I Want One: 3D Printers take information from CAD software such as Solidworks and produce prototype models from plastic in a matter of hours. Currently the printers cost about $50K, but Manufacturers of the printers have plans to make models that are von Neumann machines, reducing the cost. Other companies have plans to offer online replication services. For example, you design your own action figure in software, send it over the web to the printer, and have a solid plastic model sent back to you the next day. Cool! (HT: Wall Street Journal).
Excellent Book: Glen Stassen’s Living the Sermon on the Mount. This challenging study will change how you read the Sermon on the Mount, including the beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer. A longer review is for another day, but here is a little nugget from the book:
The beatitudes are not about high ideals but about God’s gracious deliverance and our joyous participation. Here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says we are blessed because God is not distant and absent; we experience God’s reign and presence in our midst and will experience it even more in the future…. What greater meaning in life can there be than to participate, even in a little way, like a mustard seed, in the deliverance that God brings in Jesus?