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The helicopter led him to North Dumpling Island, a speck of land with a lighthouse, located in Long Island Sound. His flight instructor's wife, a real estate agent, told him the island was for sale. One winter day, he set out to find it. He brought the chopper down near the lighthouse tender's home. A frightened old man, part of the family that owned the island, came out to see what was going on. The young inventor befriended the man and his wife. When Kamen later bought the island (at a bargain price), he let the couple continue living there.

Though Kamen doesn't visit the island much anymore, it's a microcosm of his worldview, a whimsical combination of leave-me-alone and dreams of techno-utopia. An aerial photograph that hangs in Kamen's office at Deka bears a caption that reads "The Only 100 Percent Science-Literate Society."

When Kamen wanted to erect a wind turbine on North Dumpling and the state of New York objected, he seceded from the US. Though the secession has never been officially recognized, he signed a nonaggression pact with his friend, then-President George Bush, and enlisted Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry's as "joint chiefs of ice cream." North Dumpling has its own flag, its own anthem, a one-ship navy, and its own currency. One bill, which Kamen carries in his wallet, is the value of pi. "You can't make change for it," he says with a grin. "It's a transcendental function."

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phreedom420 said:

Making money in America isn't hard. A person with a college degree should be able to make at least 50,000$ a year.

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