Although the work I do has nothing to do with particle physics, the other day my colleagues and I discovered a number of new elementary particles. Along with the well-known protons, electrons, and neutrons, as well as the lesser-known families of bosons, mesons, and fermions, science is now able to describe the quantum world with a great deal more accuracy and sophistication due to our contributions of the clipon, the klingon, the tampon, the moron, the strapon, and the clapon (and its anti-particle, the clapoff). Pictured above is an artist's depiction of what a clapon might look like.

Actually, it's my conceptual flowchart map of the Great Baseball Journey, which commences tomorrow morning at 9am. For the geographically-challenged, we're looking at Minneapolis to Chicago to Detroit to Cleveland to Pittsburgh [no baseball] to DC [no baseball] to Baltimore to New York to Boston to Toronto to Chicago [again], with non-game highlights including Cooperstown and Niagara Falls. I only have one memory card for my little camera, which equals about 130 photographs, but hopefully I'll have enough decent images on my return, a week from Sunday, to make a mini-feature on the Journey.

Had a nice weekend up north. Points of interest: Brother turned 21; Father's Day; Hung out at Big Lou's; Dad caught a chipmunk in the garden and humanely relocated it; took a picture of Dorsey reclining on her new Special Bed, had lunch at the Great Wall with John P, just as we did during AP Comp in high school.

The estimate of the number of people that have been born on this planet, since the dawn of the species at around 50,000 B.C., according to the Population Reference Bureau, is about 106.5 billion. The world population today is about 6.5 billion. In 1961, the population was 3 billion. In 1987, the population was 5 billion. It is estimated that the population will reach 9 billion around the year 2050.

One Japanese yen is roughly equal to eight-tenths of a United States cent. One Vietnamese đồng is roughly equal to six-thousandths of a United States cent. One Zimbabwean dollar is roughly equal to one-thousandth of a United State cent, though in 1980, it was roughly equal to 1.47 United States dollars. One Kuwaiti dinar is roughly equal to 3.42 United States dollars. One ounce of platinum is roughly equal to 1,139 United States dollars.

I've listened to Scattering Stars Like Dust several more times, and have decided that it is a really, really good album. As is customary after discovering an artist whom I find agreeable, I have acquired more of his recordings: In the Mirror of the Sky with Ali Akbar Moradi and Night Silence Desert with Mohammad Reza Shajarian. I've also been listening to Hamza el Din [pictured], who was a famous oudist and preeminent Nubian musician. He died recently; only about a month ago. Believe it or not, it wasn't my first experience with Nubian music: I've had a crush on From Nubia To Cairo from Ali Hassan Kuban for quite some time now, who has updated the form and even allowed it to be influenced by Western music. Hamza el Din and Ali Hassan Kuban: the traditional and the modern of Nubian music.

I recently finished reading Blue Blood by the Harvard-educated Edward Conlon. It is a book about the first eight or so years of his career as a police officer in the south Bronx, mostly in Housing and Narcotics. Aside from an ample and tasty helping of the obligatory anecdotal narrative, the book covers a lot of history: Conlon family history as well as cultural and political history of both the NYPD and of New York itself. I was attracted to the book because of my perennial fascination and terrifying dread of inner-city decay, particularly in our greatest urban area. Along with the tales of political exasperation, and the depressing and draining segments (such as tours at the Fresh Kills landfill, sifting through debris from the World Trade Center) there were several screamingly funny parts. I particularly enjoyed the following passage:

We collared, and learned how to work an odd little cat-and-mouse OP for 175 Alex, handicapped as we were by uniforms and a marked car, available for jobs at any moment. The building had a back door, so we'd have to wait for someone to walk out in order to make a sneak attack on the dealers in the lobby. One night we had an inspiration to send someone in to open it up for us. We drove a few blocks away, to the prostitution strip down on Jackson Avenue, and made the acquaintance of two ladies named Melissa and Snake. Snake explained that her boyfriend lived in the building and that she couldn't go there, but Melissa figured that opening a door for five bucks would be the easiest money she made that night. But we waited in vain - Melissa went to the wrong building, and Snake marched straight to 175 Alex to warn the dealers.

"What's the world coming to, when you can't trust a whore named Snake?"

I played golf last weekend with my erstwhile Golf Buddy [at right], at the Theodore Wirth Par 3 course. It was a beautiful day, although warm, and I was pleased to discover that my already negligible club skills haven't decayed as far as I'd feared, despite a year's disuse. That being said, I was still able to unleash my signature move, which involves the ball, being struck, proceeding along a vector roughly ninety degrees contrary from that which was intended. This strategy was first employed, by the author, while playing at the related sport of Disc Golf, during the 2004 season. This historic, and still unrivaled hurl was enhanced by a rigorous headwind, and the transmitted projectile came to rest in a position decidedly more distant from the target basket than its point of release.

Of late, my abiding musical interests lie to the East, though only as far as the Middle East, contrary to Special Agent Dale Cooper's Tibet or Dr. Jacoby's Hawaii. I heard Istanbul 1925, a compilation from the Traditional Crossroads label, which provides an "intriguing snapshot into a culture being dragged into the 20th century, even as the call of the past remained strong" (Chris Nickson, eMusic). Even more intriguing, however, I've found Udi Hrant Kenkulian, a blind Armenian oud player (oudist?), Mysteries of Turkey from Talip Ozkan, Solos And Melodies from The Andelus Ensemble (Syria), Apricots from Eden from Djivan Gasparyan (Armenia), and the masterful Scattering Stars Like Dust from Kayhan Kalhor (Iran).

Based partially on this newfound interest in that somewhat troubled part of the world, I've decided that my next tobacco pipe will be a meerschaum. I would imagine that the white mineral is the most common and popular pipe material, behind, of course, briar, and its primary source is the Turkish plains around Eskişehir. Meerschaum is an excellent material for pipemaking because it provides for a smooth and cool smoke, and is so delicate (although fragile) that it can be carved into immensely complex designs. Due to its porosity, during their lifetime meerschaum pipes will color, slowly turning from bone-white into a golden yellow, and eventually into a rich light-brown. I intend to first scout out my lovely local tobacconist to see what they've got available; otherwise, I've got my eye on the attractive specimen pictured here.

So, I was thinking about A Love Supreme tonight. It was actually my first exposure to jazz, when I was fifteen or sixteen years old. It occurs to me that jazz has been present during three very separate periods in my life, and with each new incarnation it grew exponentially in both scale and depth.

The first period was A Love Supreme. That was it. Just one recording. I have no idea how I decided on that particular CD, or even how I decided on a jazz recording in the first place. It could have been that I had known something of the album, but I doubt it; my music buying habits back then were slapdash, at best. This is evidenced by the fact that the CD I bought wasn't the Impulse! masterpiece, but instead a minor-label offering called the John Coltrane Gold Collection: A Love Supreme. It was a live recording, complete with smatterings of applause at the appropriate moments, and the saxophone would frequently fade away as the man stepped away from the microphone.

I had no idea what I was hearing. I hadn't had any exposure to jazz in any form until that point, and my ears weren't ready for it. Apparently, however, some other part of my anatomy was ready, because after a while, it grew on me. I didn't understand it, but I certainly enjoyed it. There was a happy accident involved in the purchase of this crappy budget-bin disc, in the form of a fifth track, not present on the major-label release. It was Spiritual! Though a long, ten or eleven minute track, it was more concise and much more accessible to me, and though I would go away and come back to the genre over the next several years, I believe that Spiritual built a solid connection between me and jazz. To this day, it is one of my favorite three or four jazz compositions.

For me, A Love Supreme is something of a paradox. Looking at its individual sections, there are parts that I could do without. As much as I love jazz percussion, the drum solo at the beginning of the third part, Pursuance, seems like a bunch of wasted time. And as long as I have become a heretic for having said that, I might as well also admit that I've never been too interested in any of the fourth part, Psalm. That being said, I simultaneously believe that as a complete work, A Love Supreme may have been the absolute pinnacle of jazz itself, such a behemoth of American musical history as to be, more than any other jazz recording, absolutely essential.

Could A Love Supreme be called synergistic? Greater than the sum of its parts, and all that? I'm not sure that "synergistic" can be used in that way. I could draw a parallel to Dark Side of the Moon. If I had to pick one Pink Floyd album to be played at, say, my funeral, my inauguration as President of the United States, or any equally important event, I would pick Animals every time. But if I had to pick one album to offer to recently-arrived aliens from another galaxy to represent psychedelic rock, or even the wider sub-genre of classic rock, of course it's going to be Dark Side of the Moon.

It occurs to me that this is where my conclusion should appear. Although I received my high school diploma nearly ten years ago, it is still difficult for me to compose a written piece of any length without subconsciously getting locked into AP Comp essay mode. So, I am leaving off a conclusion in an attempt to break that tendency. And, because I'm tired. Goodnight, Minneapolis.