LL :: Volume 22 :: LR

The percentage is small, so a cloud of Moon Smoke is nearly invisible, even if you're standing inside it. It's a barely perceptible dimming of the light. But, if you look along that fixed (pre-programmed) axis, light hits you in the eye.

Why is this interesting? Consider -- this is exactly the profile of incoming sunlight or moonlight. It's all parallel. (Plus or minus a small margin of error, which is why you see the Moon as a small disc rather than a point. Moon Smoke lets you set this margin of error.) If you look up at a particular angle, you see a bright spot. If you take a step, the bright spot remains at the same angle -- it "moves with you", just like the Sun or Moon.

The illusion is not perfect. Refraction of any direction to a fixed direction is (essentially) one-way field technology, and that remains an uncertain and error-prone art. Moon Smoke's disc of light is featureless (no illusory Lunar maria or craters, sorry) and rather fades around the edge in a way that the true Moon doesn't. And you'll need to set up your space with power routines and broadcasters, to keep the air molecules' fields all pointed in the right direction.

But the idea is good: attach a tool to an air vent, let the stuff blow around, and your room grows a spectral moon. Or two, or three. Did we mention the multiple-vectors option?

Nobody has good data about how many phrases the kiosks have given out in the past month -- or to how many people. But a few have transcended the community of kiosk-fans, and come into common usage. (If you've heard someone say "[more something] than a three-toot goose flute"... now you know where it started.)

(Why that phrase? We doubt even the kiosk hackers can imagine.)

The most interesting entries this year:

• Formed Quasiperiodic: Divided into weeks (of varying lengths) such that no consecutive group of weeks has the same length as any other consecutive group.
• Binarine: Divided into weeks, each of which is a power-of-two number of days: 1, 2, 1, 4, 1, 2, 1, 8, 1, 2, 1, 4, 1, 2, 1, 16, etc. No, it doesn't come out even. Weeks are associated with different meditative qualities, in proportion to their rarity (and thus their length).
• New Beatweek: Two simultaneous cycles -- a seven-day week and a thirteen-day "semmonth". Users are encouraged to use either cycle for scheduling periodic events, to allow a full range of combinations of events over the 91-day quarter.

The standard entries (Gregorian, Unsung Julian, Binary, Uniform) are of course also on the ballot. However, the City has commended traditional calendars three years of the past seven, and foam is rolling strongly for an offbeat choice this time.