CapitalistImperialistPig

Eric Mayes, writing in a comment on Cosmic Variance claims to have a paper coming out Monday that derives the MSSM from string theory, complete with lepton masses and neutrino mixing ratios (at least for known particles). Very exciting if true - especially if their derivation gives masses for particles not yet measured. I'm not sure what the status of the measurement of neutrino mixing ratios is. We can now competely derive the MSSM from string theory, including the quark, tau lepton, and neutrino mass matrices and mixings (see our paper on Monday), so these people should sit down and be quiet. I don't know if this is truly legit, but there does seem to be a real Eric Mayes at Texas A&M. UPDATE: Via Wolfgang , the paper is here .

Apparently there is no Cabinet post for Judith in the Giuliani administration. That's actually a pretty good idea. It would be a shame to have to fire your Secretary of State just because you moved a new girl friend into the White House.

It has become fashionable to bash Washington Post columnist and occasional TV talking head David Broder as a semi-senile Bush sychophant. As one entering my semi-senility myself, I prefer the term "clueless sychophant," but, whatever. One of the hazards of membership in the punditocracy in the age of the intertube is the ease of dredging up the evidence of prophecies past, as Joe Klein recently learned to his sorrow. Josh Marshall finds a good one from a Broder column six days after Hurricane Katrina (quote is from Broder's column): It took almost no time for President Bush to put his stamp on the national response to the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a reminder that modern communications have reshaped the constitutional division of powers in our government in ways that the Founding Fathers never could have imagined. Because the commander in chief is also the communicator in chief, when a crisis emerges the nation's eyes turn to him as ...

Via Josh Marshall , Laura Rozen connects two important dots in the Cunningham -US Attorneys - Gonzales - Rove mystery: From 1991 to 1993, a young lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve was working as a program manager in a Pentagon intelligence office. His name was Mitchell John Wade. His boss, the assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence, was Duane P. Andrews. Andrews's job at the Pentagon was essentially to serve as intelligence advisor to the secretary of defense. The secretary of defense at the time was someone that Andrews knew well and respected immensely: Dick Cheney... Among the many lingering unanswered questions on this aspect of the case is who, in May 2002 -- just two months in advance of Wade getting the White House contract -- facilitated MZM getting authorized to be a federal supplier in the first place. This was done through a small branch of the Department of the Interior called the Minerals Management Service. That se...

Cap tries to explain greenhouse warming. Critiques welcomed - especially from those who know. From a comment on her blog by Rae Ann RA - cip, I'm sorry I still don't really understand how exactly the greenhouse effect on Venus or even Mars can be applied to Earth. You should explain it the way that you would explain it to a child. I just don't see how you can plug 96% and .003% into the *same* calculations and get any kind of meaningful result. These are good questions, but unfortunately the answers are complicated, which is why I’ve delayed answering it. Let me say a word about the second question first. One of the most important discoveries in the history of physics was Newton’s realization that the same force that brought the apple from the tree to the Earth dragged the moon in its orbit about the Earth (and the Earth about the Sun, and so on). So it doesn’t surprise a physicist when a single equation explains phenomena differing by many orders of magnitude. Incidentall...

The case of the fired US Attys seems to be the scandal that keeps on giving. Congress turns over one rock and a million uglies stagger, crawl, and stumble out into the light. The list of WH and DoJ chiefs likely to face serious legal problems just keeps on growing. From Josh Marshall: Not good, not good. The White House Counsel's Office gave explicit sign off to the DOJ's letter falsely claiming Rove and Miers played no role in Tim Griffin's appointment as US Attorney. And the sign off came from Chris Oprison, the guy at the Counsel's office who Sampson had told about Rove's and Miers' role only a couple months earlier. Commenters are having a bit o'fun imagining a bit o'prison for Mr. Oprison. The trails all seem to point in the direction of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. W might want to start checking out that old pardon pen - I don't think it works after you get impeached and removed. This has got to be a great time to be a major criminal defens...

Josh Marshall reports a big story uncovered by Marcus Stern and colleagues at Copley News Service. Mitchell Wade paid the bribes to former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) that eventually led to both men pleading guilty to multiple felonies. Almost two years ago we noted the odd news that the first federal contract Wade ever received was with none other than the White House, the White House itself, which is officially called the Executive Office of the President in federal contracting-speak. The contract was signed on July 15th, 2002 and it was supposedly for "office furniture." On December 5th, 2005, the LA Times reported that the contract was "to provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Cheney." Now, a lot of people have wondered for a long time just what that contract was really for. Remember, this was the maiden contract for a company specializing in defense and intelligence services. (The company was approved for federal contracting two months earl...