J J wrote:
> But my example (theoretically) worked as written. 

I'm not saying it doesn't. I was trying to find a way of avoiding the 
'asAtomicBlock value' construct which I don't like and believe will be 
more common than you expect.

 > That is one of the great things about STM (software transactional
 > memory); you can compose atomic operations transparently.

Agreed but I'm not convinced it fits from a human perspective. As a 
concept, message sending is intuitive. The same cannot be said of atomic 
transactions. I believe the solution for Smalltalk lies in something 
equally as intuitive and explainable in terms of objects and messages.