Everyone needs a summer project (or sixteen), and among mine was mixing the perfect margarita. In pursuit of the perfect margarita, I read a lot of recipes, and a lot of opinions. I finally made progress when I realized something important: the way to make a perfect margarita is to ignore everything anyone else has ever said about what makes a perfect margarita. That realization, and a little fiddling, and there it was in my hand: my (not “the”) perfect margarita.
That last little tweak of the wording is key. My perfect margarita might horrify a margarita purist – no, never mind “might”, it’s sure to. But because I’m mixing a margarita for me, it makes absolutely no difference what anybody else thinks. It’s my perfect margarita.*
I have not yet written the perfect scientific paper. It turns out that’s harder. Continue reading