Sorry, that's a chemistry joke. Sublimation is a process of purifying solids
by heating them until they go directly into the gas phase and then recondensing
them in a clean reciever. The impurities are left behind. Solid carbon
dioxide sublimates (ie enters the gas phase directly from the solid) at
atmospheric pressure. Ice melts into the liquid phase instead.
The derivation is an old alchemy term. Imagine a old alchemist heating a solid
in one side of a sealed tube and seeing pure, clear crystals form on the other
side without any apparnent cause. Chemists are used to "distilling" the
essence of something, but to make crystals appear from nothing was considered,
well, sublime.
The rest of that post is interesting, but I'm going to have to wait to
respond...
Reed
konsler@ascat.harvard.edu