Interning Dissent: The Law of Large Political Events

1968 är ett mytomspunnet år. Håller man sig till 1900-talet är det få årtal som kan konkurrera med 1968 i fråga om symbolisk laddning och dragningskraft. Denna dragningskraft utövar det även på omkringliggande årtal: i dag står 1968 mer för en epok än ett årtal. När denna epok börjar och slutar är oklart, men att den kulminerade 1968 råder det, så vitt jag kan bedöma, stor enighet om. 1968 betraktas allmänt som kulmen på en våg av ungdomsprotester, kravaller, mobilisering, livsstilsexperiment, en politisk vänstervåg, galna upptåg och framväxten av ett specifikt generationsmedvetande. Det är framför allt som generationsmarkör 1968 har skrivit in sig i historie

Representing Network Trust and Using It to Improve Anonymous Communication

Motivated by the effectiveness of correlation attacks against Tor, the censorship arms race, and observations of malicious relays in Tor, we propose that Tor users capture their trust in network elements using probability distributions over the sets of elements observed by network adversaries. We present a modular system that allows users to efficiently and conveniently create such distributions and use them to improve their security. The major components of this system are (i) an ontology of network-element types that represents the main threats to and vulnerabilities of anonymous communication over Tor, (ii) a formal language that allows users to naturally express trust beliefs about network elements, and (iii) a conversion procedure that takes the ontology, public information about the network, and user beliefs written in the trust language and produce a Bayesian Belief Network that represents the probability distribution in a way that is concise and easily sampleable. We also present preliminary experimental results that show the distribution produced by our system can improve security when employed by users; further improvement is seen when the system is employed by both users and services.Comment: 24 pages; talk to be presented at HotPETs 201

Speed-of-light limitations in passive linear media

We prove that well-known speed of light restrictions on electromagnetic energy velocity can be extended to a new level of generality, encompassing even nonlocal chiral media in periodic geometries, while at the same time weakening the underlying assumptions to only passivity and linearity of the medium (either with a transparency window or with dissipation). As was also shown by other authors under more limiting assumptions, passivity alone is sufficient to guarantee causality and positivity of the energy density (with no thermodynamic assumptions). Our proof is general enough to include a very broad range of material properties, including anisotropy, bianisotropy (chirality), nonlocality, dispersion, periodicity, and even delta functions or similar generalized functions. We also show that the "dynamical energy density" used by some previous authors in dissipative media reduces to the standard Brillouin formula for dispersive energy density in a transparency window. The results in this paper are proved by exploiting deep results from linear-response theory, harmonic analysis, and functional analysis that had previously not been brought together in the context of electrodynamics.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur

Essays in Development Economics and Economics of the Family

Chapter 1 explores a potential solution to the continuing disequlibrium in microfinance markets. I design a mechanism to aid in securitization of microloans, using a dynamic investment pool governed by a Central Microcredit Clearinghouse (CMC), that would sell investment units back to MFIs and outside investors simultaneously. The CMC would serve as a catalyst to this other avenue of microcredit financing, securitization of microloans, which could help spawn the type of growth in investor-based funding of MFIs that is so urgently needed. Chapter 2 analyzes Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitment and disbursement activity in terms of motivation, considering that the difference between bilateral aid commitments and disbursements may be related to the business cycle of the donor country. The annual disbursement gap is calculated for each pair for each year, as well as a cumulative disbursement gap, and these are regressed against multiple cyclicality measures of income and a set of control variables. It is found in multiple specifications that the cumulative disbursement gap is generally procyclical, much as aid itself, although the cyclicality of aid depends on the cyclicality measure. This is confirmed with four extensions designed mainly as robustness checks. Chapter 3 uses both the round six and 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) data for both male and female respondents along with macroeconomic data over the same time period to test a number of theoretical questions regarding changes in relationship exit costs and their effects on behavior in cohabitation, marriage, and separation. I find that our proxy for cohabitation surplus and exit costs significantly affects subsequent decisions of cohabitation, marriage, separation, and divorce. Also, marriage hazard rates are related to these changing exit costs in ways consistent with recent advances in theory