Wednesday, September 3, 2008

LT124: Passing Thoughts

WHY DIDN’T SMOKEY KILL KEAMY?

We have noticed how Keamy seemed to be pretty well prepared for what he was about to find on the island. He could have then come prepared. Perhaps he had a miniature sonar force field like the fence that encompassed Othersville. Or maybe he had some other possession that kept him save…like, oh…maybe a black and white rock?


ALMIGHTY BRUCE GERNON

If you haven’t heard of Bruce Gernon before now, it might be worth a search on the Internet. He is the person who claims to have flown a distance in 45 minutes that normally takes 75 minutes. This flight was anything but a normal straight-line to make the time even more surprising for he had to dodge storm clouds along the route.

It seems as if he runs into special clouds that behave unlike what he had witnessed before. They would change shape rapidly for a cloud. Tunnel would form within the cloud. At times, the unusual shaped clouds could be found in pairs – with his little prop-plane in the middle.

He reports heavy electromagnetic fields that rendered his equipment useless. He observed several changes in the light in what he describes as “shades of grey” or “greens like an electronic fog”. The most odd of all reported observations was that the fog would form and seem to attach itself to an object – his plane.

NOTE: Pick up the short story by Stephen King called “The Mist” and read his description of his fog. It is the best description of what Gernon was talking about. Yeah, this is the one made into the movie and I never saw it. But a book is always better at describing something. In short, it “moved oddly”.

I’m sharing this because someone recently suggested that the storyline of LOST is borrowing heavily from this guy’s account.


GAME UPDATE


The Project Game this summer is moving into Test 3. It will remind the older members of the audience of Asteroids as you have to avoid being hit for 100 seconds. The longer you avoid the asteroids, the faster they move.

Like earlier tests, there are always cheats. In this test you can right-click to pause which can come in handy. The Geek Squad found some letters and numbers and plugged them into an anagram machine. They ended up with some musical notation of the musical term “lento”. The term means “music in a slow tempo”. Of course, typing that word in during Asteroid Attack slows the rocks speed down. Are they moving slower or is the timer moving slower? Hmmm…

We also got a little warning from Octagon Recruiting about a hacker named Black Swan.


TRIVIA TIME

Each blog I’ll try to come up with a piece of trivia that 99% will read and think, “I didn’t know that.” And of course, it should be LOST related. Like this one:

Kevin Tighe is the actor who played Anthony Cooper on LOST. Cooper is John Locke’s father.

That you knew, but did you know…

Kevin Tighe guest starred on Law and Order and played a character also named Cooper?


Enjoy,
KC

Monday, September 1, 2008

LT123: The World is Folding

DHARMA INITIATIVE UPDATE

We are on the second test for recruits. The tests are timed-based, of course, so the faster connections have a better chance of scoring. Players can also earn bonus points for recruiting other people to the site.

An interesting discovery is that letters appeared on the site that seemed to be a glitch. However, after enough letters were shown one could come up with an anagram that said, “I am on the inside”. Wonder what that means?


PRELIMINARY SCREENING

When the summer game began, applicants were asked a series of questions such as, “You see a tortoise lying on its back, struggling, and you're not helping -- why is that?"

This might ring a bell if you are fan of the movie “Blade Runner”. In the movie, a device called the Voight-Kampoff Machine, is a device where people are asked a series of questions. The claim is that with enough questions a person can be determined to be a replicant or human.

One of the questions in the movie is “You're in the desert, you see a tortoise lying on its back, struggling, and you're not helping -- why is that?"

The connection is there between movie and LOST. It goes one step further in that the movie says that within 20-30 questions the determination of replicant can be made. However, a replicant name Rachael takes over 100 questions to make the discovery. Rachael is the name of main character in the LOST summer game, The Lost Experience.

The same question also shows up in an episode of Stargate and the movie, 6th Day.

The author of the book which is the origin of Blade Runner is Philip K. Dick. The sci-fi writer is known for several books-to-movies including Total Recall, Minority Report, Next, Imposter, Paycheck, and Scanner Darkly.

Why would Dharma Recruiting be using a Voight-Kampoff Machine questions?


GOT ORIGAMI

Invites to Dharma Recruiting at Comic Con where given some fliers that included on the back some instructions on how to do origami. The shape when completed was that of a swan. This particular design was done by a physicist named David Bohm. He was a pioneer in thought control and author. His book, The Holographic Universe, discusses a model of the universe that deals with infolding and enfolding space – very LOST-related. A little more digging into David Bohm might be worthwhile.


Enjoy,
KC