Day: 78’2’84 (2007-01-23)

bookmark_borderUnited Kingdom of Scotland and Northern Ireland

Posted on by thomas

One aspect of Scottish independence that I’ve never seen discussed is the “problem” that Ireland joined the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1801, nearly a hundred year after Scotland and England formed a union. As far as I can tell, this means that it’s not obvious whether England or Scotland gets Northern Ireland if Scotland becomes independent again.

Everybody seems to assume that the two resulting countries would be the Kingdom (or Republic) of Scotland and the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland, but wouldn’t it just be interesting if instead we ended up with the Kingdom of England and the United Kingdom of Scotland and Northern Ireland? 😉

In many ways it would make sense, since Northern Ireland is culturally and linguistically much closer to Lowland Scotland than to England.

bookmark_borderHow to commit a crime according to New Scientist

Posted on by thomas

I get to read New Scientist through my work (under the pretext of looking for new words). In a recent issue, a reader gave the following advice about how to commit a crime:

There is a simpler way for master criminals to throw the police off the scent. If they have blood samples from other people these could be placed at the scene. Or anonymous donor red blood cells could be mixed with DNA amplified from a hair from someone they want to frame to create a blood-like residue. Picking up an ashtray of cigarette stubs from a public place and leaving these at a scene would be the simplest way to create confusing DNA evidence.