Someone will come to help you

Allegories and parables, recipes and things

Religion is a metaphor and so is pure epic fiction, so I wanted to take a little side trip here and talk about Tolkien’s metaphor.

Sauron is someone who discovered how to make a ring of power. He did not tell anyone how to make it, but he made a number of copies which allowed him to control the world through the bearers of those copies. Then he lost the ring.

Everyone who handled the ring thereafter was unable to destroy it, until Frodo was able to carry it back to its place of origin and will himself to cast the ring away.

That’s a very condensed summary, but I think it’s fair.

As a story it’s a very powerful one, and goes to the core of what it means to be a human being (or a hobbit) with a gift that can create and destroy in equal measure.

I am hearing this testimony and weighing, even as I write. Because that is what great fiction is, a request for consideration.

A good bread should not be destroyed, but eaten. Yet some might consider the same bread if made from a sourdough to be spoiled. The same is true of wine, which is made of spoiled grapes, and cheese, which is spoiled milk.

But if the recipe is made known, then the knowledge is shared, and as the bread can be eaten by anyone, so can the ring be worn by all those who choose it, as long as everyone knows its design.

42.0 42:0 4:20

The answer to life, the universe and everything.

I’m sorry, what was the question?

Provisional voting in Alameda county

It appears that the registrar of voters and election officials are within their legal rights to refuse to count my vote if I choose to cast a provisional ballot, unless by order of the superior court. They do not tell you this and when I asked the election supervisor directly, she refused to answer.

Here is a statement on the secretary of state’s website:

Ballots for such voters are placed in provisional ballot envelopes. Each provisional ballot is researched by election officials. A provisional ballot is not counted unless the Elections Official establishes from the records in their office the claimants’ right to vote prior to the completion of the official canvass, or by order of the Superior Court in the county of the voter’s residence.

Emphasis added.

Related post:

• How we are told we cannot vote and be counted

Say hello

to John Cole.

Hat-tip to Creature.

Which fruit of which tree is best, which is poison?

Hat-tip to Toker00.