Okay a bit of topic, but give it time and it will all come back around 
…
Anyway, up the block from my office someone was threatening to jump from a second floor deck, which led me to share the link to Improve Everywhere’s suicide jumper bit. Since I was there I decided to just toss in this bit of time-warping/time-killing fun in here…
One big problem I had with this episode was with this scene in the helicopter:
Sayid: “What do you hope to find on that freighter?”
Desmond: “Answers.”
This is where I expected Sayid to say: “Oh yes, thanks for bringing that up. I want to know who hired you to monitor that switch, who sent you the food supplies, what do you know about the numbers, what do you know about Dharma, tell me everything from the training films, tell me everything they told you about where this island is…”
About Desmond’s memory:
Seems perfectly clear to me that desmond’s crisis is completely over. He knows who and when and where he is. And who Sayid is.
Some viewers are looking too hard at things. The writers had Desmond specifically say “Sayid” (complete with a dramatic pause) for a reason–to communicate to us that Desmond knows and remembers him now.
The same thing happened last week with the baby. Kate called him Aaron but people questioned whether it was the same Aaron. Again, they had Kate dramatically say the name to communicate to the viewer that this is Aaron–the only Aaron we know of in the show.
The writers are trying (in these cases) to be perfectly clear but some people are still looking for the ‘con’.
I agree with this - especially given the music change when she said his name… it actually took on a bit of a sinister tone.
I agree. The time travel thing was an odd unexpalined side-effect phenomena of the island. That’s what this episode was about. It started here and ends here. Viewers thinking it’s taking us in a new direction and the others are using it to zip around through time and control things are taking it too far.
My guess is they drop the topic like a bad habit and it won’t come up again. Much like the significance of the numbers.
This isn’t a revelation. Charlie talked to Penny when they were in the Looking Glass station, that’s how he knew it wasn’t Penny’s boat.
I’m not sure Desmond knew that Charlie had talked to her.
I agree with you completely about Aaron and said so in that thread.
And you may be right about Desmond’s memory returning, but when I watched it, it was not clear to me. Now that you mention it, I do remember him distinctly saying Sayid’s name, and at the time I thought it sounded like he was pronouncing it as if for the first time (it was kind of awkward-sounding). I’m planning on re-watching it tonight to see if I think different on repeat viewing.
But I’m not “looking for a con” or “looking too hard” or anything else - that’s just the way I saw it. So you may want to dismount from Secretariat.
Not necessarily blatantly or anything, but Charlie had to find out from someone.
-Joe
Oh, I agree with that. And I thought I remembered the story being retold during one of the first episodes of the season with Charlie talking to Penny. At any rate, he knows now.
When he was talking to Penny, it all seemed to come back to him. “I’ve been on an island…”
I might have agreed with you until I read this…
I went back to Lostpedia’s summary for that episode, and sure enough they characterize it as a “time slip”, saying that he has become “unstuck in time”. But to your point, Hampshire, is the Ms. Hawking character…a little old woman who takes Desmond by the hand and convinces him that he is not to marry Penny, and instructs him on the intricacies of altering time…sounds like someone popping in to control the situation…at least to keep it on course.
That is a very good point.
That was impossible almost from show number one.
I rewatched the end of the episode and I am now convinced that Desmond DOES regain his memory. When Penny asks where he is, he says: “I’m on a boat…[significant look]…I’ve been on an island.” Cut to a shot of Sayid looking up in interest at Desmond, which I read as “He remembers.” The he calls Sayid by name and says he is “perfect.”
So, upon further review, I am convinced.
For me it was never a question. While I was watching it I even said to my SO “here he is going to call sayid by his name” about 8 seconds before he did. I thought it was very clear that the loop was closed, so to speak, and he had regained his memory.
The new podcast is up: http://ll.media.abc.com/podcast/audio/abc/LOST_406_audio_podcast_1577829_9c4b902f-9f7a-4bee-b52c-56931d18ff90.mp3
They rehash the show and talk about how time travel works on the show.
This is the idea I was trying to convey when I said that Desmond’s consciousness had been suppressed. “2004 Desmond” basically pushed “1996 Desmond” aside for a few moments and took over his body. 1996 Desmond cannot remember those times, because he was unable to access his own body until 2004 Desmond left again.
Given Desmond’s drinking problem, he probably assumed the gaps in his memory were alcoholic blackouts 
As for the time warp the helicopter faced, it looks to me like anything that attempts to enter or leave the island is transported into the future. The amount of time seems to vary, since the rocket lost about 30 minutes while the helicopter lost over a day. The same thing probably happened to Desmond’s boat when he tried to flee the island, although we don’t know how badly it was effected. In his case, there also seems to have been a spacial warp, which moved Desmond’s boat to the other side of the island, causing him to sail right back to it. The raft might also have been spatially warped, since they ended up drifting ashore on the opposite side of the island from where they left. In the raft’s case, any time warp they experienced must have been very minor. It seems like radio transmissions are not effected.
How do we know that radio transmissions are not affected? Because people on the island can have real-time dialogues over the radio with people off the island? If moving to the island causes a time jump forward and moving off the island causes an equal time jump backwards, then it would still be possible to have those real-time dialogues.
My take is that while we were all distracted with Desmond, the auction scene quietly slipped in many interesting things.
The auctioneer said the Black Rock’s log had one previous owner - Hanso - I would assume this is the same Hanso who started the Dharma project. Since the well funded group on the boat also knows about the island, they might be agents of Widmore, and Penny may have picked up enough from her father’s affairs/ the log to narrow in too.
So if the ship’s log has clues to a mysterious island with great powers, why would Hanso let it out of his hands?
If Hanso’s Dharma experiments were what created the island’s powers and he only found the Black Rock’s log and sold it to make money, how did the ship end up so far inland?