STRING THEORY.(literature and fashion)

In my youth, I had a weakness for the esoteric. You could seduce me by reciting the poetry of any language I didn't speak. I was charmed by the gambler who introduced me to the Daily Racing Form and held rapt by the physicist who tried to explain string theory. His lesson didn't enlighten me about the hidden workings of a ten-dimensional "shadow universe" where enigmatic particles, some of them hypothetical, like Wino and Zino, have the names of space creatures from a children's book. But it did enhance my sense that there existed, as researchers in the field believe, a unifying "theory of everything." Fashion journalism tends to erode such a conviction.

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