Foie gras has been produced by farmers since the daysofancient Egypt, when farmers discovered that the waterfowl's liver expanded in the days leading up to the bird's planned migration.
The MIT mathematicians, that is, sidestepped a weak spot that had plagued cryptographers ever since the daysof the ancient Greeks: How do sender and receiver hand off a key without risking that their communication channel or their courier will be compromised in some way?
Sadly, it was a feeling similar to poking your head through the sun gate at Machu Picchu and seeing the ancient ruins for the first time after four daysof hiking the Inca Trail.
Keeping track of the vast, meandering mix ofancient artifacts and techno-mystic talk makes me yearn for the days when the point was to fight the Covenant because the Covenant was bad.