LT244: Researching the Details

GUNS AND CANOES

With Ilana holding the weapons and the beach holding some canoes, is it safe to assume that it was her that was shooting at the Locke and company during that time flash?

This leads me to wonder if then that flash wasn’t to 2007 Ajira time (we did see water bottles from the flight). If so, and if what happened, happened…then we must assume that when Sawyer catches back up to 2007 (in 30 years) he will board a canoe with Locke to get to the Orchid hatch and then get shot at by Ilana. But we see her now and Sawyer and Locke are no where near each other in time. So…either Sawyer is going to flash to 2007 or things do change. If the first guess is correct then we might see a lot more “replays” of events we have seen already but coming from a different vantage point. I’m reminded of Sawyer coming up on Kate and Claire delivering the baby. However, does this mean Sawyer really was in the bushes the first time we saw Aaron’s birth or do we know he was on the beach at that time?

Yeah, me too.


EGYPTIAN MYTH

Seems there was a goddess named Inanna (is that close to Ilana?) who had to die in order to appreciate life. In the afterlife she meets her mirror image and loses her innocence. I might not have this next part straight, but it seems she dies in the afterlife and then returns to the land of the living “enlightened”.

If this sounds familiar it might be because of Ben and John. Or maybe you are thinking of Greek myth where a goddess and pomegranate share a similar tale? That Greek goddess was Persephone – which happens to be the alias name of the character in the summer LOST game.


SEASON 5 CLIFFHANGER

Each season LOST producers come up with a codename to reference the big season climax. They have announced that the Season 5 nickname will be “The Fork in the Outlet”.

Can’t help but remember those electric flashes we saw in Smokey under the Temple.


SPEAKING OF ELECTRICITY AND SMOKE

I did some digging on when smoke and electricity are found together. What we may have observed in Smokey is static electricity. This involves the forces of attraction between charged particles. When we take a sweater off on a dry day is sparkles and snaps.

But how is this associated with smoke? During my research I found that the electro-static properties are used to control pollution. When a factory chimney is spewing pollutants into the air, we can apply a static charge to the smoke. Once the smoke is charged then metal plates of the opposite charge will attract the smoke and not allow it to escape into the open air.

This led me to conclude how Smokey has structure. If the smoke is say negatively charged and if we have a positively charged rod or metal plate or CHAIN (like the sound we often hear)…then it can cause the smoke to swirl around that charged metal piece. Yeah, it isn’t a complete explanation but it sure beats the snot out of nanotechnology.

Of course, how Smokey can display a video image or wrap around a person like we saw it do to Ben without the subject notice a metal rod, chain or wire is still unexplained. But this info did make be go, “Hmmm…”

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Smoke, Part II

I found that there is a “Smoke Theory” in the field of electronics. It seems that electronics work on the principle of blue-gray smoke. Engineers trap smoke inside each discreet component in order to empower it to do its thing. When a person does the wrong thing – like spill a liquid into a electronic component – the error is manifested by the production of a bluish-grey cloud of smoke. The phrase used to describe this is “letting the smoke out”.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard this before, but it seems to apply somehow to the discussion at hand!


CHARLOTTE DETAILS

Just to clear things up for TIDBIT readers. Recently I posted that LOST might have made some continuity errors with Widmore. The prior “Opps” moment was with Charlotte’s age. At one point we are told she was born in 1979 and then we see a two-year old Charlotte skipping through 1974. The producers have said this was a mistake on their part and to go with the 1972 birth year.

This is probably more a sign of the sheer volume of facts that are dispensed on this show and how difficult it will become to keep everything straight. We may then experience more of these inconsistencies, so be on guard not to take everything literally.


JULIET DETAILS

Rumor has it that the actress playing Juliet might leave LOST for a new TV series. You know what this means for Juliet. They could just reduce her role to a few special guest roles or kill her off.

And for those older than the crackers Hurley eats on the island, you might recall a sci-fi show called “V”. I believe it was “V – the Final Battle” that dealt with a reptile alien race. It is going to be remade and this is the show Juliet is moving to.


LOCKE DETAILS

Just how numb have we become to oddities on LOST? John Locke starts to take his shoes off before paddling to the main island with Ben. He then puts them back on when they reach the dock. Yet, hardly a word is mentioned on message boards about this. Well, I haven’t found anything. How odd.


LOST REVIEW: Polar Bears

Soon the Survivors come across a very unusual thing: polar bears. It is unusual for they are found on a tropical island.

Now if we continue along the idea of a virtual reality computer things begin to break down on this discovery. Unless the programmer is not very well read, it would make little sense to find a polar bear on a tropical island. There is probably some fancy word for this contradiction, but let us all agree – this was strange.

It is not until much later that the Blast Door Map gives us an explanation. Someone wrote on the Blast Door that the Dharma Initiative was attempting to adapt polar bears to live in extreme climates. To accomplish the Dharma group used gene therapy.

Phenotype of the polar bear reveals that they adapted to the environment. These adaptations are so severe that bringing them to another environment would prove fatal. However, genetic study has proven that polar bears are of the same species as brown bears. Brown bears can easily live in a variety of less extreme climates as its cousins. Therefore, gene therapy is a very likely explanation as to how these creatures made it to the island.

In other words, we have a scientific explanation and nothing to do with bad programming by a computer geek.

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On the spiritual side of the equation there are many references to polar bears. The Inuit and Eskimos believed that polar bears were humans when inside their own houses and put on bear hides when going outside. They connected the constellation in the skies to the resemblance of the great bear. The human-like posture of bears when standing and sitting may have contributed to this belief.

The skulls and teeth were considered to be of great value and meaning. In popular culture polar bears are often portrayed as sentient beings as seen in the movie, “The Golden Compass”. If the connection isn’t clear, it should be pointed out that the compass will play a role in future episodes of LOST. Maybe I should rent that movie?

Another book contains a reference to polar bears in Hawaii entitled, “Laughter in the Dark”. This book was found in Sawyer’s stash by Charlie. The original English name of this book was “Camera Obscura”. The book uses a non-linear storyline which is emulated by LOST.

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File this under, No Rock Left Unturned, but it should be noted that the USS Connecticut did encounter a polar bear once. The bear chewed on the rudder before moving on and the USS Connecticut was able to return to base under its own power. The USS Connecticut is a submarine.

It seems they even got a picture of this event which occurred in 2003.

CONCLUSION

It would seem that polar bears on LOST point to a hypothesis of science and religion much more than computers. Was this merely a distraction for us? If we use our Gary Troup theory that when things are cast aside on the show, we too should ignore them, then maybe polar bears were a distraction.

Recall that Mr. Troup’s anagram of “purgatory” was thrown away the minute he passed through a running plane engine. His manuscript of the book was discarded when Jack tossed it into the fire.

If we keep this consistent, then it should be noted that Walt’s comic book depicting a polar bear was also thrown into the fire. Sawyer kills the polar bear during the Transceiver Trek. And Locke burns the bear in the cave when retrieving Mr. Eko. There does seem to be quite a bit of suggestions to “ignore this clue”.

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Enjoy,

KC

LT243: Visual Aids

SAY WHAT?

Yes, we pour over the details of this show. Yes, we get a week in between to share notes. But when we heard Widmore left the island due to frequent nights on the continent and a tryst with an outsider, that seemed to differ with Widmore’s earlier explanation about turning the Dharma Wheel. It is a continuity error or is this one of those picture frame changing moments (think the staircase when Miles chased away a ghost with his DustBuster).

And while I’m on details concerning Widmore…the exile seemed to happen after the Purge in 1992-93. This would make it 15 years later when Ben calls Widmore at Penny’s boat. Widmore said he had been trying to return for 20 years. Maybe it just feels like 20 years.


DID YOU NOTICE?

When Ben was sent to kill Danielle the boy with him was Ethan. His hair seemed a little blonde for Ethan.

Did you catch the board game in Ben’s house? It is RISK, one of my all-time favorites. It appears no one has been in this house since Keamy and his merry band of military men stormed the island.

Did you catch the name of Penny and Desmond’s boat was “Our Mutual Friend” which is the title of Desmond’s last book he would ever read?

How about that metal case that Ilena seemed to using to carry weapons? That’s a big case for guns…what else could be in there? A casket?


Did you catch the Egyptian images in the tunnels under the Temple? It looked like the statue character bowing before Smokey. Anubis seems to be the winner of the Guess the Statue image.

LOST REVIEW: Transceiver

We last discussed the attempt by Jack, Kate and Charlie to find the cockpit. What they ran into was rain and the monster. But eventually they found what they were looking for: the transceiver.

As we review past clues in LOST we are attempting to find a common theory to explain the events we witness each week. At this point of our review we have covered topics found in part 1 of the Pilot episode. There is an amazing amount of clues pointing to a computer. This leads us to conclude that some kind of virtual reality is happening.

This post we have moved into part 2 of the Pilot episode and one of the key items is the transceiver. Again we find a clue related closely to a computer. Both use circuitry, microchips and have input and output capability. For trivia sake a transceiver is a sending and receiving device (transmitter and receiver). It talks and it listens as it provides two-way communication.

Once the transceiver is brought back to the beach it is up to Sayid to attempt to get it working. Kate checks on the progress and Sayid says that it can’t be used on the beach but perhaps on higher ground a signal might be found. He warns that the batteries are low.

You may not be aware but workstation computer do have a batter in them. Laptops obviously have batteries but even the MAGIC BOX under your desk has a battery. This is required for when the power is off because the computer still must keep the TIME.

I realize the influence it has when I capitalize words, but do take note that these popular terms are going to be future themes and topics on LOST. I just can’t help it, but everything keeps pointing to computers.

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Another thought on this subject is that the transceiver is trying to suggest communication. Anthropologists agree that speech is one of the few things that separate us from the animals. In all fairness it should be pointed out the importance of communication in science and religion. The word “communion” comes to mind on the religion side.

This non-computer analysis seems pertinent because soon the Survivors are going to march up to higher ground and find a signal. The receiver portion of the transceiver picks up a message that is on a loop for 16 years. Yeah, computer programs loop through lines of code. But on the non-computer side of the debate we notice the message is in French which seems to point out that while one can be talking, it doesn’t mean anyone can understand. The strict definition of communication would include sending a message and having it be received.

One last point…Sayid says they can’t send a message because the incoming transmission is blocking them. This reminds me a bit of religion in that God has left several messages (Bible, Torah, Book of Mormon, etc.) but they are each one-way communication.

CONCLUSION

I’d be willing to call this a tie between computer and religion. Ok, let’s call computers the science side of things and we have a tie between the show discussing religion AND science.


BUSY SCHEDULE

There is a lot on my plate right now, so keep checking back since we have just scratched the surface of this episode!

Enjoy,

KC

LT424: Dead is Dead Initial Thoughts

The worst thing about immediate posting is it doesn't give me time to digest. Each week LOST gives us a full-course meal and we should heed that advice about waiting 30 minutes. But time waits for no one, so here goes...

NO WORD FOR IT

Ben says that the Survivors call it the Monster. We call it Smokey. Tonight I call it just plain strange. The final scene was a lot like Mr. Eko except Ben apologized where Eko said he had nothing to be sorry for. Don't mean to keep beating the religious drum, but that sounds like a popular doctrine - repentance.

The orders are clear now: follow John. Funny, but the monster doesn't seem able to tell if Ben is lying about his promise, but I could tell from where I was sitting. You don't jump through this many hoops just to become a follower.


SUN

As much as she has disappointed me, tonight I felt a bit sorry for her. All the options provided her were not very good ones. Can you imagine either going into the hole with John and Ben OR being left to stand outside in the jungle at night? If my count is right, there were only two torches so she is standing in the dark.


FAST AND FURIOUS

-- What was Ilena keeping in that big metal box?

-- Did the "what lies in the shadow of the statue" remind you of "what did one snowman say to the other snowman"? Me too.

-- Is Ilena another Widmore group infiltrating this island?

-- If Ben meant to kill Penny then why didn't he? If he didn't mean to kill her, then why pretend?

-- How did Ben crawl out of the water?

-- I'm betting now that it was a liquid that saved Desmond. Was it Charlie that saved mommy?

-- Ben had a good heart? He saved Alex and Richard seemed to be keeping a close eye on Ben's progress.

-- So you can't leave the island or have children with an outsider? What pulled Charles off the island in the first place?

-- Tunnels run under this island and that is how Smokey gets around. But if you find one of his exit holes and fill it with water....

-- I saw electricity and sparks in the smoke.

-- Dead is dead...so can John be killed? Had Caesar shot John would that have revealed something John that Ben didn't want him to know?

-- Why is Ben taking so long to heal?

-- Desmond's boat was the name of the last book he would ever read, "Our Mutual Friend"

-- Has Ben ever directly killed anyone?


NEXT ON TIDBITS

Well, this episode is going to take some analysis so check back often. Until then, my advice is this, "If you hear whispers, run the other way."


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Enjoy,
KC

LT241: Warning Messages, Memory and Variables

WARNING: ALWAYS TO BE ONE OF THEM

Richard warns Kate and Sawyer that if he takes Ben then Ben will always be “one of them”. Why does it seem that so many people are bending over backwards to help this guy? Could it be that history can be re-written and maybe the redemption theme will extend to Ben who will be given a chance to change his ways?

Imagine if that is what happens! Charles Widmore is invited back to the island to lead the Others happily ever after. Roger Linus marries Kate and they have 23 kids together. The sonic fence is taken down and a new civilization is started that outlasts the outside world. That would be strange.

Consider what we have seen in five seasons, I’m more inclined to wonder about Juliet. If the doctrine “once an Other, always an Other”, than could Juliet still be a threat? Does Sawyer realize the danger of having a Latin-speaking Other in their midst? Could see be leaving tape recorded messages for Richard some place? Yikes!


DRINK UP

Richard tells us that Ben won’t have any memory of what has happened prior to his “healing”. Fine, I can work with that. But that got me thinking about all these beverages again.

Juliet drank something in order to “not remember” the trip to the island in the submarine. Claire returned from her ordeal with Ethan and couldn’t remember anything and we saw her drinking something bitter.

One has to wonder if the drinks being served and the medicine show performed by Oldham aren’t related in some way. It may not be a time flashing at all. Re-ordering the show in chronological order may be the actual and only order of events ever to have happened. The headaches and dizzying lights could be part of the memory beverage. Hmm…


STATUE POSSIBILITY

I came across an interesting theory for the statue. It could be the goddess, Taweret. Here is some pretty convincing evidence:

The goddess was said to carry an Ankh – same symbol Paul wore around his neck! Plus the four toes…I’d bet money on this one. Plus the pregnancy tie-in and we have ourselves a resolved mystery! Well, maybe…


LOST REVIEW: The Purple Sky

This is going to be a quick one because the main point is that light is a critical theme of LOST. Light and computers share a lot of commonality.

Besides “flash drives”, we know computers use light in the form of lasers to read CD’s or to project holograms. Computers use light as an interface device: monitors.

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When time changes on the island, we have always observed a light flash. This leaves me wondering if the memory banks of the supercomputer aren’t being reset or re-programmed.

In a computer program we find “variables”. This term is used to hold the value of various key pieces. For example:

Person1 = Jake
Person2 = Kate
Time = 9/22/2004
Animal1 = Boar

And so on…what if the flashes are changing the variable known as “time”? The rest of the program continues to operate without notice or obstruction, but the date-related routines now have a different value. If a piece of the code goes to retrieve other objects based on the time variable, then it gets a 1970’s Technics turntable at one point in time and a 2008 watch at another time. Keep in mind that unless the programmer tells a program to “dump all current variables” the computer just holds on to the current values. This might be what gives us our occasional anachronistic observations!

CONCLUSION

So far our observations are leaning heavily towards a supercomputer as a valid hypothesis. We do have some areas however that do not directly relate to a computer such as the religious and philosophical themes. In the next TIDBITS we will explore a possible rationale for these observations.


NEXT ON TIDBITS

After the next episode, there will be the Initial Thoughts posting. The next one is entitled, “Dead is Dead”. That sounds interesting and may begin to explain some of the ghosts we have seen.

Here is your teaser photo for this next episode:

Check it out...more beverages and a purple shirt. Hmm...

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Thanks for reading!

Enjoy,
KC

LT240: Blinded By the Light

NO SURPRISES

The past episode was short on Easter eggs and “Oh My!” moments. Most of it seemed to simply confirm things we strongly suspected in the first place. Everyone knew Ben wouldn’t die even if it was the trained, professional killer Sayid doing the shooting, right?

Item after item was resolved with solutions that were easily the favorite choice going into the show – such as Kate giving Aaron to Mrs. Littleton.

This episode even offered solutions that we didn’t need such as Ben losing his memory so he wouldn’t later remember being shot by Sayid.

This kind of episode always leaves me struggling to fill a week’s worth of postings. The good news is that we can mull over a few subtle points…


SCIENCE AND RELIGION

During my second viewing I began to notice things that were easy to gloss over originally. The show offered as a wonderful explanation of science and religion. It was almost a refresher course on the doctrines of LOST.

For example, consider the simple and funny line from Miles, "You're all free to leave whenever you want. But I'll shoot you in the leg." If anyone has ever struggled to understand the doctrine of predestination versus free will, then just consider Miles’ explanation. He states that free will exists, “You’re all free to leave”, but then explains how predestination fits in, “but I’ll shoot you in the leg”. Everyone has had moments like this in the life – at it usually involves parents: “You can stay out past curfew, but your bags will be packed on the front lawn”, sort of thing. Some choice, huh? The truth of the matter is that there still is a choice in there.

And we can consider that later Kate storms out of the house and Miles is caught off guard. Makes one wonder if this isn’t sometimes how God is thinking. “Hey, I give you perfect bodies, a perfect garden to live in, and still you make bad choices, Adam.”

This reminds me then of the basic tenet of the show which is philosophical musings. The greater question remains a mystery…who is this God or if you prefer, who is the man behind the curtain? If you’ve been following the TIDBITS LOST Review then you know I’m learning towards a scientific answer of a supercomputer. I’ve tried the religious angle and found it too convenient to blame everything on a being with “I can do anything and everything” powers. That explanation falls as flat as saying, “Oh, Ben won’t remember.” A little too convenient.


REVISITNG THEMES

This latest episode really was a reunion of sorts. We revisited the theme of games.


Above we see Hurley and Miles playing Dominos. It was on the second viewing that my appreciation for this show began to grow. The idea behind Dominos being a chain-reaction was really brilliant. And it kept that common theme of games which must be difficult for the writers to keep in mind every theme presented.

And consider the beverages on the table. Drinks have long been a running theme of the show, so a tip of the hat to the writers for keeping the theme around. Give them a pat on the back for selecting Juice while Aaron is asking mommy for a juice box in the same episode. It even gives me flashes back to Hurley’s crazy Camaro ride which begins by knocking over a table of oranges.

It was really upon this closer examination that the full appreciation of this episode was realized.


TIME TRAVEL

Hurley and Miles even provided a confirmation of time travel. Actually, it was more like the writers telling us, “Yep, you have the basic premise figured out, but you still don’t understand it.” Spot on.

How the writers keep all this stuff straight is really quite a feat. At times it has gotten them into trouble. For example, I want to see how they explain Kate and Sawyer coming back to Dharmaville. Sooner or later, Horace is going to start putting the pieces together and someone is going to have to give him some answers. Personally, if I were Horace I’d march the group of “friends” out to Oldham’s tent and pump them all full of truth serum.

The more we examine “What Happened, Happened”, the deeper the meaning becomes. Consider Locke’s line, “Welcome back to the land of the living.” Oh, that’s right – Locke was dead. Just how numb have we become to this show. Or was this another theme reminder for us that involve reincarnation, spiritual rebirth and other religious themes?


LOST REVIEW: ETHAN

When reviewing Season 1, our first major clue we get is Ethan. If you recall, Hurley was doing a census using the manifest from the flight and discovers no Ethan on the list. He was a tangible clue that there were other people on this island.

We learn that Ethan’s last name is Rom and he hails from Minnesota – at least, this is what he told Hurley. I think it is important to remember that every lie usually has some piece of truth in it. For example, Minnesota would eventually show up as Henry Gale’s home state. Odds are great then that Ethan was involved in the discovery and perhaps burial of the balloonist. And most likely, it was recent history for it to be on Ethan’s mind.

LOST is big on anagrams and when we take Ethan Rom and mix up the letters we get “Other Man”. We always have to be on guard about seeing things in LOST that aren’t really there, but it interesting to note that the word “Other” was being provided to us early in the show.

It might actually be his actual surname that is the clue, Rom. In computers this acronym stands for Read-Only Memory. When we consider our working hypothesis of a supercomputer, this clue fits like a glove.

Read-Only Memory is as the name implies as it can be read from its source, but not written or updated. We might call it “hard-wired” or “hard-coded” on a integrated circuit chip.

There are times when a descriptive name is assigned but over time it no longer applies. Great examples include how older people may say they like to play music “albums” instead of “CD’s”. Older folks might also like to play “pinball” when they mean “video games”. It is merely the terms we…er, I mean, THEY grew up with. Same with ROM. Over time, computers offered erasable ROM.

ROM is instructions hard-wired into a computer in order for the computer to have enough basic information to get booted-up. As improvements were made, a manufacturer may wish to update that initial set of instructions and erasable ROM make an oxymoronic term. But it served a purpose.

In order to update ROM chips the technology uses a bright light flash. The type of light is ultraviolet and it “burns” a new set of instructions onto the memory chip. The color of that light is purple.

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CONCLUSION

While we may not have a super strong case to make for computers yet…we do have several circumstantial clues pointing us in this scientific direction. Now if we discover down the road that the island experiences some flash of light where the sky turns purple…ah, we have! More on this in the next edition of TIDBITS.


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Enjoy,
KC