But still… CDE? Fvwm? Hard to tell because these goddamn Unix people keep imitating each other’s window decorations…

Another take on my perennial favourite social convention, the dress code: Signalling (on Cosmic Variance).

This instance of the pro-dress-code argument is so lame I can hardly be bothered to discuss it (“Everyone should dress so that they wouldn’t embarrass my mother”), but I welcome people making good fun out of it. So, like I already said back in the day, dressing up is about signalling status – but why do we have to drag aesthetics into this? Can’t we simply wear t-shirts that show our current bank balance, grade average, or pictures of our model-grade SOs? Why the silken suicide utility? I might add that signalling status is actually counterproductive in academia, since discussions are not supposed to be guided by “the guy with the necktie said it, so it must be true”-type decisions. In the long run, I hope that the belief in suit == authority will fade away, helped along by the tireless work of Chinese tailors flooding the market with cheap high quality evening dress. Still, I’m not holding my breath (nor am I as religious about the “don’t dress to impress” rule in real life, being the unprincipled cynic that I am).

While preparing a chemistry presentation, I came across a book describing research chemists by giving each person two pages – one describing their research interests and results, and one for a recipe. Given that I was looking for something different, the only thing that stuck with me was the exceptional simplicity of the recipe for dulce de leche (immediately reminding me of a dot-com era business plan):

1. Put a can of condensed milk (the sweetened kind!) into boiling water.
2. Boil for two to three hours.
3. ???
4. Profit!

The ??? part is apparently called a Maillard reaction and magically creates caramelly goodness (the linked Wikipedia article is slightly weird since it claims that Maillard reactions are only significant at temperatures above the boiling point of water, citing a reference that makes no such claims). Since my condensed milk came in a tube instead of a can, I was a bit nervous about pressure issues, but it seems that Nestlé’s packaging engineers overspecified enough to make it work.

Two-and-a-half hours of boiling got me a distinctly unrunny consistency, which tends to stay in shape against gravity’s meager coupling constant, even when poured on ice cream or such (which, due to certain associations most people have with piles of brown sausagy stuff, is not so great for the enterprising host). Maybe I’ll give it a little less time on the next run.

Oh, I just remembered I still have this blog. As usual, the end of the semester was way too much work university-wise, but at least I managed to make room for an actual break by taking all the exams for the semester in advance and thus completely finishing it by February 1. January hell aside, I’d call this the best semester so far. Here’s a little artistic contribution from the fun hours before my quantum theory exam:

The thought of eating another Dragee Keksi, however, has become rather revolting to me (which might have something to do with the unfortunate coincidence of my quantum theory exam and my local supermarket’s “buy three packs, get one free” offer).