Cousin Definitions

Last night I went out for dinner with my wife, eldest daughter, my parents, my cousin and wife (they were visiting from NZ), his son and girlfriend and their daughter. Needless to say we had a great night. However the discussion at some point inevitably turned to everyone trying to define the relationships between us - and with more than a little confusion. So after a bit of research (thank you wikipedia) I've finally found out that:

1. the degree eg first, second, third etc is the one less than the minimum number of generations from either cousin and the nearest common ancestor;
2. the remove is the number of generations separating the cousins.

So based on those 2 rules, some of the relationships at dinner were:
1. Me and my cousins son are first cousins once removed;
2. My daughter and my cousin are first cousins once removed;
3. My daughter and my cousins son are second cousins;

I doubt that this will be the most life-changing information, but at least at the next dinner I have with my cousins and family I'll be able to define our relationships!

Reading Resolution

I quite enjoy reading and own a large number of books on a wide range of subjects. However many of those books remain unread because I never seem to have time. So this year I made a resolution to read a book a month. It's now May (4 months gone) and I've completed 3 books so I'm currently slightly behind. The books are:

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A Abbott
Incandescence by Greg Egan
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

Hopefully I can write a review of those books at a later date.

The start of my blog

Well I've decided to jump on the blogging bandwagon and start my own blog. I'm doing this more out of interest about what I will end up writing. So here begins the journey.