Well, yes, I owe the cypherpunks founders an apology, so apology sent. Our rump session after Steve's talk last night, to which he didn't come, put me face to face with 20 nyms and let me tell you online has its virtues -- the main one being never having to have people stare at your TLA forehead mark and you at theirs. Everybody in the room said they're working on a book, really, but what they needed was a writer to burnish the jewels. There was a writer there but incognito, knowing what happens in NYC at any gathering when pols, doctors, lawyers and thieves lock onto someone who has authentic literary skills. Even a total stranger at the bar up front had a story which he said makes the stuff in CRYPTO mere child's play. NSA-trained he claimed to be and a long time battler of corporate evildoing. Great piles of files to prove it, only a ghost writer needed. Now our secret meeting place was in a unisex dormitory building, and this gent was surely trolling with TLA crypto comsec pickup rap. It's as though the whole place was channeling Sandy's natsec-cryptoporn. Confirmed by an attendee who said the Net is dead except for exchanging porn, as in the beginning, as it will ever be. I asked for a copy of his essay, and he said, do you write.