[Cryptography] ideas for (long) Nothing up my sleeve numbers

[Bear]

On Sun, 2014-03-30 at 20:43 +0200, Miroslav Kratochvil wrote:


> Therefore, the question: What is your favourite idea for a good,
> random-enough Nothing Up My Sleeve data with size around 2^14 bits?
> (e.g. long, reputable, randomly looking positive integer that is less
> than 2^(2^14))?

If you want "nothing up my sleeve" numbers start with a source that 
has long been published and do a simple repeatable manipulation to it.  

For around 2^14 bits, I think you could take a long novel (say, the 
Gutenberg Press copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's book _The Idiot_).

Separate it into sentences. 
Eliminate any duplicates.
Take all combinations of two sentences in a deterministic sequence. 
Produce a SHA256 block for each. 

Then publish the code that munged the book into the bitblock, 
publish the exact version of the book you used, and everybody can 
verify that the bits you used are in fact derived from that book 
in a straightforward way and that you didn't manipulate the text 
to get any particularly-desired results.