed products, and provide a bit of a behind the scenes look at Maker Media. One of the new columns introduced in […]

Maker Shed Science Room Grand Opening Sale

Maker Shed Science Room Grand Opening Sale

The paint has dried, the floor’s been swept of construction debris, and all the merchandise is now in place in the Maker Shed’s new Science Room section, their companion to our new Make: Science Room. To celebrate this accomplishment (think: ordering, receiving, warehousing, and merchandising hundreds of chemicals and lots of things made out of glass!), they’re holding a massive Grand Opening Sale.