Making oor ane Merk
The real facts are that if 'the United Kingdom' is the 'continuing state', then in international law it is clearly, simply and unequivocally responsible for all the debts — every last penny of them. That's the law as it's been through the independence of Ireland, of the breakup of the British Empire, of Czechoslovakia, right down to Sudan last year.
If there's a 'continuing state', and Westminster has made it very clear it wishes to be a continuing state, then that state takes the debt. That isn't, of course, Scotland's bargaining position. We are willing to take on a population share of debt — but only if we also get a population share of assets, and there's no doubt the Pound Sterling is an asset.
On Clojure as a multi-user environment
Today, not having really enough to do at work, I was reading a Guy Steele and Richard Gabriel's (highly partisan) paper 'The Evolution of Lisp', and thinking about Post Scarcity Computing and about Clojure.
Lisp has failed to get traction too many times because people insisted on their own idea of what constituted a pure Lisp. Let's be clear about it, if I were designing my perfect Lisp it would be different from Clojure in a number of significant ways. Nevertheless, Clojure is more or less the best Lisp we have now, and furthermore it has traction. Furthermore, it has a number of most excellent features which, had I not been exposed to Clojure, I would not have thought of myself. So if you're going to build a post-scarcity computing environment now, Clojure is not a bad place to start.
A circular history of money
I don't know what money is, but I'll give you this nice shiny piece of metal for that loaf of bread.
Stage 1
Au tour de ma tête, more or less.
OK, so, my friend Janet got me on this blog tour thing. Thing is, I'd like to say I'm not writing these days. Much. I've got a new and demanding job, and I'm dog tired all the time. I've also got a lot of things I ought to be doing — not least, this year is Scotland's chance of independence, a chance I've been waiting for and claiming to be working for for forty years. But I'm not out on the streets campaigning, because I'm too tired.
Or so I say.
And yet, I came back to my lodgings on Monday night, sat down, and wrote three thousand words. I got up this morning at sparrow fart, and wrote another five hundred before wolfing down some breakfast and running out to work.
At fifty thousand words
A week ago tonight I tweeted:
"New novel now up to 42k words in only two months — 670 words/day average — despite new job. Very surprised. Don't know where it comes from!"