<quote><p>"String theory" is actually a collection of several competing theories and this theory appears to be another version.</p></quote>

Actually this is not true. The scientific consensus is that the "different" string theories formulated in the early 80s are just different realizations or limits of the same underlying theory and are all related by different dualities (one-to-one correspondences). On the other hand Horava gravity is a completely different kind of proposal: it is a modification of General Relativity at high energies in order to make it "quantisable", as opposed to Einstein's GR.

Horava-Lifshitz gravity is an alternative to String theory only as far as it is a theory of quantum gravity (though its renormalisability hasn't been checked throughly yet). For now it doesn't aim to describe the other forces of Nature so it does not replace string theory as a proposal for a Theory of Everything. Also, it's not clear for now whether Horava-Lifshitz gravity could maybe be realized in string theory.

Another note: the original proposal of Horava is clearly ruled out experimentally because of an unwanted (i.e. unobserved) extra mode at low energies. There have been extensions of the original proposal that cured this problem, but which haven't been studied enough to be compared with other astrophysical and cosmological observations.

I'm shocked at how easily one can hack a kitchen knife to make a deadly weapon!

>> Would you be happier with a 1:1 death toll? can't an army be efficient?

> Yeah, the logic is just bizarre. Whoever wins = bad guy.

But it's an interesting intellectual exercise since usually we have

whoever wins = good guys

Remember: history is written by the winners...