Most of what is wrong with the world in one quotation.

I was just now flipping through the digital edition of "The New Yorker" when I ran across an ad for James Gleick's new book, "The Information." The book is currently on my night table, likely the next thing I read if something else pressing doesn't knock it down a peg.

In any event, to the "blurb" I found in an ad for the book, I am struck by the phrase "sexily theoretical." That hits me as wrong.

What makes something sexy is not the theory behind it, rather, it's the promise--no matter how prolonged--of consummation. A letch does not see a lap dancer as "theoretical."

Likewise, nice girls don't get theoretical on their first dates.

I guess my point is obtuse in its simplicity. Theory is not sexy, or shouldn't be. Only the visceral, that which you can one day touch and experience is sexy. By calling theory sexy we elevate and extol that which is only meant to be a passage onto something real.