If I scatter soot or some other dark powder on the ice and snow covering my driveway, will it thaw appreciably faster?

This is what happened when I warmed up the car and opened the window.

8 AM Feb 2, 2011 New York City    -  -  Click on photo to enlarge -

I have encountered a question while pouring myself a glass of room temperature soda, then adding icecubes to cool it down. Is there a direct duration to which icecubes cool liquids? or are there variables as well? Take an example of a soda at room temperature of 23.9 degrees celcius. In a glass with 225 mililiters. If four icecubes are deposited in the glass immediately after coming out of a freezer with a temperature of -5 degrees celcius, what is the approzimate cooling time, or are there still more variables involved?

We (the UK) have had a lot of snow and sub-zero temperatures recently, followed by brief thaws and then sub-zero temperatures, and the water in the pond has frozen white and then these large dendrite-like structures have appeared - the pond is still frozen solid. There are also what looks like bubbles frozen into the ice below the surface and odd dents in the surface..

When my family were out in the car around Christmas after all the recent snowfall and rain, I noticed that it felt that there were new speedhumps on the road. On closer inspection it appeared that the areas of ice around manhole covers were raised higher than on the rest of the road (see photograph)? None of my family could explain - why is this?

When water freezes inside various tubs and containers, sometimes the ice has large holes in it. They are roughly flying-saucer shaped and filled mainly withy air, but can also contain some liquid water. Dissolved air forms small almost cylindrical bubbles, but how are the large holes formed?

I've seen the animations of icy meteorites filling the primordial oceans with (presumably) pure water, but rocks are not naturally 'salty', in a potato crisp sense, and extracted salt is from dried-out deposits originally from seawater. And why Sodium Chloride in particular ? 

Before the tubing of a trumpet is bent, it is filled with soapy water that is then frozen. This means the ice provides counter pressure to stop the tubing crinkling at the bend, but the soap in the ice makes it malleable - why does it make it malleable?