By Steven J. Frank

Steven J. Frank is a Boston lawyer who struggles not to write like one. His work includes short stories, the novels The Uncertainty Principle and The Sell-Out, and the not-as-dreadful-as-it-sounds handbook Intellectual Property for Managers and Investors. Direct praise or disgust to priorart@hotmail.com.

THE PROBLEM OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

—And today we are pleased to welcome the notorious “atheist creationist.” Thank you for joining us, Dr. Kranish. —Your sobriquet is only half right, but I accept it. It got me on your show. I’m making a fortune. —Why, Dr. Kranish, you sound positively cynical. “When you’re dead, you’re dead,” declares Stanley Kranish, disgraced engineering professor and charcoal chef extraordinaire. His son David watches dutifully. Wielding his long spatula like a baton, Kranish slices through the heat ripples over two hissing steaks and one mute veggie burger, and prepares to utter his key insight. “Like a rock,” he and David…