Sometimes life imitates fiction. It may even mimic myth. Let’s suppose someone had an array of sensitive email stores that were going to be the subject of an audit. This was known because someone in the auditing firm tipped them off.
In order to protect the organization(s) they first back up the array of email databases and put them on removable media. They could then sanitize the original databases, hypothetically, by removing inappropriate entries as “private” secure in the knowledge that all past deals and correspondence could be referenced by very careful and surreptitious consultations from the hidden archive.
No data will have been lost since the archive still exists, simply placed where it cannot be found. This archive can even be accessed at need by someone physically able to physically obtain it. There is no danger because the administrator is trustwortthy.
But suppose the administrator lives with someone less trustworthy, but who is pitied. Therefore his presence is tolerated. This wretched creature observes the data being accessed but has no clue as to its import. Nevertheless his sly nature leads him to suspect it is something important owing to the secrecy with which it is consulted. So he watches silently with his curiosity piqued until one day the removable media is left unguarded, perhaps only for a few minutes.
He copies its contents in that instant onto his own computer, still oblivious to its significance. Then he forgets about it, returning only to look at its hefty mass in megabytes before returning to his obsessions. But outside his little word great forces are on the move seeking something that he in his ignorance, has. They never think to look in his cave. There it lies, unremarked in his pocket until one day a stranger stumbles across it seeking something unrelated.
What is this? he is asked. But the wretch doesn’t know. It just something I found, not as interesting as these pictures. He tells irrelevant riddles.
What has roots as nobody sees,
Is taller than trees Up, up, up it goes,
And yet never grows?
But the stranger who has come upon him in the dark realizes it’s more than a bauble and takes it. It is strangely heavy and glowing. The election of 2016 has so far been a series of improbable events. Now in the homestretch of the campaign a series of improbable events has turned the political odds around. Pundits have look mostly in vain for a explanation to all of it. Suppose there is none?
Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo besides evil. Bilbo was meant to find the ring, in which case you also were meant to have it, and that is an encouraging thought!
I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened!
So do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo besides evil. Bilbo was meant to find the ring, in which case you also were meant to have it, and that is an encouraging thought!
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