'Tis far better to know where you are and not desire to leave, than to be LOST and wish only to go far away…
Not any sailor would. Sailors were dumb hicks. Probably some officers and the navigator/cartographer would.
And that’s because they had to. Calculating latitude and longitude aren’t necessarily skills that come in useful to modern man, no matter how simple the calculations (and made more difficult if they don’t have a table of cosines handy).
That said, Sayid probably does know how to do this (he was in the military – Saddam’s Republican Guard, specifically) but, I’m guessing it takes a back seat to actually sending out a signal, avoiding beasties, and finding food.
It doesn’t matter if you know your lat/long if you aren’t communicating with anyone.
And FTR, in reference to your “trapped in a cell” post, triangulation isn’t used to calculate an angle. It’s used to calculate a position if you know your position relative to 2 fixed points.
What you do know is that the stick casting your shadow is 8 inches tall and the shadow cast is 5.5 inches long. Quick, what’s the angle?
Not as basic as it seems, is it?
My husband seems to think that Jack suffocated the Marshall. I am undecided, but I think I am inclined to agree with him. Still, I wonder what the hell Kate could have done for the Marshall to interact with her the way he did throughout the episode. I sort of get the feeling that the Marshall and Kate knew each other waaaaaaaay before he started looking for her Down Under.
Help. My VCR didn’t work! Can somebody give me a good sum-up? Thanks!
I absolutely agree. There is more untold story here. If he were simply a federal agent or bounty hunter, would his first reaction upon seeing Kate be to attempt to strangle her? I think not. There was something personal about his hate for Kate.
I agree. It probably isn’ too helpful to be able to tell the rescuers (assuming I find the transmitter and figure out how to use it to communicate) that the angle of the sun at noon is somewhere between 30 degrees and 45 degrees.
And longitude? Let’s say actual noon occurs at 4:24 a.m. on my watch (which is set at Sydney time. How would I know what my longitude is from this information?
You can tell longitude if you know the time your watch says at noon (by noon, I mean the sun’s peak). You know that if it was 12:00 on your watch, then you’re at Sidney.
If it was 11:00am on your watch, then you’re 1/24 of the way around the world to the east at sidney (or 15 degrees east of Sidney, 15 = 360/24).
That’s only going to be an approximation, though because you don’t know that noon in Sidney is exactly 12:00, even within time zones, sunrise can differ by an hour (Sunrise might be at 6:15 in Maine, and 7:15 in Dayton, OH).
Actually, latititude was difficult to calculate for a long time because they didn’t have a clock that worked well on ships. (that’s a bit or arcana from reading “The Discoverers” by DJ Boorstin a long time ago. It’s not a complete explanation). With a modern watch, its much easier.
last sentence, change “latitude” to “longitude”.
you knew that mistake was only a matter of time.
I was reading another message board and people were posting that they saw Locke on the plane in flashbacks so that ruins quite a few of my theories. I was disappointed they never explained what kate did, I hope they don’t drag it out too much. I did enjoy the fact that kate is canuckian though. 
A few comments:
a) Re Kate’s personal fire: I thought it was odd that Kate was trying to use matches to start a new fire from scratch. Hint: Just take a piece of burning wood from the existing fire and transfer it to the new pile. Instant fire! You want to conserve your matches/lighters lest a heavy storm come and drown your fire. Building fires from scratch is darn near impossible and you’d have a hard time sustaining life without fire. Have we learned NOTHING from watching Survivor?
b) I also find it odd from a pyschological POV that anyone on that island would go off by him/herself, esp. at night, after all that’s happened.
c) I agree that Jack smothered the marshall, though he certainly did it quickly.
d) Speaking of those bodies, after 3 days and given their unusual circumstances, I’d be taking those bodies out of the plane. The temp in that plane would be 100+ during the day and they’d be fly-ridden and smelly by now. I’d remove them from the plane, i.d. and log them the best I could, undress them, wait til the tide went out and after a lovely prayer service offering them up to Poseidon send them off into the sea. Not only is it a health hazard to have putrid bodies next to your living area, but they are using the only decent shelter on the island.
e) I know it’s trite but I’d have to write a message in a bottle using Charlie’s sharpie (“We are the survivors of Flight XXX and we are lost…”) and hope for the best. It worked for those poor tourists in Australia who were left on a reef after a diving expedition (oops!). Of course, it was too late for them by the time it was found, but at least their families know what happened to them.
f) Possibly related tidbits of info: Polar bears eat a LOT of food per day. The animal chasing whatshisname sure sounded like a lion. Seems we have a bunch of carnivores yet, strangely, no evidence of small animals. What ever have these animals been eating for 16 years? :dubious:
Yes, Locke was sitting behind the black lady on the plane. We saw him in Jack’s flashback of the flight’s final moments.
Which makes me wonder about the marshall. Was it ever said explicitly that he’s a U.S. marshall? Does Canada have marshalls? Would Australia extradite a Canadian citizen to the United States?
It was weird for me to see Nick Tate looking so old. And also, you know, not on the moon.
I missed the first ten minutes. The first moment I saw last night was Ray knocking on his prosthetic arm. What did I miss? Was Kate some sort of prisoner in Australia? And did the mountain climbers tell the others about the polar bear?
Well, I read this about the production somewhere;
I read that the digitally created warthogs for the series because they tried to use real warthogs and they just weren’t as fierce as they wanted. Fierce or not, I’m sure a polar bear could take out a warthog.
and there’s good eating on them things.
There is something about Locke though. I posted the bit about Tabula Rasa and John Locke behind a spoiler earlier, but the other info posted about backgammon and light and dark was interesting, too. I thought it was a little odd that he said “light and dark” when explaining the game to the kid and not “black and white”. He didn’t seem like he was trying to be P.C. because the kid was black. There seemed to be more of a reason behind it.
Then again, maybe the writers just want to edumacate us and get us to read some philosophy?
I don’t think we do but maybe the writers think it’s cooler than having a mountie chasing after her. 
Kate showed up at a ranchers farm saying she was travelling around oz on foot. He gave her room and board in exchange for work. It never said she was a prisoner in oz specifically.
Kate told the farmer that she was Canadian, but she could have been lying, so I wouldn’t go by that.
As for all the discussion of who was on the plane, has anyone tried to watch the flashback scenes to see who was definitely shown on board?
I missed last week’s episode and the re-broadcast, so bear with me…
How did they know the other message had been repeating for sixteen years?
I know I should have more questions or comments, but that’s all I can remember now.
the message was like this. . .
-
woman speaking french
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man saying “iteration number four hundred thousand and one”
repeat with man saying one higher iteration each time.
the arabic guy calculated the length of time based on the length of the message and the iteration count, assuming, of course that it had been broadcasting non-stop.
The distress call in French was playing in a loop. After each loop an English speaking mechanical voice would say “Iteration bunchanumbers”. Sayid did the math that if the loop was 30 seconds long and had been playing so many times it would have been playing for 16 years and 5 months etc.
Minor nitpick:
The iterations would have been getting longer over time, as the iteration counter went up. It takes a lot longer to say “Iteration 12568398333” then it does “Iteration 1”. Not a lot of time, but after that many iterations, it would add up. So the time it’s been running is actually less than 16 years.
I gotta tell ya, this is the best show I’ve seen in a loooooong time. Not since Tales of the Golden Monkey have I been so enthralled with a network TV show.
I love how they are using flashback sequences to develop characters. I can’t wait to see Sayid’s flashback(s). Are they going to show him fighting in Desert Storm? Wouldn’t that be interesting. How refreshing it is to see a Middle Eastern character (an qi no less) being portrayed as sympathetic leader, especially in this day and age.
Sayid better not be killed early on, or I am going to be pissed!
Did anybody else get a little chuckle out of the whole ‘Kate as a fugitive, complete with a marshall and a one armed man’ thing going on?
Oh… well, I did.