Re: ice-9

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Brian S McQueen <address@hidden>

    > What does ice-9 stand for?  What is it? Where did it come from?

It comes from a book by Kurt Vonnegut called "Cat's Cradle".

Cat's cradle, if you haven't heard of it, is the name of a game two
children can play with a loop of string.   You start by looping it
over the fingers of either hand (in, roughly, a simple "oval"
configuration) and then pass it back and forth, with each pass adding
additional complexity to the looping structure (more and more
crossings of the string) until things are so tangled that no further
progress is possible.  For some reason, this is considered fun.

Ice-9, as I recall (it's been a while since I read it), is the name of
a fictional (knock on wood) discovery made in the context of some
comperable children's games (scientific research, international
politics and war, religion, etc.). It's a crystaline form of water
which is solid at room temperature.  Drop a seed crystal into a glass
of water and the contents of the glass rapidly solidify.  You'd have
to stick it in an oven to get back to liquid state.  Hey, keep that
stuff away from my well!

"Solid at a wide range of temperatures" and "rapidly growing seed
crystal" might give you some idea of the free associating that led me
to pick the name.  In retrospect, perhaps it was an ironic choice? :-)

-t