This is one reason why it is important for you to be here: some simple things like the problem with 'splice are clearly bugs, but other things are not. For example, the fact that '(1 . 2 . 3) reads as '(2 1 3) is just something drained accidentaly from mzscheme's reader or is part of Arc? Since you've written Arc, you're the only one to really know this. We can only suppose.