[good comments deleted]
The lack of cryptanalysis papers at "Crypto" has been striking...I was told that the program committee considers cryptanalysis to be less important than original research. (I can see the rationale in this, as Crypto is an academic/research conference, and there are really no "engineering" crypto conferences. And cryptanalysis might not even fit into an engineering conference very well, as cryptanalysis is traditionally a sort of "hobbyist" activity--if you've read Kahn you'll know what I mean.)
Tim, My impression (based on reviewing papers for the last few CRYPTOs and EUROCRYPTs) is that the reason for the lack of "practical" papers is primarily that not very many of them get submitted. In fact, I think there actually are a fair number of cryptanalysis papers at CRYPTO, at least compared with the even smaller number of papers there that describe new ciphers. Anyway, cryptanalysis IS part of the mainstream of the academic crypto world these days (consider differential cryptanalysis, linear cryptanalysis, etc.) -matt