Martin Hellman talks about crypto & eliminating nuclear weapons

Prof. Martin Hellman gave a talk recently about the rationale behind his decision to work on “foolish” problems.  The first of which resulted in the discovery of public-key cryptography with Diffie and Merkle, which is now used to secure all modern communications – from email (PGP) to credit card transactions (SSL) and phone calls (Skype).  The prevailing wisdom at the time was that there was no point doing the research because the the NSA had probably already done it (they’re the largest employer of mathematicians in the world), and even if one were to to find something out, the government would classify it.

This is the best analogy I’ve seen for how it works, in the form of a puzzle:
“

You’re living in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule.  You’ve been jailed and sent to the gulags, but you must tell your wife in St. Petersburg to arrange for your release.  You’re afraid, however, that your mail will be read by the secret police, so you think of using a lock (assume that it’s not going to be broken due to the time it would take to do so).  The problem is, your wife doesn’t have the key.  This is how you’d do it: Put a lock on the package you send to your wife.  On the outside of the package, enclose a message that instructs her to put a second lock alongside your lock, and mail it back.  When the package is returned, remove your lock, then mail it once again to your wife.  When she receives it, she can then unlock it with her own key.

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or download the MP3 here.

His “fools errand, version 2″ refers to his new project related to the elimination of nuclear weapons – he’s asking for help changing the “conventional wisdom” about nukes through online advocacy (he’s already got signatures from former heads/deputy heads of the NSA and CIA, respectively).

William Shockley

This didn’t make it to the online version of the Stanford Daily:
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“May 2, 1972: Shockley Denied Approval for Grad Genetics Course
Professor William Shockley was refused university approval yesterday to teach a graduate special course on his research into ‘dysgenics,’ the study of worsening genetic qualities… [dean of the graduate school Lincoln] Moses’ letter to Shockley, a Nobel prizewinner for co-invention of the transistor, stated, ‘your expertise for teaching this course is subject to doubt.’ The 62-year-old physicist responded yesterday that ‘this is so in keeping with… the unwillingness of the intellectual community to appraise things objectively and dispassionately.’ Shockley added that the threat to academic freedom was ‘trivial’ compared to the administration’s illusion that all races of mankind are genetically equal. He describes this is ‘the illusion of flat human quality.’
Shockley’s proposed course, on new methods of research dealing with ‘the determination of the Caucasian fraction of the ancestry of the American Negro populations,’ the ‘geneticity of IQ,’ and the relation between I.Q. and personality traits, took the five-member faculty committee three months to review.” – compiled by Kelley Fong

”
Perhaps he should have tried the GSB, which I recall reading has a ’1-year-rule’: any faculty can teach a course on any topic of their choice for one year, after which it comes under administrative review. See the new book on his life, Broken Genius. Tenure continues to have its benefits and its drawbacks – such as this emeritus Stanford professor’s tirade against Iranian students – which the numerous Persian students here have tried, and failed, to do anything about.

Graduation

A girl outside the Stanford stadium was passing these out:

an engineer would never have made such ambiguous arrows:

Mohsin Hamid talks about writing

Mohsin Hamid dropped by Stanford a few weeks ago to give a talk about his new book, the Reluctant Fundamentalist.

or download the MP3 here.

Some tidbits:
His mother was at a restaurant in Islamabad when she saw the CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour sitting across from her; right then she knew it was ‘all over,’ as a year ago Amanpour was covering Bosnia…

He started writing under Toni Morrison‘s tutelage at Princeton. His thesis at Harvard Law was the draft of his first book, which his advisor agreed to because he was so sick of reading the regular fare.

He would call his book a bestseller, except that it was extensively pirated.

When he showed up to vote in the presidential referendum in Pakistan, he discovered he was the only person at the poll station. As he was voting, a person came over to him and asked him to hurry up, even though they were 10 other empty booths. He said even Musharraf had to disown the results because they were so preposterous.

In his belief American patriotism has led to ‘self-censorship.’

As an investigative journalist he went to Gwadar (a small port town) and stayed in a truck drivers’ motel, buying tea for anyone who wanted to talk. Reminds me of a person I saw once at a Model UN conference in the Hague, sitting alone at a table with a sign saying “an American willing to listen.”

Made mention of how at one time, the news in Pakistan was broadcast in Arabic (even though virtually no one understood it) and how air conditioning separates the “masses from the elite.”

Recounted how he was forced to vacillate when an immigration officer asked him what the title of his book was, saying “I have my own idea, but the publisher disagrees.”

a History of Stanford Commencement Speakers, 1892-

I hate it when information literally gets discarded or lost… I remember speaking to Prof. Hector Garcia- Molina a few years ago, when he mentioned his passion for photography and how even his digital photos that had been sitting on his hard disk had become corrupted. NASA I believe even makes you submit an age distribution of your group for any research/project proposal, as they want to make sure 20 years from now, someone will still be around who understands what was done. I even recall hearing that some of the records in the Library of Congress are simply useless because the machines needed to read them are no longer in existence nor properly understood by anyone.

The only list Stanford has of all its commencement speakers at graduation ceremonies from over the years is a sparsely-maintained list sitting in the Special Collections of Green Library, without any of their actual speeches. What a shame… if you have excerpts from any of these addresses or information on where to find them, please email me… the following is a transcription of the list; you’ll recognize a few names: Millikan (the oil-drop experiment), Trudeau (creator of Doonesbury), a smattering of Supreme Court justices, and two UN Secretary Generals.