Higher dimensions

Today, talking to my daughter about A level mathematics:

D: "How can you have more than three dimensions?"
W: "Well, two dimensions gives you coordinates on a map. Three dimensions will do for fixing a point in space. But suppose you want also to fix the time as well as the point? ..."
D: "You will need four dimensions!"
W: "Exactly so. And in many applications, for example in problems in business, you may need to consider more than 4 measurements at once; you can easily end up with 14-dimensional space. And that's not all -- when I was in my third year at university I learned to get comfortable with a whole infinity of dimensions at once: I spent the year learning all about infinite-dimensional Hilbert space."
D: "No wonder you didn't have many girl-friends then."

Leadership

Taken from Peter Cliff's book on Mountain Navigation:

• The ability to move at a steady pace while navigating over unfamiliar ground is the essence of mountain navigation; and if you master the first part, map reading, you are most of the way there.

As in mountain walking, so in the Christian life ...

Patriarchy

For some reason we've been thinking about Patriarchy over the break.

Q: Is your family patriarchal or matriarchal?

A: Both.

Q: Yes, but who really gets to make the decisions when they are urgent and important?

A: Whoever is on the spot at the time.