I have been in London all this week for business and having a great time. I must say that I love London. It's a fun city with a lot of interesting things for an American to do. Frankly, I love it for the people watching and find the Brits great fun. My wife and I have quite a few Brit friends back home in California and it's interesting (to say the least) to find a whole country populated by them.

I was sitting in the pub tonight for dinner, and so happened to be reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. For those that don't know, Cryptonomicon involves great stretches that deal with WWII and Alan Turing's work on cryptography. Much of that storyline takes place in London. In any case, the situation tonight was quite funny, reading a passage along with my third pint, letting escape a muffled chortle at Lawrence Waterhouse's observations of Brits that I had just witnessed earlier today.

It's interesting to be watching British political TV programs on BBC. The Brits are far more in tune with American politics than I would have suspected. Yes, it didn't surprise me that they know the names of the candidates and have an opinion about them. It did surprise me that BBC carried sections of the presidential debates and that they were covering the rough electoral vote count and even understood the nuances of the US elections system dealing with the electoral college. I can't, for instance, tell you the first thing about how a British MP is elected. I did score some points with my Brit colleagues having watched Prime Minister's questions on CSPAN a few times. At least I wasn't totally ignorant.

In any case, it is no surprise to me that there is a good-sized Lisp community in London. Smart people, fun city.

Update: Did a bit of editing around this one. Needless to say, I wrote it in London after the three pints in the pub and not all of it was really cogent. ;-)