Over yonder in the baked-bean eating, geeklish-speaking wilderness of MIT, somebody has invented a machine that makes dishes on demand. Basically, you put acrylic discs into said machine, tell it to make you, say, ten soup bowls, ten plates, and thirty cups -- you three-kinds of wino you -- and the machine then molds each plastic disc into the requested shape. Then after your snooty meal, somewhat soused but full of adjectives like "full-bodied," "bold," and "for the love of god, it's just fermented fruit juice," you run your dishes through the dishwasher, put them back into the machine, and then using some long-awaited Jetsons magic, the dishes are pressed back into acrylic discs, ready to be used again and again.

Now that, ardent fans, is a truly terrific future-type invention. Why, it even beats out cars which run on ethanol instead of petroleum -- because unlike the latter, I can actually imagine a plastic dish-maker being used one day. After all, there are no lobbying fatcats rubbing their greedy, dish-covered, Hummer-creating hands behind the acrylic dish-making industry. Yet.

Dun-dun-duuuuuun.