A long time ago, the French teacher at the technical college, an enthusiastic museum visitor and opera lover, was in the classroom on a drizzly afternoon. He reported on an exhibition of the works of the surrealist Belgian painter René Magritte in Brussels. One of his most famous paintings, he said, showed a pipe with the caption “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”. “But you won't understand that,” he continued, dryly, with his report and then proceeded with the lesson. This made it clear (not very subtly) that he was actually looking down on us — after all, we were stupid science students and, above all, cultural barbarians with whom all this beauty had not been shared...