The Power of Zero

Via a rather loose concatenation of links, I began reading the first page of the book, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife:

An Eastern concept, born in the Fertile Crescent a few centuries before the birth of Christ, zero evoked images of a primal void, it also had dangerous mathematical properties.  Within zero there is the power to shatter the framework of knowledge.

It is not so strange that I would read this eventually, although it is a bit strange that I would be reading it now.  Last night, I was reading The Golden Ratio : The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number, by Mario Livio.  What is strange is the confluence of ideas thus provoked.  I went from the mathematics of Zero, to the amount of postwar planning for Iraq.  Continue reading here.

categories: politics, rants
tags: downing street memo, BBA