Reading Compreh...

The following passage is adapted from a book published in 1999.
Calling it a cover-up would be far too dramatic. But for more than half a centuryeven in the midst of some of the greatest scientific achievements in historyphysicists have been quietly aware of a dark cloud looming on a distant horizon. The problem is this: There are two foundational pillars upon which modern physics rests. One is general relativity, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the largest of scales: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and beyond to the immense expanse of the universe itself. The other is quantum mechanics, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the smallest of scales: molecules, atoms, and all the way down to subatomic particles like electrons and quarks. Through years of research, physicists have experimentally confirmed to almost unimaginable accuracy virtually all predictions made by each of these theories. But these same theoretical tools inexorably lead to another disturbing conclusion: As they are currently formulated, general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right. The two theories underlying the tremendous progress of physics during the last hundred yearsprogress that has explained the expansion of the heavens and the fundamental structure of matterare mutually incompatible. 
   If you have not heard previously about this ferocious antagonism, you may be wondering why. The answer is not hard to come by. In all but the most extreme situations, physicists study things that are either small and light (like atoms and their constituents) or things that are huge and heavy (like stars and galaxies), but not both. This means that they need use only quantum mechanics or only general relativity and can, with a furtive glance, shrug off the barking admonition of the other. For 50 years this approach has not been quite as blissful as ignorance, but it has been pretty close.
      But the universe can be extreme. In the central depths of a black hole, an enormous mass is crushed to a minuscule size. According to the big bang theory, the whole of the universe erupted from a microscopic nugget whose size makes a grain of sand look colossal. These are realms that are tiny and yet incredibly massive, therefore requiring that both quantum mechanics and general relativity simultaneously be brought to bear. The equations of general relativity and quantum mechanics, when combined, begin to shake, rattle, and gush with steam like a decrepit automobile. Put less figuratively, well-posed physical questions elicit nonsensical answers from the unhappy amalgam of these two theories. Even if you are willing to keep the deep interior of a black hole and the beginning of the universe shrouded in mystery, you cant help feeling that the hostility between quantum mechanics and general relativity cries out for a deeper level of understanding. Can it really be that the universe at its most fundamental level is divided, requiring one set of laws when things are large and a different, incompatible set when things are small?
     Superstring theory, a young upstart compared with the venerable edifices of quantum mechanics and general relativity, answers with a resounding no. Intense research over the past decade by physicists and mathematicians around the world has revealed that this new approach to describing matter at its most fundamental level resolves the tension between general relativity and quantum mechanics. In fact, superstring theory shows more: within this new framework, general relativity and quantum mechanics require one another for the theory to make sense. According to superstring theory, the marriage of the laws of the large and the small is not only happy but inevitable. Superstring theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universefrom the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary starsare reflections of one grand physical principle, one master equation.

The following passage is adapted from a novel set in the early twentieth century. Mr. Beebe, a clergyman, is speaking with Cecil Vyse about a mutual acquaintance, Lucy Honey church. Miss Honey church has recently returned from a journey with her older cousin and chaperone, Miss Bartlett.
Lucy Honey church has no faults, said Cecil, with grave sincerity. I quite agree. At present she has none. 
At present?
Im not cynical. Im only thinking of my pet theory about Miss Honeychurch. Does it seem reasonable that she should play piano so wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that someday she shall be wonderful in both. The water-tight compartments in her will break down and music and life will mingle. Then we shall have her heroically good, heroically badtoo heroic, perhaps, to be good or bad. Cecil found his companion interesting. And at present you think her not wonderful as far as life goes? Well, I must say Ive only seen her at Tunbridge Wells, where she was not wonderful, and at Florence. She wasnt wonderful in Florence either, but I kept on expecting that she would be.  
In what way?
Conversation had become agreeable to them, and they were pacing up and down the terrace. I could as easily tell you what tune shell play next. There was simply the sense that she found wings and meant to use them. I can show you a beautiful picture in my diary. Miss Honey church as a kite, Miss Bartlett holding the string. Picture number two: the string breaks. The sketch was in his diary, but it had been made afterwards, when he viewed things artistically. At the time he had given surreptitious tugs to the string himself. 
But the string never broke? No. I mightnt have seen Miss Honeychurch rise, but I should certainly have heard Miss Bartlett fall. It has broken now, said the young man in low, vibrating tones. Immediately he realized that of all the conceited, ludicrous, contemptible ways of announcing an engagement this was the worst. He cursed his love of metaphor; had he suggested that he was a star and that Lucy was soaring up to reach him?
Broken? What do you mean? 
I meant, Cecil said stiffly, that she is going to marry me. 
The clergyman was conscious of some bitter disappointment which he could not keep out of his voice. 
I am sorry; I must apologize. I had no idea you were intimate with her, or I should never have talked in this flippant, superficial way. You ought to have stopped me. And down in the garden he saw Lucy herself; yes, he was disappointed. 
Cecil, who naturally preferred congratulations to apologies, drew down the corner of his mouth. Was this the reaction his action would get from the whole world? Of course, he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement. 
 Im sorry I have given you a shock, he said dryly. I fear that Lucys choice does not meet with your approval.

The following two passages are from critical commentaries

on "the Tramp," the comic character created by silent-film

star Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977).

Passage 1

Before Charlie Chaplin came along, tramps and hoboes

had long been a part of the cartoon and comic strip tradition,

represented most prominently in England in 1896

by Tom Browne's "Weary Willie and Tired Tim" and

in the United States in 1900 by Frederick Burr Opper's

"Happy Hooligan." But Chaplin was to bring a definitive

genius to the tramp figure, raising it to heights of poetic

and mythic power in his first year with the Keystone studios.

That Chaplin had considered using the tramp figure earlier

is suggested by the title of one of his childhood stage teams,

"Bristol and Chaplin, the Millionaire Tramps.' But the

tramp character was not fully realized until 1914, when

Chaplin donned the baggy pants, the floppy shoes, the cane,

the derby hat, and the little moustache for his second film.

As Chaplin would later explain, "The moment I was dressed,

the clothes and makeup made me feel the character. By the

time I walked on stage 'the Tramp' was fully born." He

would polish and revise the character through other film

roles until 1915, when he was featured in his own two-reel

film,The Tramp.

        In his own comments on the Tramp, Chaplin put his

finger on many of the elements that made the characterization

so powerful and universally relevant. As he said

after introducing the character to his director, "this fellow

is many-sided, a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a

lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

He would have you believe he is a scientist, a musician, a

duke,a polo player. However, he is not above picking up

cigarette butts or robbing a baby of its candy." The Tramp,

in other words, is a human being down and out on his luck

and full of passion for life and hope that things will get

better.He is imaginative and creative, and thus a romantic

and an artist, who brings style to his meager existence and

art to his struggle for survival. Yet when things become

worse,he is willing to place practicality above sentiment

and violate the usual social amenities. He is indeed complex

and many-sided, thereby touching most human beings at

one or more points in our character and makeup. There is a

good deal in his nature that most of us identify with in our

secret selves, apart from what we are in the public world

we inhabit.

Passage 2

       There is no doubt that Charlie Chaplin was a regu-

lar reader of the most famous of the early comic strips,

"Weary Willie and Tired Tim." Weary Willie and

Tired Tim made their debut on the front of Illustrated

Chips in 1896 when Chaplin was an energetic eight year

old.In his book, My Autobiography, Chaplin only mentions

his love of comics in passing, commenting that one of his

rare pleasures was reading "my weekly comic on a serene

Sunday morning."

        He was much more forthcoming---and revealing---

in 1957 while talking to journalist Victor Thompson.

Chaplin began reminiscing about his younger days--and

one particular occasion when he had a short-lived job at

a glass-blowing establishment in London.

      "In the lunch breaks, I used to entertain the men with

sand dances," he told Thompson. "On one occasion I

danced so furiously, I got sick and had to be sent home.

I sat on the curb feeling I was dying. A woman gave me a

penny to go home by horse-bus, but I walked and bought

a comic with the windfall.

"Ah,those comics, Chaplin went on, the wonderfully

vulgar paper for boys with Casey Court pictures, and the

'Adventures of Weary Willie and Tired Tim,' two famous

tramps with the world against them. Theres been a lot said

about how I evolved the little tramp character who made my

name.Deep, psychological stuff has been written about

how I meant him to be a symbol of all the class war, of

the love-hate concept, the death-wish and what-all.

      "But if you want the simple Chaplin truth behind the

Chaplin legend, I started the little tramp simply to make

people laugh and because those other old tramps, Weary

Willie and Tired Tim, had always made me laugh."

       If one glances through old copies of Illustrated Chips,

it is possible to find similarities between the scrapes that

Weary Willie and Tired Tim got into and those in some of

Chaplin's films: even the titles of Chaplin's early movies

seem derived from the adventures of the comic book heroes.

And if further proof of the influence is needed, isn't the

very appearance of the gaunt Weary Willie strikingly

similar to that of Chaplin's Little Tramp?

The following passage is adapted from a novel set in the early twentieth century. Mr. Beebe, a clergyman, is speaking with Cecil Vyse about a mutual acquaintance, Lucy Honey church. Miss Honey church has recently returned from a journey with her older cousin and chaperone, Miss Bartlett.
Lucy Honey church has no faults, said Cecil, with grave sincerity. I quite agree. At present she has none. 
At present?
Im not cynical. Im only thinking of my pet theory about Miss Honeychurch. Does it seem reasonable that she should play piano so wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that someday she shall be wonderful in both. The water-tight compartments in her will break down and music and life will mingle. Then we shall have her heroically good, heroically badtoo heroic, perhaps, to be good or bad. Cecil found his companion interesting. And at present you think her not wonderful as far as life goes? Well, I must say Ive only seen her at Tunbridge Wells, where she was not wonderful, and at Florence. She wasnt wonderful in Florence either, but I kept on expecting that she would be.  
In what way?
Conversation had become agreeable to them, and they were pacing up and down the terrace. I could as easily tell you what tune shell play next. There was simply the sense that she found wings and meant to use them. I can show you a beautiful picture in my diary. Miss Honey church as a kite, Miss Bartlett holding the string. Picture number two: the string breaks. The sketch was in his diary, but it had been made afterwards, when he viewed things artistically. At the time he had given surreptitious tugs to the string himself. 
But the string never broke? No. I mightnt have seen Miss Honeychurch rise, but I should certainly have heard Miss Bartlett fall. It has broken now, said the young man in low, vibrating tones. Immediately he realized that of all the conceited, ludicrous, contemptible ways of announcing an engagement this was the worst. He cursed his love of metaphor; had he suggested that he was a star and that Lucy was soaring up to reach him?
Broken? What do you mean? 
I meant, Cecil said stiffly, that she is going to marry me. 
The clergyman was conscious of some bitter disappointment which he could not keep out of his voice. 
I am sorry; I must apologize. I had no idea you were intimate with her, or I should never have talked in this flippant, superficial way. You ought to have stopped me. And down in the garden he saw Lucy herself; yes, he was disappointed. 
Cecil, who naturally preferred congratulations to apologies, drew down the corner of his mouth. Was this the reaction his action would get from the whole world? Of course, he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement. 
 Im sorry I have given you a shock, he said dryly. I fear that Lucys choice does not meet with your approval.

The following two passages are from critical commentaries

on "the Tramp," the comic character created by silent-film

star Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977).

Passage 1

Before Charlie Chaplin came along, tramps and hoboes

had long been a part of the cartoon and comic strip tradition,

represented most prominently in England in 1896

by Tom Browne's "Weary Willie and Tired Tim" and

in the United States in 1900 by Frederick Burr Opper's

"Happy Hooligan." But Chaplin was to bring a definitive

genius to the tramp figure, raising it to heights of poetic

and mythic power in his first year with the Keystone studios.

That Chaplin had considered using the tramp figure earlier

is suggested by the title of one of his childhood stage teams,

"Bristol and Chaplin, the Millionaire Tramps.' But the

tramp character was not fully realized until 1914, when

Chaplin donned the baggy pants, the floppy shoes, the cane,

the derby hat, and the little moustache for his second film.

As Chaplin would later explain, "The moment I was dressed,

the clothes and makeup made me feel the character. By the

time I walked on stage 'the Tramp' was fully born." He

would polish and revise the character through other film

roles until 1915, when he was featured in his own two-reel

film,The Tramp.

        In his own comments on the Tramp, Chaplin put his

finger on many of the elements that made the characterization

so powerful and universally relevant. As he said

after introducing the character to his director, "this fellow

is many-sided, a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a

lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

He would have you believe he is a scientist, a musician, a

duke,a polo player. However, he is not above picking up

cigarette butts or robbing a baby of its candy." The Tramp,

in other words, is a human being down and out on his luck

and full of passion for life and hope that things will get

better.He is imaginative and creative, and thus a romantic

and an artist, who brings style to his meager existence and

art to his struggle for survival. Yet when things become

worse,he is willing to place practicality above sentiment

and violate the usual social amenities. He is indeed complex

and many-sided, thereby touching most human beings at

one or more points in our character and makeup. There is a

good deal in his nature that most of us identify with in our

secret selves, apart from what we are in the public world

we inhabit.

Passage 2

       There is no doubt that Charlie Chaplin was a regu-

lar reader of the most famous of the early comic strips,

"Weary Willie and Tired Tim." Weary Willie and

Tired Tim made their debut on the front of Illustrated

Chips in 1896 when Chaplin was an energetic eight year

old.In his book, My Autobiography, Chaplin only mentions

his love of comics in passing, commenting that one of his

rare pleasures was reading "my weekly comic on a serene

Sunday morning."

        He was much more forthcoming---and revealing---

in 1957 while talking to journalist Victor Thompson.

Chaplin began reminiscing about his younger days--and

one particular occasion when he had a short-lived job at

a glass-blowing establishment in London.

      "In the lunch breaks, I used to entertain the men with

sand dances," he told Thompson. "On one occasion I

danced so furiously, I got sick and had to be sent home.

I sat on the curb feeling I was dying. A woman gave me a

penny to go home by horse-bus, but I walked and bought

a comic with the windfall.

"Ah,those comics, Chaplin went on, the wonderfully

vulgar paper for boys with Casey Court pictures, and the

'Adventures of Weary Willie and Tired Tim,' two famous

tramps with the world against them. Theres been a lot said

about how I evolved the little tramp character who made my

name.Deep, psychological stuff has been written about

how I meant him to be a symbol of all the class war, of

the love-hate concept, the death-wish and what-all.

      "But if you want the simple Chaplin truth behind the

Chaplin legend, I started the little tramp simply to make

people laugh and because those other old tramps, Weary

Willie and Tired Tim, had always made me laugh."

       If one glances through old copies of Illustrated Chips,

it is possible to find similarities between the scrapes that

Weary Willie and Tired Tim got into and those in some of

Chaplin's films: even the titles of Chaplin's early movies

seem derived from the adventures of the comic book heroes.

And if further proof of the influence is needed, isn't the

very appearance of the gaunt Weary Willie strikingly

similar to that of Chaplin's Little Tramp?

In the introduction to one of her dramas, a well-known playwright and actor discusses some of her ideas about acting.

Words have always held a particular power for me. I remember leafing through a book of Native American poems one morning while I was waiting for my Shakespeare class to begin and being struck by a phrase from the preface, (5) The word, the word above all, is truly magical, not only by its meaning, but by its artful manipulation.
   meaning, but by its artful manipulation. This quote, which I added to my journal, reminded me of something my grandfather had told me when I was a girl: If you say a word often enough it becomes your (10) own. I added that phrase to my journal next to the quote about the magic of words. When I traveled home to Baltimore for my grandfathers funeral a year after my journal entry, I mentioned my grandfathers words to my father. He corrected me. He told me that my grandfather (15) had actually said, If you say a word often enough, it becomes you. I was still a student at the time, but I knew even then, even before I had made a conscious decision to teach as well as act, that my grandfathers words would be important.
      (20)Actors are very impressionable people, or some would say, suggestible people. We are trained to develop aspects of our memories that are more emotional and sensory than intellectual. The general public often wonders how actors remember their lines. Whats more remarkable to me is (25) how actors remember, recall, and reiterate feelings and sensations. The body has a memory just as the mind does. The heart has a memory, just as the mind does. The act of speech is a physical act. It is powerful enough that it can create, with the rest of the body, a kind of cooperative (30) dance. That dance is a sketch of something that is inside a person, and not fully revealed by the words alone. I came to realize that if I were able to record part of the dance that is, the spoken partand reenact it, the rest of the body would follow. I could then create the illusion of being (35) another person by reenacting something she had said as she had said it. My grandfathers idea led me to consider that the reenactment, or the reiteration, of a persons words would also teach me about that person.
     I had been trained in the tradition of acting called (40) psychological realism. A basic tenet of psychological realism is that characters live inside of you and that you create a lifelike portrayal of the character through a process of realizing your own similarity to the character. When I later became a teacher of acting, I began to become more (45) and more troubled by the self-oriented method. I began to look for ways to engage my students in putting themselves in other peoples shoes. This went against the grain of the psychological realism tradition, which was to get the character to walk in the actors shoes. It became less and less (50) interesting intellectually to bring the dramatic literature of the world into a classroom of people in their late teens and twenties, and to explore it within the framework of their real lives. Aesthetically it seemed limited, because most of the time the characters all sounded the same. (55)Most characters spoke somewhere inside the rhythmic range of the students. More troubling was that this method left an important bridge out of acting. The spirit of acting is the travel from the self to the other. This self-based method seemed to come to a spiritual halt. It saw the self as the (60) ultimate home of the character. To me, the search for character is constantly in motion. It is a quest that moves back and forth between the self and the other.
       I needed evidence that you could find a characters psychological reality by inhabiting that characters words. (65)  I needed evidence of the limitations of basing a character on a series of metaphors from an actors real life. I wanted to develop an alternative to the self-based technique, a technique that would begin with the other and come to the self, a technique that would empower the other to find the actor (70) rather than the other way around.

In the introduction to one of her dramas, a well-known playwright and actor discusses some of her ideas about acting.

Words have always held a particular power for me. I remember leafing through a book of Native American poems one morning while I was waiting for my Shakespeare class to begin and being struck by a phrase from the preface, (5) The word, the word above all, is truly magical, not only by its meaning, but by its artful manipulation.
   meaning, but by its artful manipulation. This quote, which I added to my journal, reminded me of something my grandfather had told me when I was a girl: If you say a word often enough it becomes your (10) own. I added that phrase to my journal next to the quote about the magic of words. When I traveled home to Baltimore for my grandfathers funeral a year after my journal entry, I mentioned my grandfathers words to my father. He corrected me. He told me that my grandfather (15) had actually said, If you say a word often enough, it becomes you. I was still a student at the time, but I knew even then, even before I had made a conscious decision to teach as well as act, that my grandfathers words would be important.
      (20)Actors are very impressionable people, or some would say, suggestible people. We are trained to develop aspects of our memories that are more emotional and sensory than intellectual. The general public often wonders how actors remember their lines. Whats more remarkable to me is (25) how actors remember, recall, and reiterate feelings and sensations. The body has a memory just as the mind does. The heart has a memory, just as the mind does. The act of speech is a physical act. It is powerful enough that it can create, with the rest of the body, a kind of cooperative (30) dance. That dance is a sketch of something that is inside a person, and not fully revealed by the words alone. I came to realize that if I were able to record part of the dance that is, the spoken partand reenact it, the rest of the body would follow. I could then create the illusion of being (35) another person by reenacting something she had said as she had said it. My grandfathers idea led me to consider that the reenactment, or the reiteration, of a persons words would also teach me about that person.
     I had been trained in the tradition of acting called (40) psychological realism. A basic tenet of psychological realism is that characters live inside of you and that you create a lifelike portrayal of the character through a process of realizing your own similarity to the character. When I later became a teacher of acting, I began to become more (45) and more troubled by the self-oriented method. I began to look for ways to engage my students in putting themselves in other peoples shoes. This went against the grain of the psychological realism tradition, which was to get the character to walk in the actors shoes. It became less and less (50) interesting intellectually to bring the dramatic literature of the world into a classroom of people in their late teens and twenties, and to explore it within the framework of their real lives. Aesthetically it seemed limited, because most of the time the characters all sounded the same. (55)Most characters spoke somewhere inside the rhythmic range of the students. More troubling was that this method left an important bridge out of acting. The spirit of acting is the travel from the self to the other. This self-based method seemed to come to a spiritual halt. It saw the self as the (60) ultimate home of the character. To me, the search for character is constantly in motion. It is a quest that moves back and forth between the self and the other.
       I needed evidence that you could find a characters psychological reality by inhabiting that characters words. (65)  I needed evidence of the limitations of basing a character on a series of metaphors from an actors real life. I wanted to develop an alternative to the self-based technique, a technique that would begin with the other and come to the self, a technique that would empower the other to find the actor (70) rather than the other way around.

The following passage is adapted from a book published in 1999.
Calling it a cover-up would be far too dramatic. But for more than half a centuryeven in the midst of some of the greatest scientific achievements in historyphysicists have been quietly aware of a dark cloud looming on a distant horizon. The problem is this: There are two foundational pillars upon which modern physics rests. One is general relativity, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the largest of scales: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and beyond to the immense expanse of the universe itself. The other is quantum mechanics, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the smallest of scales: molecules, atoms, and all the way down to subatomic particles like electrons and quarks. Through years of research, physicists have experimentally confirmed to almost unimaginable accuracy virtually all predictions made by each of these theories. But these same theoretical tools inexorably lead to another disturbing conclusion: As they are currently formulated, general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right. The two theories underlying the tremendous progress of physics during the last hundred yearsprogress that has explained the expansion of the heavens and the fundamental structure of matterare mutually incompatible. 
   If you have not heard previously about this ferocious antagonism, you may be wondering why. The answer is not hard to come by. In all but the most extreme situations, physicists study things that are either small and light (like atoms and their constituents) or things that are huge and heavy (like stars and galaxies), but not both. This means that they need use only quantum mechanics or only general relativity and can, with a furtive glance, shrug off the barking admonition of the other. For 50 years this approach has not been quite as blissful as ignorance, but it has been pretty close.
      But the universe can be extreme. In the central depths of a black hole, an enormous mass is crushed to a minuscule size. According to the big bang theory, the whole of the universe erupted from a microscopic nugget whose size makes a grain of sand look colossal. These are realms that are tiny and yet incredibly massive, therefore requiring that both quantum mechanics and general relativity simultaneously be brought to bear. The equations of general relativity and quantum mechanics, when combined, begin to shake, rattle, and gush with steam like a decrepit automobile. Put less figuratively, well-posed physical questions elicit nonsensical answers from the unhappy amalgam of these two theories. Even if you are willing to keep the deep interior of a black hole and the beginning of the universe shrouded in mystery, you cant help feeling that the hostility between quantum mechanics and general relativity cries out for a deeper level of understanding. Can it really be that the universe at its most fundamental level is divided, requiring one set of laws when things are large and a different, incompatible set when things are small?
     Superstring theory, a young upstart compared with the venerable edifices of quantum mechanics and general relativity, answers with a resounding no. Intense research over the past decade by physicists and mathematicians around the world has revealed that this new approach to describing matter at its most fundamental level resolves the tension between general relativity and quantum mechanics. In fact, superstring theory shows more: within this new framework, general relativity and quantum mechanics require one another for the theory to make sense. According to superstring theory, the marriage of the laws of the large and the small is not only happy but inevitable. Superstring theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universefrom the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary starsare reflections of one grand physical principle, one master equation.

This passage is from the preface to a 1997 book by 
a United States journalist detailing a disagreement 
between doctors and family members about a childs
medical treatment at a hospital in California.

Under my desk I keep a large carton of cassette tapes.
Though they have all been transcribed, I still like to listen
to them from time to time.
Some are quiet and easily understood. They are filled
with the voices of American doctors, interrupted occasion-
ally by the clink of a coffee cup or beep of a pager. The
rest more than half of them are very noisy. They are
filled with the voices of the Lees family, Hmong refugees
from Laos who came to the United States in 1980. Against
a background of babies crying, children playing, doors
slamming, dishes clattering, a television yammering, and an
air conditioner wheezing, I can hear the mothers voice, by
turns breathy, nasal, gargly, or humlike as it slides up and
down the Hmong languages eight tones; the fathers voice,
louder, slower, more vehement; and my interpreters voice,
mediating in Hmong and English, low and deferential in
each. The hubbub summons sense-memories:  the coolness
of the red metal folding chair, reserved for guests, that was
always set up when I arrived in the apartment; the shadows
cast by the amulet that hung from the ceiling and swung in
the breeze on its length of grocers twine; the tastes of
Hmong food.
I sat on the Lees red chair for the first time on
May 19, 1988. Earlier that spring I had come to Merced,
California, because I had heard that there were some
misunderstandings at the county hospital between its
Hmong patients and medical staff. One doctor called them
collisions, which made it sound as if two different kinds
of people had rammed into each other, head on, to the
accompaniment of squealing brakes and breaking glass.
As it turned out, the encounters were messy but rarely
frontal. Both sides were wounded, but neither side seemed
to know what had hit it or how to avoid another crash.
I have always felt that the action most worth watching
occurs not at the center of things but where edges meet.
I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders.
These places have interesting frictions and incongruities,
and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can
see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either
one. This is especially true when the apposition is cultural.
When I first came to Merced, I hoped that the culture of
American medicine, about which I knew a little, and the
culture of the Hmong, about which I knew nothing, would
somehow illuminate each other if I could position myself
between the two and manage not to get caught in the cross-
fire. But after getting to know the Lees family and their
daughters doctors and realizing how hard it was to blame
anyone, I stopped analyzing the situation in such linear
terms. Now, when I play the tapes late at night, I imagine
what they would sound like if I could splice them together,
so the voices of the Hmong and those of the American
doctors could be heard on a single tape, speaking a
common language.

The following passage is adapted from a book published in 1999.
Calling it a cover-up would be far too dramatic. But for more than half a centuryeven in the midst of some of the greatest scientific achievements in historyphysicists have been quietly aware of a dark cloud looming on a distant horizon. The problem is this: There are two foundational pillars upon which modern physics rests. One is general relativity, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the largest of scales: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and beyond to the immense expanse of the universe itself. The other is quantum mechanics, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the smallest of scales: molecules, atoms, and all the way down to subatomic particles like electrons and quarks. Through years of research, physicists have experimentally confirmed to almost unimaginable accuracy virtually all predictions made by each of these theories. But these same theoretical tools inexorably lead to another disturbing conclusion: As they are currently formulated, general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right. The two theories underlying the tremendous progress of physics during the last hundred yearsprogress that has explained the expansion of the heavens and the fundamental structure of matterare mutually incompatible. 
   If you have not heard previously about this ferocious antagonism, you may be wondering why. The answer is not hard to come by. In all but the most extreme situations, physicists study things that are either small and light (like atoms and their constituents) or things that are huge and heavy (like stars and galaxies), but not both. This means that they need use only quantum mechanics or only general relativity and can, with a furtive glance, shrug off the barking admonition of the other. For 50 years this approach has not been quite as blissful as ignorance, but it has been pretty close.
      But the universe can be extreme. In the central depths of a black hole, an enormous mass is crushed to a minuscule size. According to the big bang theory, the whole of the universe erupted from a microscopic nugget whose size makes a grain of sand look colossal. These are realms that are tiny and yet incredibly massive, therefore requiring that both quantum mechanics and general relativity simultaneously be brought to bear. The equations of general relativity and quantum mechanics, when combined, begin to shake, rattle, and gush with steam like a decrepit automobile. Put less figuratively, well-posed physical questions elicit nonsensical answers from the unhappy amalgam of these two theories. Even if you are willing to keep the deep interior of a black hole and the beginning of the universe shrouded in mystery, you cant help feeling that the hostility between quantum mechanics and general relativity cries out for a deeper level of understanding. Can it really be that the universe at its most fundamental level is divided, requiring one set of laws when things are large and a different, incompatible set when things are small?
     Superstring theory, a young upstart compared with the venerable edifices of quantum mechanics and general relativity, answers with a resounding no. Intense research over the past decade by physicists and mathematicians around the world has revealed that this new approach to describing matter at its most fundamental level resolves the tension between general relativity and quantum mechanics. In fact, superstring theory shows more: within this new framework, general relativity and quantum mechanics require one another for the theory to make sense. According to superstring theory, the marriage of the laws of the large and the small is not only happy but inevitable. Superstring theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universefrom the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary starsare reflections of one grand physical principle, one master equation.