[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Personally I would try to distance myself from concepts like bent and straight....you can make a case for both and in fact they are the same thing. They only apparently change to us due to scale.

If the human observer is taken away, then the scale is removed thus light or energy travels as it does, bent, straight, sideways and spiral all at the same time, it doesn't really matter

I would rather try to understand these concepts using anything but terms I am familiar with as a human. To humanise or to use our vocabulary of non-human activity is really tricky...thus....as you sit on your favourite seat, perhaps one way to try and make a little more sense of it is to think like a computer, in terms of black and white, yes and no.

Of course I am human so I fall into the same old trap, trying to use words to describe phenomena, but every time, the words chosen don't seem to do justice to the reality of what's going on.

For an exercise try writing the action of a wave and use words that a five year old child would understand, it's harder than you think

That exercise is more or less the same problem amplified that Hawking had in his book, trying in words to explain things that are not part of the human experience. Of course you can switch to mathematics which is easier, however if you are not much good at maths then you are no better off.

Anyway, just drifting off topic a bit, so sorry, but my point is, don't be too dismayed if you had to read the book 4 times and still can't get some concepts, not many people can, not because of the concept per se, but more so in the telling (the words chosen to describe it).

Well, I'll shrink away now, cheers