DESPITE HIS SUDDENLY POUNDING HEARTBEAT, the president’s face remained calm. “Say that again,” he said in his best imitation of a steady voice. His chief of staff looked as though she would faint. “We have discovered ruins on Venus,” she…
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those text-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pen. He is unafraid of adverbs, loves astronomy and gastronomy with equally unabashed passion, and lives with/in an eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
Word to Bring Back: “Privacy”
– Definition: n. the quality or state of being apart from company or observation – Used in a sentence: American culture’s “instant celebrity” fixation is playing hob with the basic concept of privacy. – Why: Duh.
Prosatio Silban and the Blank Tyranny
ARTISTRY IN ONE ARENA DOES not always guarantee artistry in another. “My proposal is a simple one,” the young man said. “Grant your endorsement, in a few choice words, of my latest cookbook, New Tastes of Pormaris. It is a…
Posse Commentatus (An Alpha-Nerd Manifesto)
(Originally posted 2007.06.28) IN THE BEGINNING was the Text. But not for long. The Text – definer and exemplar, authority and comfort, platform and trampoline – was no ordinary collection of words. It spoke of history and possibility, treated miracles…
Prosatio Silban and the Free Lunch
IF SOMETHING COMES FROM NOTHING, is it worth the price? Prosatio Silban sighed, and not for the first time that day. How did I come to this? he asked himself. I used to be more thrifty with my pantry and…
Regarding ChatGPT (or, Cassandra’s Got Nothing On Me)
BE CAREFUL PLAYING WITH THE shiny new toy — the shiny new toy may decide to play with you.
Ozone; or, The Horror Upstairs
WHEN A MAN HAS GIVEN his life to science, even to the naked edge of that science, he is expected to be vocal about it. And if others choose not to listen, well … perhaps they won’t have the nightmares,…
I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
— Thos. Jefferson
Stellar Blues
do the stars know the names by which we call them? we, the hubristic and temporary, label the unthinkably ancient with quick mouth sounds and fading pen-scratches. will they mourn when we are gone? would they say: “nice try, two-legs;…
Prosatio Silban and the Proxy Diner
SOMETIMES, “HUNGER” IS JUST ANOTHER word for “desperation.” Prosatio Silban heaved a sigh and pondered his bleak future. How does this keep happening? he asked himself. How do my circumstances seem to always drop so low? To be fair, it…
Clearly the best time to be alive is when you start out wondering and end up knowing. There is only one generation in the whole history of mankind in that position. Us.”
— Carl Sagan, June 1974
For Franz Kafka
THE OLD WOMAN SAT, SOFTLY singing, on a blue wooden chair in the vast cobbled square, rippling a carpet of birds with each cast of her seedful hand. Tall jagged buildings loomed on all four sides — blocky and black-windowed,…