romantic cryptography

http://www.anagram.com/~jcrap/Volume_7/Romance.pdf

Abstract. We show how Alice and Bob can establish whether they love each other, but without the embarrassement of revealing that they do if the other party does not share their feelings.
This is a “secure multiparty computation” of the AND function, where the participants cooperate in producing the result of the AND, but without learning the input bit contributed by the other party unless the result implies it.

Nice illustration involving scales too.

Also:

Hexapods!

 

Recursive webcast!

and finally, those lyrics to “battery” in full:

including “coming through the fraction, show me to the fashion, coma kill the battery”