Winter Wonderland: I'm Confused

I just heard about the Global Thermostat project. I don't know what I could possibly say. I wish ours was a world in which things like this don't happen. Why do so many people want to destroy the world? How can they be so selfish that they think their vision of the world is worth all the lives they take to achieve it? I'm a freaking cryogenetic, and even I don't want to live in an ice age. This is our damned planet. It belongs to baseline humans, superhumans, metahumans, cyborgs, xenoids, plants, animals, fungi, and whatever else I've overlooked. We all have to live on this one planet. We're not getting another one. The Pan-Galactic treaties are very clear about that. And yet it seems like every day another person tries to destroy it.

I can't think about this anymore. I can't think about the people just like me who are dying. Since this is my blog, I'm going to be selfish and talk about me now. I need the distraction, and the best part about navel-gazing is that I never find something traumatic in there. I'm going to ignore the rest of the world, and the looks on people's faces whenever they hear the word cryogenesis. Here's what's been happening in my life.

Internet's been down here for days due to a combination of nasty thunderstorms and DJ Livewire redirecting communications satellites for some interstellar crisis. The power's been down too, and you can imagine how pleasant that is in June in South Florida. Cryogenesis has never tasted sweeter. On that note, I've been researching peppermint. Science students bear with me here, I know I'm bastardizing this. Peppermint contains menthol, which chemically triggers TRPM8 receptors. TRPM8 receptors are sensitive to cold, which is why peppermints make your mouth feel cool. So I'm wondering if the sporadic spontaneous peppermint taste is less a sign of impending brain tumor doom, and more a matter of crossed wires in my chemical receptors that interpret peppermint and cryogenesis the same way. Or maybe I can produce menthol? I'm confused. Maybe I should conduct a scientific experiment and smooch someone to determine whether or not I'm only imagining the peppermint taste. Or I could just ignore the problem and eat another peppermint humbug. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

Winter Wonderland: Movies

I've been trying to find reasons to keep using my cryogenesis. The media is bombarding me with images of how NOT to use cryogenesis. I'm not sure if I'm glad that everyone can see what Killer Frost has done, or if I'm angry at how predatory the paparazzi are towards the victims. Mostly I'm just horrified. Nobody deserves to die like that. Not supervillains, not murderers, not anybody.
So I've devoted the past couple of days to therapeutic fluff movies and rediscovering what I love about my powers. I missed yesterday's Winter Wonderland installment, so here it is.
The classic cryogenesis movie is The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I never really got a feeling of bleak winter horror out of what the White Witch did to Narnia. It seemed like a really awesome place: snowball fights every day, misty breath, frosted windows, ice castles, kickass fur coats. And imagine what that would do for the winter tourism industry. You know the Archenlanders were totally skiing there. I would. I thought Narnia was much cooler in its beautiful stark winter than in spring with all those flower people and snooty lions prancing around. The White Witch had some very pretty sparkly ice effects. I kind of envy her, the way she never gets her outfit wet despite all the snow. The more recent Narnia movie has a really cool scene involving a frozen river. You know, whenever anyone crosses any frozen body of water in a movie, someone is inevitably going to fall in. It's like that rule in theater about how the loaded gun in the desk has to go off by act three. Except this rule is more likely to result in someone pulling the old let's-cuddle-for-body-warmth act, which I don't think you can do with a gun scenario. Unless it's a freeze ray.
Carrying on the tradition of evil cryogenetic women is the Snow Queen, in the movie of the same name. The movie takes place in a wonderful little Germanic town with ice skating, hot chocolate, sledding and all the other seasonal perks of living in a place that isn't Florida. I wish I could make it snow all over Florida for just one day. I've seen real snow before on vacations, but some people never have. That strikes me as unutterably sad. Anyway, the Snow Queen has an awesome sled and a polar bear and some sort of mirror mind control-ish power that I never quite got. I highly recommend the movie.
In the X-Men movies, Bobby (Iceman) has a cameo. He does a cute thing with his powers, making a blooming rose out of ice. I admire his delicate touch, and the way he got the ice so clear, but perhaps it's not a good idea to hand something that cold to someone you like. Just because you're immune to cold doesn't mean your sweetheart is. Also, she probably doesn't want to carry around a chunk of ice that will melt all over her textbooks. In later movies Bobby does standard stuff like walls of ice, but he doesn't get much screen time. I know he's fictional, but I'm kind of relating to him. My powers look a lot like his, except not as good. I might be able to make a wall of ice, but then I'd have to find some place to hide it until it melts. I tried making an ice rose. I had to make all the petals separately and then make more ice to stick them together. It was kind of blobby, but it looked rose-ish. Kind of. I don't think I've seen Bobby make snow in the movies either, but I think he can in the comic books. Maybe I'm the type of cryogenetic who's just supposed to make ice instead of snow.
More recently, there is Frozone in the Incredibles. I like how he breaks away from the stereotype of Aryan cryogenetics. Seriously, just because I can make ice doesn't mean I'm descended from people who lived in icy climates. That's like saying every hydrokinetic has the last name Fisher. It doesn't work that way, people! Frozone was more of a cryokinetic than a cryogenetic, because he used ambient humidity, but he managed to produce amazing amounts of ice, really fast. His power also produces fluffy snow, which I envy because he uses it to cushion a couple impacts. Also, he could hypothetically start a snowball fight AT ANY MOMENT. Imagine living with that potential. I just have my little hail balls, and I wouldn't want to use those in a friendly fight because they're solid ice. It's like having a pillow fight after stuffing your pillowcase with bricks. Frozone has very aerated ice for the most part. It's white, unlike the mostly clear glasslike stuff Bobby makes in the movies. Frozone also does that classic violating-the-laws-of-physics skating ramp ice thing, except he disintegrates it behind him to reuse the water. I totally wish I could do that.
So in essence, I've been avoiding the news and watching movies that make me want to use my cryogenesis in new ways. I've also invented a way to motivate myself to practice every day: Freeze Pops. Little tubes of flavored water, which I can turn into popsicles merely by holding them and concentrating. I think I'm going to run out of room in my stomach and Freeze Pops in my fridge before I hit the limits of my power or even get appreciably better at freezing things in my hand, but this is the best practice tool ever.

Winter Wonderland: Tools of the Trade

Since I live in Florida, I don't have access to a lot of anti-ice devices. Screwdrivers and hairdryers really aren't cutting it for me, as yesterday's events demonstrated. My ankle hurts from where I scraped it. It's not infected or anything, but it throbs whenever I walk. I can't exactly tell my parents that I've stabbed myself with a screwdriver, so I don't even get sympathy points from them. Of course, I'm totally lazy, so the not-walking thing is well within my normal range of activity.
I've been researching ice management online. The options so far are salt, antifreeze, and windshield scrapers. I'm not going to go for something disgustingly expensive like those automatic thermal coils in Vector's suit. Unfortunately, odds are I can't physically buy anything but the salt. I don't believe there is a single auto shop in South Florida that sells ice scrapers, and I don't really own a car or have any interest in cars at all, so that might seem a tiny bit suspicious. In Florida, cars don't freeze. They spontaneously combust. And they spontaneously get melted by Firecracker during his collateral-heavy throwdowns with the local goons. One of the reasons I don't own a car is because the insurance down here is truly obscene.
Antifreeze doesn't sound particularly useful. The whole point of it is to prevent things from freezing, which is kind of counterintuitive seeing as I'm a cryogenetic and all. Plus, I don't particularly want to expose myself to too much of it. Salt seems like a better choice. It does melt ice a little bit, it's not going to kill me, it's easy to find, and nobody will ask questions if I buy a box or two of it. Plus I can totally make my own ice cream with it. I'm going to rescue that empty coffee can from the recycling bin and make ice cream tomorrow. I learned how to make it in chemistry class. I think it was supposed to be educational, since we did a token lab report afterwards, but mostly it was a bunch of kids kicking coffee cans full of ice around and eating ice cream.

Winter Wonderland: Math

Freezing point of water:
0 °C, 32 °F, 273.15 K, 491.67 R.
Just because I'm trying to memorize this (and it's taped on my mirror too), here is the Fahrenheit/Celsius conversion:
Fahrenheit to Celsius: [°F] = [°C] x 9/5 + 32
Celsius to Fahrenheit: [°C] = ([°F] − 32) x 5/9
At negative 40 degrees, Celsius and Fahrenheit converge.
The various thermodynamic temperature scales used today are Celsius, Fahrenheit, Kelvin and Rankine, named after Anders Celsius, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, William Thomson (1st Baron Kelvin) and William John Macquorn Rankine. What is the Rankine scale, you ask? It's basically Kelvin if it were based on Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. It starts measuring temperature with its zero point at absolute zero like Kelvin, and then uses degrees Fahrenheit from there up. Confusing. Yeah, I'm not a math major.
By the way, that Wikipedia article (what, you think I'm doing actual research on a Wednesday night?) is kinda out of date. It may be impossible to reach absolute zero through natural means, but metatechs have been doing since Dr. Miracle (or Miriam S. Closson, as she was called during her undergrad days) invented the Zero Point Chamber for her thesis in 1974, or was it 1975? Depends on your point of view on that whole time travel thing. Personally, I think it's kinda cheating to get an extra eight months to work on your thesis due to a chronal loop in your dorm room.

Winter Wonderland: Liquid Nitrogen

In honor of Wednesdays, I encourage you all to head over to YouTube and look up liquid nitrogen, and all the things one can smash dramatically after immersion in it. Bananas seem to be a popular target, but you gotta go with pumpkins for tradition. This clip shows a pretty good variety of things getting dipped in nitrogen: grapes, a rose, eggs, a ping pong ball and a balloon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE-BtbV6zA8

Most of the experiments I've seen with balloons tend to involve watching them shrink when they're dipped in nitrogen. This one had a balloon self-inflate after being filled with liquid nitrogen.
Now, I know you're all desperate to know: did I immediately go out and purchase large quantities of fruit to freeze and smash to brittle crystaline chunks with my awe-inspiring cryogenetic powers? That would be completely awesome, but the answer is no. One, no way can I get to those kinds of temperatures yet. Nitrogen freezes at -210 °C, or −346 °F, but is more commonly measured in degrees Kelvin. Yeah, no way am I there yet. Two, I'm still leery about leaving evidence around. Despite those murder mystery icicle-dagger-in-the-sauna stories, ice is really hard to melt in large quantities. It took me FOREVER to get rid of the ice fist I made around my hand, even alternating boiling hot water and a screwdriver to chip it off. It was fun to punch things with my indestructable fist for all of fifteen minutes, and then I realized that my hand was completely useless for doing anything else. Like, say, zipping my jacket. Opening doors. Typing. Scratching my nose. Picking things up. Walking around inconspicuously. I had been punching things in the privacy of a scrubby little patch of woods behind my dorm, but then I had to sneak back in with my fist wrapped in my jacket to defrost it in private, and also compete with Dani for the bathroom. I seriously need to set up some sort of secret headquarters where I don't have to worry about damaging the carpeting, or sneaking around, or having to scramble for a way to defrost myself and the immediate surroundings.

Winter Wonderland

The moment one dumb superhero misuses her powers, pundits like Angela Slater start clamoring about how dangerous we are, and how we shouldn't be sharing air with honest-to-goodness Real Americans because we are walking doomsday devices who could lose control at any moment, endangering kittens, apple pie and blue-eyed babies. Geez, no wonder the woman has to live in a virtual fortress. Does she not understand that she is insulting SUPERVILLAINS while simultaneously alienating the people who can protect her from supervillains? Wait, nevermind, I retract the question. She clearly thinks we're ALL supervillains.
The problem isn't one that can be solved by declaring superhumans too dangerous to live, and imprisoning us all for the Greater Good. That would just result in ALL superhumans either going stealth, or going supervillain, and amplifying the problem. The way to fix this sort of crap is to offer better training for superheroes. Granted, a villain or two will attend the seminars and pick up some tricks, but for the most part, better information about superpowers will make life safer for both the people with the powers, and the people within range of said powers. Less kids discovering the hard way what triggers their heat ray vision, and less massive screwups on the part of the heroes. Windigo's not bad at using her powers. In fact, she can control impressive amounts of wind. She is, however, stupid at using her powers. Her ineptness really undermines her natural strength and her skill. Someone really should sit her down for Aerodynamics 101.
It's not enough to be able to control my powers. I have to understand what makes them tick. It will be very useful for me to know about stuff like freezing points of common materials, and Celsius-Fahrenheit conversions, no matter what I choose to do with my powers. And also I need to know what's out there in the world of ice-themed stuff before I pick my name. So about once a week I intend to post some trivia about ice. And perhaps to maintain appropriate alliteration, I should post this on Wednesdays.
On that note... Behold! Pentagonal ice chains!
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/uol-sdp040709.php
Mmm, sciency! I have no idea what this means. But it might result in five-sided stars coming into fashion for cryogenetics, which would be a refreshing break. It looks like scientists are trying to control the weather again. Less hail in the winter, more rain in the summer, it all sounds good. Until they accidentally spawn another Elemental and it results in billions of dollars of property damage. Or someone like Weather Witch gets hold of it and starts a drought. Again.
The part about studying water-condensation on the nano-scale sounded intriguing, so I iced up a windowpane (after moving my laptop far, far away) and looked at it through my little jeweler's loupe. That's not as irresponsible as it sounds - my door was locked, and that particular window faces into an empty field, and is mostly screened off by several palm trees. Frost patterns are absolutely gorgeous and fractal-ish, but I couldn't get them to go pentagonal. And though I was generating ice on the inside of the window, the outside started sweating too, so that got annoying. I think I'm running a fever, because I couldn't stop shivering. How long has it been since I shivered? I still went to class, though. Might as well share the misery.