Personally, I don't even know why it's being taken that seriously. Half the reason for it's popularity, which is really only limited to the non-scientific community, is the aesthetics. It has no...

Snap... Quantum field theory and general relativity are two theories that are separately incredibly successful. Attempts to unify the two directly are looking pretty promising, LQG for example.

It is true, I remember reading something about it last month.