Almost the Beginning of the End, But a Fresh Start has Emerged...

 

So, I haven't updated as much as I would, but it does happen to be a very hard week for me.
Besides all that life stuff, I've been reading a few works of H.P. Lovecraft (A very old, but famous horror/sci fi writer) that included many supernatural dimensions, space, time, and many references to an 'Abyss of time' and such. I wanted to put in a quote that I just had to smile at, because his trademark is putting numerous descriptions all in a line in one large run-on sentence. This is from The Lurking Fear (pub. Necronomicon Press, 1977):
"I felt the stranging tendrils of a cancerous horror whose roots reached into illimitable pasts and fathomless abysms of the night that broods beyond time." - pg. 23
I have to say, in my opinion, this is a much more awesome description, rather than just saying "I was scared, I wanted to run, and scream, but I couldn't."
Although in the second quote, these are commonly used in today's horror books, to suffice the average bowel movement, instead of attempting to stretch our imagination beyond our limits.
I had to write a paper for school in March about my favorite author, or just an author of literary merit. I chose Lovecraft because he fits both of those descriptions. We had to choose an X, Y, and Z about the author (three descriptions of his work, three pieces of literature by him, three themes he commonly uses, etc.) and argue why this author is a great author, or how in the world these three things appropriately describe his work. I chose for my thesis: "H. P. Lovecraft’s use of magic-realism, New England lore, and supernatural dimensions were made more effective in his writings by his obsession with the sciences." which actually turned out to be great, compared to some who used the old X, Y, and Z method, I just chose his three usual literary devices, and made it work with how EVERYONE who has analyzed his works says over and over how he loved the sciences, especially astronomy and physics (which is ironic, clearly).
Anyways, so I've been very distracted from my science reading, until Thursday when at the library, I stumbled upon "The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero" by Robert Kaplan.
I was looking for something fresh, something besides "Blah, blah blah, can't go faster than the speed of light, blah, blah blah" and this was definitely something I was looking for: Something about the sciences that definitely showed genuine interest from the narrator, and didn't start babbling over useless things just to fill the pages.
If I had to suggest it to anyone, seriously, I'd suggest it to anyone who's interested in history, math, science, mysteries, or human nature (behavior, etc.). It talks about numbers from the beginning besides zero, too, and it says how it ties in with the cultures, how the cultures exchanged symbols, and how the symbol for zero wasn't developed until far into the development of civilization. It gives pictures, too, to give the reader a visual of what the old numbers used to look like, and how they weren't exactly numbers, such as Roman Numerals, the Indian 'Kha', and the Greek symbols for different amounts. Many of them weren't exactly numbers because they were only ten-based, not one-based. It's terribly confusing when you tried to make slightly larger numbers such as 72 or 160.
And so, I am taking a break from "A Brief History of Time" for something a bit newer and refreshed, then I'll get back down to the nitty-gritty of spacetime.