Certain events herald the change of season. The first tulips of spring, the first turning leaf of fall. And in my world, the first radio station that plays the barking dog "Jingle Bells" song. In the case of spring we rush the motorcycle or watercraft to get a tune up; in the case of fall we turn on the furnace or cover the swamp cooler; and, in the case of Christmas, I shut off the radio until January. Don’t think of me as a Scrooge, I love most Christmas music; I just have a thing against songs that causes innocent people’s brains to run out of their ears.
My Aunt Tilly’s favorite – "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" — is a case in point. I truly believe that it was her animatronic Santa repeatedly playing that song which caused her third husband to fake his own death and move to Florida with an exotic dancer. Then again it could have been her plastic spruce that played “Oh, Christmas Tree” or possibly dear Auntie’s Billy the Big Mouth Bass collection (She had three ‘Billys’ that sang respectively "Don't Worry, Be Happy,” "Pretty Fishy" ("Oh, Pretty Woman") and "Take Me To The River." I remember surreptitiously taking out the batteries whenever I visited her.   
But what, an intelligent reader rightfully asks, does this have to do with Science?
In the early 1900s Thomas Edison (who in my earlier article saw his commercial DC power outperformed by AC) once again lost out to competitors as his music cylinders were replaced by discs. Those hard plastic cylinders were arguably the most well wearing media before the digital age for two reasons. One, the needle didn’t wear out the outer edge of the groove as it spun (like it did on disc records) and secondly, all later recording media were less physically durable (as anyone who ever cried when a friend scratched their new vinyl LP or when pulling a snarling mess out of their car tape player will remember). But Edison, brilliant inventor that he was, was not a very savvy marketer, and even he was forced to switch to the cheaper and less durable media. Discs were limited to a few thousand plays at the most. Tapes suffered as well due to stretching of the tape and loss of the magnetic coating. You bought a copy of the disc or tape and when it wore out or broke, you bought a new one.
With the advent of the digital age durability increased dramatically. Tilly’s table display of the barking dogs "Jingle Bells" can play 10 to 100 thousand times thanks to the little electronic chip inside. By the way, "Jingle Bells" (written in 1857) was originally called "One Horse Open Sleigh" and was a song for the Thanksgiving holiday, not Christmas. I understand some audiophiles feel we have lost the warmth of this music by reproducing it digitally. I have a classmate who strongly believes this and even goes so far as to make his own vacuum tube amplifiers — but this is not a common view, and most people accept the loss of range as a welcome tradeoff for the loss of pop, hiss and skip. Unfortunately CDs are not very robust either and scratch at the drop of a hat. Unlike tapes, though, CD copies are identical to the original and preserve your music perfectly. With proper backups on your hard drive you can play your music indefinitely. The only problem now is transferring the Christmas carols back and forth between your various devices in your home and car and office and pocket.  
This problem, it seems, is solved by distributing music over Ultraviolet. What?!? Ultraviolet is a wavelength of light. I understand sending music on radio waves, but how could you send anything over light usefully? It couldn’t pass through walls or trees or around corners. Ultraviolet, however, isn’t referring to the light wave but to a brand name. With Ultraviolet (or any of its competitors), you buy the song (or video) but instead of getting the disc, you get the right to play it from their server. Say you buy a copy of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” You buy the copy online and you can download and play it on your home computer, in your car on your Ipod/smart phone, at the office on your laptop or all three. The record company no longer has to manufacture the physical discs and the consumer no longer has to maintain a physical library or worry about scratching or losing an album. Overall, I think, a welcome plus. The disadvantage? It’s getting harder for me to take the batteries out of all of my Aunt's devices and get away with it. Happy Solstice.