Not necessarily. DHARMA could have wanted to make sure that no one else knew about the Island and so asked Widmore to buy it to keep it out of anyone else’s hands. He could have been buying it for them.
Ahhh. One of my favorite Lost moments. Right up there with the tender reunion between mother and child with Rousseau’s first words to her daughter, missing for 16 years: “Will you help me tie him up?”
Why does everyone think she’s crazy? Honestly, she has always seemed to be the most focused and grounded and reasonable person on the whole island.
I agree that Des got his memory back when he became unstuck. It’s all been mentioned upthread, but the way he maintained conciousness in '96 while talking to Penny in '04 effectively showed us that he got much better. He was suddenly able to grasp his current situation and even relay a little to Penny on the phone, telling her he was on a boat, that he’d been on an island. I thought it was pretty clear.
I’m also pretty sure the journal will figure prominently in future episodes.
I’m wondering if the island isn’t some sort of time wheel on which you can dial up an era on the compass points. It would explain how Ben got all his information on various people…even information that bugged me because he would really have no way of knowing this stuff unless he’d been inside the other person’s head – or at the very least standing nearby. For example: How did he know Sawyer had killed the wrong guy? How did he know Sawyer killed any guy? It really bothered me that we were supposed to believe that the Others’ crack investigative team were supposed to know that he’d shot this guy a few hours before getting on the plane when there were no records to even investigate. But if Richard could spin the magic compass on the sub and head to Sydney to follow James around to watch him shoot the guy and hear the exchange between them, the rest would be easy to piece together.
Ben could also have given Michael and WAAALLTTTTT! coordinates to a point x years in the past, which would explain why Walt can now legally drink when he’s only supposed to be 11.
Faraday’s coordinates are supposed to send you back and forth with little or no time difference, which would explain why he was so freaked out over the 3 (hour? Minute? Second? so many have been written I can’t remember) time difference experienced by his watch.
Wouldn’t it make more sense then to just, um, not sell the journal if you’re Hanso?
It was definitely longer than 8 years. Ben did not have Alex yet when he started his coup. She’s now 16. So, it has been at least 16 years or so.
Good point.
Not only that, but in watching it, the series of events I saw was this:
Original timeline-Farraday does his geekery, eventually figures the settings out, ends up on the island.
New and improved timeline: once on island, meets Desmond, sends him to himself with the coordinates to confirm. Now he’s got the numbers earlier than he otherwise would have had them, but he’d have gotten them one way or the other. This way just has less trial and error.
I think Desmond has fully recovered his memory - that was my impression anyway.
I think Omniscent’s speculations about the importance of the log are right on the mark.
Nothing real clever to add. Though - could Vincent & Walt be each other’s constants?
That’s what I don’t get. If this journal is a crucial as they made it out to be (and I believe it is), why would it be up for auction?
Maybe there is a schism in the Hanso family…?
Ben killed all the Dharmaites, so Hanso retired from the Island business.
or a Bad Twin. 
Just another thought as a new episode approaches: I don’t like the Locke character; never have. I see him devolving into a Kurtz character more and more, as Sawyer called him. I’d like to see a power struggle between Locke and Sawyer grow as there was a power struggle between Janck and Locke previously. They could clash of over what to do when the Others or the Freighter people or whoever show up. Without such a role, I’m afraid Sawyer is doomed to have not much of a storyline. The horror!
I got this from the guy who writes “The Lost Report” (link provided in the OP), but wouldn’t it be cool if they did a backstory on the Black Rock? Maybe we’d see Richard in the crew, or maybe he’d already be on The Island.
If it’s shown that Farraday worked out the settings on his own, then at least they avoid that stupid impossible causal loop that I hate.
I guess we all kinda wish we were writing this show. Not enough to stoop to something as shameful as fanfiction, but enough to be annoyed that it’s not better.
I still don’t see what’s impossible about causal loops (other than the fact that, as far as we know, the physics of our universe doesn’t have any time travel to begin with, and certainly no causal loops), though I’ll grant that you hate them.
Here’s one form the movie Somewhere In Time that I talked about in a thread a while back:
Old woman approaches young Christopher Reeve and gives him a watch.
Reeve finds out that old woman was once beautiful, becomes infatuated with her and goes back in time to meet her, watch in tow.
He gives her the watch in the past as a gift.
She keeps it all those years and returns it to him as an old woman.
Who made the watch?
Why does it have to be that someone made it? Is it the case for everything that comes to exist that someone made it?
-FrL-
I know it’s just a TV show, but… why the hell didn’t Sayid grab the phone from Desmond and say something like: I am Sayid Jarah, one of the survivors of Oceanic 815. You need to tell the world that there are <however many there are> survivors on this Island. We’re not sure who these people are who are here, but they don’t seem to be planning on rescuing us.
Alessan:
Do the off-island Dharmaites know this? The food drops for Swan station continued on a regular basis at least through 2004. Did Ben and his gang take over the off-island Dharma as well, and intentionally maintain Swan despite the fact that its residents were not under his control? (Well, I suppose Kelvin might have been and us not know it, but Desmond certainly wasn’t.)
Because he was told that the phones only communicate with each other IIRC.