19 June

It's time Australia and the world dumped the 'pub test' and replaced it with the smart test. Society will never progress if the only thing that can be done is what people pissed off their tits can understand. Here's a good example. This machine is literally miraculous, the genius needed to build it almost defies belief. It's an EUV photo-lithography machine, that creates the circuits on silicon chips. It does it by altering the surface of the chip one atom at a time, with an extreme-UV laser. To generate the EUV light, it uses molten tin, which it fires lasers at to create the UV. That extreme UV light is then captured by a series of mirrors that are so smooth that if you made them the size of Australia, the biggest bump on the mirror would be less than half a millimetre high. Mind-boggling precision, but then the machine is moving individual *atoms*. I see little to no respect for the sort of expertise that does stuff like this, not least because few even know about it. Without this machine nearly every single modern comfort you enjoy would cease to exist, overnight. If you asked for a vote at the pub on it, I'm sure it would be voted down in favour of another round of drinks, and a football stadium. Incidentally if you wanted to buy this machine, which wouldn't be allowed, it's top secret, but just as a fun if...it would cost you over $200 million. It's one of humanity's greatest achievements, that most people have never heard of, because the pub test is the benchmark we use.