Amateur Hour

Between the concert last night and an afternoon cookout at the house of one of Kate's co-workers, we were out of the house for most of the day yesterday. This means light blogging today, as I struggle to deal with the stuff I really should've done yesterday.

I do want to note, though, the New York Times Magazine article on amateur inventors competing for NASA prizes:

When Peter K. Homer, an out-of-work director of a local community center in Maine, first heard that NASA was turning to America's backyard inventors to brainstorm new technologies for a possible return to the moon, he had an idea. With NASA sponsoring seven design contests for everything from a new lunar lander to a new space glove, anybody with a home-brewed invention could enter. Homer's previous jobs included some gigs in the aerospace industry as well as work sewing boat sails. So, Homer told me not long ago, he ruled out building a flying spacecraft but decided that "the glove contest represented something of the scale I could achieve working out of my home by myself." He'd always been a garage tinkerer, he said, and being unemployed, he also wanted to prove to his 14-year-old son "that you can do anything if you put your mind to it." Oh, he added offhandedly, "the money is a motivator, too." At stake was a prize -- presented with one of those giant cardboard checks -- for $200,000.

It's a nice piece, documenting the inventive and slightly obsessive nature of the people setting out to win prize money for inventing space gadgets. Horner spends a bunch of time wrapping gaffer tape around his fingers, looking for a better glove design, and in the end... Well, you'll have to read the article to find out what happens.