segways

"Let's run it through from the top. This is going downhill."

Dean Kamen is standing on a six-inch riser in an almost empty room in the basement of Westwind, his 32,000-square-foot house in Bedford, New Hampshire, trying to get this thing right. It's crunch time for FIRST, the high-school robotics competition Kamen founded two decades ago in an effort to get kids jazzed about engineering, to make science as sexy as sports. (FIRST = For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.)

In less than a month, 42,000 students on 1,700 teams will gather at 43 regional championships to showcase the ball-throwing 'bots that each team has spent six weeks assembling in novel ways from nearly identical boxes of parts. At stake -- besides glory -- is $9 million in scholarships.

The Segway Enthusiasts Group of America announced today that it will disband after a period of inactivity and an absence of candidates for its board of directors. Apparently the dorky-looking human-transporter, which travels at a heart-thumping max speed of 12 mph and costs upward of $5,000, isnt garnering a whole lot of enthusiasm anymore. Ya think?