far? Of course, those working in each area have with all new paper the feeling of progressing, and this feeling reflects indeed a progress. My humble opinion is that this feeling of progress resides in understanding the theory itself, rather than in the connection with the physical reality. If the theories will be someday understood enough, if they will unify in a simple way the standard Physics, and provide good predictions, then all this effort will become indeed fruitful. But it is a risky investment. Exactly like investing in researching directions in which fewer experts believe. This is why I said that, instead of betting all the money on ST and a part of it on LQG, diversify the portfolio: for example with Garrett Lisi?s theory, but there are many others approaches. Or invest in contests like this one. But these are only shy steps. WHY NEW ALTERNATIVES ARE IGNORED There are many amateur or professional physicists, researching out-of-mainstream directions. Maybe they are wrong; definitely they cannot all be right. Maybe they have totally misunderstood the whole thing, or maybe some of their ideas deserve closer attention. How can they be helped? The acknowledged authorities don?t have enough time to read their ideas. They may think, because of bad experiences in their past, that they cannot help them, nor they can make them understand where they are wrong. So, they will say every time when they will anticipate a similar experience: ?I won?t even bother to read this sheet of