Russ McBee

I'm ending this blog, effective immediately. It's been fun (mostly), but I'm signing off, for personal reasons. I'm also deleting my accounts at Twitter and Utterli, but I'll keep my PBase account active.

This site will remain live until either my hosting account expires or I decide to delete it on a whim, whichever comes first.

Goodbye.

[UPDATE]: I'm keeping my Twitter account.

When Amazon released the first generation of its Kindle reading device in November 2007, I was intrigued by the idea, but the list of ergonomic and performance issues kept me from buying one. The next generation of the device, the Kindle 2, was released a few weeks ago, and the reports suggested that Amazon had addressed the problems with the first generation. I was tempted to take the plunge.

Then, Randy Neal did a thorough review of the Kindle 2 at KnoxViews; his discussion of the ergonomic improvements and the readability of the device sold me on it.

My Kindle arrived a couple of days ago, and I haven't been able to put it down since. As Randy said: "This is a remarkable thing." Its convenience is only surpassed by its readability; the Kindle has almost completely eliminated the eye strain I would get from reading a standard LCD display for hours at a time.

When I turned it on for the first time, it automatically downloaded the books I had ordered while waiting for it to arrive. I sat down to read at about 6:00 PM, and the next thing I knew, it was 11:30 PM. I felt no eye strain at all after that marathon. There is no way I could have spent that much time reading on an LCD without my eyes complaining.

The Kindle doesn't use a standard LCD display, which constantly refreshes the screen 60 or 75 times a second. Instead, the Kindle uses a technology called "electronic paper," in which the screen is only refreshed when it is first drawn. After drawing a screen of text, the device just sits there, with no subsequent screen refreshes until you navigate to another page. Once the screen is drawn, its electronic ink particles just sit there, magnetically behaving themselves, sort of like the screen on an Etch-A-Sketch, but with much finer resolution.

This has two main effects:

1) The device only consumes power when it's redrawing the page. Once the page is rendered, it takes no power to maintain the display. This eliminates the subliminal flicker of an LCD, and it significantly increases battery life (especially if the wireless feature is turned off).

2) The display has a contrast approximating that of ink on paper.

Both of those factors help eliminate eye strain. The static display doesn't flicker like a monitor or TV screen, and the improved contrast and sharpness of the Kindle's font make readability much easier than any other electronic device I've ever seen.

Ergonomically, the Kindle practically disappears once it's been in my hand for a minute or two. Immersed in a book or news article, I no longer feel aware of the fact that I'm pushing a button to turn the page; the Kindle is just as unobtrusive as holding a book (and maybe less so, since it weighs so little). This is a bookworm's dream come true.

For me, the Kindle is a liberating technology; the almost total elimination of eye strain, the ease of use, and the availability of vast amounts of content through Amazon's Kindle Store have given me a refreshed and rejuvenated hunger for reading, and I'm grateful for that.

In addition to the immense number of books available in the Kindle Store, Amazon offers Kindle editions of several newspapers and magazines. Although the subscription prices for some titles may be debatable, it's important to note that all Kindle content is free of advertisements. For me, that automatically commands a premium.

I haven't subscribed to a daily paper in about 15 years, and I've never paid for a subscription to the Knoxville News Sentinel, so I've kind of startled myself by taking out a Kindle subscription to the Washington Post. For $10 a month, I get the Kindle edition of the paper pushed down to my device every morning (including Sundays); it seems to contain basically everything in the print edition that I would care about. It's missing the classifieds, comics, TV listings, crossword, and other such features, but I wouldn't be interested in those things anyway.

This is a point I think newspaper publishers might be missing: people who subscribe to the Kindle edition probably aren't likely to be subscribers to the dead-tree version. I think they're likelier to be people like me, who have been reading the free edition of the paper on the Web for years now. For that reason, I suspect Kindle subscriptions would represent a new source of revenue for newspapers, rather than a shift from dead-tree subscribers to Kindle subscribers.

I'll put it another way: I have never paid for a subscription to the Knoxville News Sentinel in my life, but I would be willing to subscribe to a well-priced Kindle edition of the paper, especially if the daily Kindle edition included a snapshot of the News Sentinel's blog posts from the previous 24 hours.

Jack Lail, are you listening?

Today brought us a three-fer from the goons in charge of the Tennessee General Assembly. If the mouth-breathers running our state legislature get their way, local governments won't be allowed to pass a minimum wage above the federal minimum, lawsuits against nursing homes won't be allowed if they're unpalatable to the nursing home lobby, and guns will be allowed in bars.

Yippee.

I'm so glad the state of Tennessee doesn't have any serious problems for the General Assembly to worry about. The multiple crises in unemployment, economic development, education, health care, and the environment have all apparently been solved without any of us even noticing.

Fans of "Lost" witnessed something historic in "LaFleur," this week's episode: Sawyer's slow transformation from self-centered con man to full-fledged hero is now complete. Sawyer is once and for all confirmed as not only one of the good guys, but probably the pre-eminent good guy of the story. We also caught a glimpse of a curious statue, saw Juliet finally confirmed as trustworthy, and spent a lot of time in a groovy 1970's flashback.

Changing the past

After Locke turned the Frozen Donkey Wheel, the Left Behinders (Sawyer and company) experienced one more flash, a particularly violent one which seems to have been the last. After it was over, Daniel was found sitting alone in the jungle, wracked by grief over Charlotte's death. He was found muttering to himself, over and over, "I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to tell her." This seems to be a reference to Charlotte's dying moments, when she told Daniel that he was the crazy man who made such an impression on her as a little girl. He had told her at that time that if she ever returned to the Island, she would die. This encounter stuck with her over the years, and it seems to have formed at least part of her lifelong inspiration to find the Island where she was born.

Daniel's grief-stricken mutterings seem to indicate that Daniel thinks he can change the course of the past and its future consequences. By not warning the child Charlotte, he seems to be thinking that he can prevent her return and therefore her death. But this contradicts Daniel's repeated insistence (and Eloise Hawking's) that the course of events cannot be changed from their destined path. Only minutes after mumbling these words to himself, he says, "It doesn't matter what we do. Whatever happened, happened."

So which is it: can the past be changed or not?

Charlotte's age

This episode presented what seems like a contradiction regarding Charlotte's age. In "Confirmed Dead," Ben says that Charlotte was born July 2, 1979 in Essex, England (Rebecca Mader, the actress who portrays Charlotte, was born in 1979). However, in "LaFleur," the Left Behinders are transported back to 1974 during their final flash. At the Barracks, Daniel sees a little red-haired girl whose mother speaks with an English accent. The girl appears to be about four years old, and we are led to believe this is Charlotte as a child. However, that would place her birth sometime around 1970, not 1979.

Ben's information may have been incorrect; he stated that she was born in Essex, when in fact she was born on the Island, so he might have gotten her birth date wrong as well.

So when was Charlotte born?

The statue

Before the final flash, the Left Behinders were apparently thrust into some ancient time, during which the four-toed statue was still intact. We caught a distant glimpse of a massive stone statue from behind, and only for a couple of seconds. That brief glimpse suggests some intriguing possibilities.

This statue is clearly Egyptian. The statue is holding an ankh in each hand, which several ancient Egyptian deities were commonly shown doing (and which is echoed later in the wooden ankh necklace worn by Amy's dead first husband). In addition, the statue is shown dressed like an Egyptian man; ancient Egyptian women wore long gowns, and men wore short kilts like the one on the statue. It has long, flowing hair, short ears on the top of its head, and a crown that is flat and squat.

It's tempting to jump to the conclusion that this statue represents one of the deities related to resurrection, like Anubis, or Horus, or Osiris, but none of those deities were ever depicted with that kind of head, ears, or crown. However, one Egyptian deity did: the goddess Taweret. She was usually depicted with the head of a hippopotamus, the mane of a lion, and a short, flat crown. Here's one statue of her:

The main problem with this theory is that Taweret is female, but the body of the statue in "LaFleur" is definitely male (at least from the shoulders down). On the other hand, it may be relevant that Taweret was the goddess of protection during pregnancy and childbirth. Given the return of the pregnancy storyline in "LaFleur," this may be significant.

Other examples of Taweret statues are here, here, and here. Most depictions of Taweret show her leaning on a cane that looks a lot like an ankh, but it's actually the sa symbol, which signified protection.

Perhaps the statue really is Taweret's head on the body of Anubis. That wouldn't be unusual for an ancient Egyptian statue; many of their deities merged with others over the millennia, and countless statues show their physical forms gradually being combined. For example, there were two gods named Horus in the Old Kingdom: one of them was the son of Osiris and had a human form, and the other was a solar god who was depicted as a falcon. Eventually, the human-formed Horus began to adopt the falcon head of the solar god, and after a few centuries, they merged into one deity. Likewise, the originally distinct gods Amon and Ra eventually morphed into Amon-Ra, and their separate depictions merged into a single, unified form.

If the statue in "LaFleur" is hermaphroditic, this suggests another interesting point regarding the changing narrative of "Lost." But first, a history lesson:

Although ancient Egyptian society respected the equality of the sexes more than most ancient cultures of the region, the throne of ancient Egypt was almost exclusively a male institution. Over the 3,000-year course of ancient Egypt's history, from the First Dynasty to the beginning of the Ptolemaic Period, only four women ever held the throne of Egypt as pharaoh in their own right.

In all four of those cases, statues of the female pharaoh were shown with hermaphroditic qualities: the female kings wore the same fake beard the male kings wore, they were depicted in male clothing, and the pronoun "he" was used to describe them in inscriptions. This was due to the fact that the words describing kingship and the authority of the throne were all masculine; in order for the female pharaoh to assert her authority over the country with the same finality and certitude as her male predecessors, she had to co-opt and adapt those familiar words and symbols for her own purposes. She had to reinforce the idea that she was both the mother and the father of the kingdom, all wrapped up in one person. She had to reconcile contradictory notions of (masculine) authority and (feminine) submission to that authority, so a fusion of symbols was necessary. In order to secure the same respect as her male counterparts, she had to go an extra step and become a living, breathing duality, a yin/yang in the flesh.

If the statue in "LaFleur" is deliberately intended to depict a blending of male and female elements, it echoes the overall transformation of the "Lost" narrative from dichotomy to duality. In the early seasons, the narrative and its underlying themes focused on opposites: light vs. dark, us vs. them, and Sawyer's mantra of "every man for himself" vs. Jack's mantra of "live together, die alone." Irreconcilable polarity was the dominant theme of the early years.

Over the last season or so (and especially since the beginning of Season 5), we've seen the narrative progress beyond the theme of opposition toward the theme of reconciliation of opposites -- dichotomies become dualities, the apparent good guys and bad guys switch roles, and opposites combine to form new entities. A hermaphroditic statue could easily be seen as a signpost along the road toward the full merger of the Losties and the Others (for example), or Sawyer's merger of his old cussed independence and his newer, more enlightened sense of communal duty and empathy.

A random theory

Speaking of uniting people, I have a theory regarding the eventual reunion of the Left Behinders (who are now stuck in 1977) with Locke, Ben, and the survivors of Ajira 316. Once Sayid and Sun are reunited with Sawyer and company (hopefully along with Rose, Bernard, and Vincent), I think they will convince Pierre Chang to use the time travel chamber at the Orchid station to propel them forward to 2008.

Sawyer's transformation

There can no longer be any doubt that Sawyer has permanently transformed.

After Juliet tells Sawyer and Jin she delivered Amy's baby without a problem, the look on Sawyer's face was pure, genuine affection and joy. I don't think he's ever displayed that face before; it was an expression of pure concern and happiness for other people and was in no way self-centered. That is a complete change from the Sawyer of old, and it's a slow transformation that's been in progress for a couple of seasons now.

Sawyer and Juliet

Much of the episode was dedicated to building up the relationship between Sawyer and Juliet, and I found the chemistry between them to be much stronger and more realistic than the chemistry of the Kate/Sawyer or Kate/Jack relationships. After seeing the two of them together, and especially seeing how well Josh Holloway and Elizabeth Mitchell brought that chemistry to life, I'm now hoping that Sawyer and Juliet stay together. They make a great couple.

When Sawyer told Horace that three years was enough time to get over someone, I think he really meant it. When Kate showed up at the end of the episode, the look on Sawyer's face amounted to an expression of "well, this is certainly awkward," but I doubt seriously that the new Sawyer would give up Juliet merely because Kate came back to the Island.

He's outgrown Kate. The old, pre-hero Sawyer was a good match for the anchorless, drifting Kate, but the new and improved Sawyer is in a much better place with Juliet, who now seems more well-grounded and centered than she ever has. That's what Sawyer's new personality needs. If he were to return to Kate, it would amount to little more than picking up an old, bad habit after successfully kicking it.

For almost exactly the same reasons, Juliet would have no reason to go back to Jack.

LaFleur

Sawyer's choice of pseudonym is kind of interesting. French for "the flower," it may be a reference to the earlier episode "The Little Prince." In the novel after which the episode was named, the Little Prince originally came from an asteroid which he spent his time tending. On that asteroid lived a rose, which he fell in love with. The rose loved him back, but couldn't express itself.

In the "Lost" episode by that name, I thought the Little Prince might be Aaron, or Jin, or maybe even Jack; but "LaFleur" makes me think that the Little Prince(ss) is actually Kate (who was largely the center of that episode), and Sawyer/LaFleur is the rose (la fleur) she loves and to whom she eventually returns. In this version of the story, though, the rose seems to have moved on to greener pastures.

One final note on the hermaphroditic duality thing: Sawyer's chosen pseudonym begins with the feminine article la, rather than the masculine le.

When Miles asks him about the name, Sawyer says, "It's Creole." A creole is a language formed by blending two or more others into a new language. You might even call it a duality.

Alongside today's announcement of Kathleen Sebelius as Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, the White House also announced Obama's choice as director of the White House Office for Health Reform. His choice for that post is Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, President Clinton's administrator of Medicare and Medicaid; prior to that, Ms. DeParle was Tennessee governor Ned Ray McWherter's commissioner of the state's Department of Human Services (I thank God Phil Bredesen didn't get named to any post related to health care).

I graduated from UT-Knoxville 22 years ago this month; Ms. DeParle gave the commencement address at our graduation (she was Nancy-Ann Min at the time).

She was a young upstart in government administration then, unknown to most people in the field, but her background in the issues of poverty, hunger, and children's advocacy proved her to be an apt appointment and a good choice for her later positions in the Clinton administration.

I'll never forget her commencement address. Thousands of us sat before this young Turk, this reformer in Tennessee government; we were an open audience awaiting a rousing, inspiring call toward public service and traditionally liberal altruism.

That isn't what we got.

Instead, Ms. Min spent an entire hour reciting statistics. "Ten percent of this, forty percent of that, nineteen percent of this," she droned for an eternity. If anyone in history has ever come close to putting 5,000 people to sleep by mere words, Ms. Min would be near the top of the list. Her address was by far the most stupefyingly boring speech I've ever endured.

Nevertheless, she was obviously a policy wonk before any of us had even heard that word. She clearly knew her stuff.

After the McWherter years, she went on to be Clinton's OMB director and (as I mentioned) the director of the agency that funds Medicare and Medicaid. Since 2001, she's served as a director on a number of corporate boards in the health care industry. This is the only part of her background that gives me pause; I wonder just how aggressive she would actually be in any attempt to reform the industry in which she has served on corporate boards. She has already announced that she will resign from the boards of health care companies, but the fact that she has served on those boards at all makes me wonder just how far she'd be willing to advocate any policies that might hurt their profits.

Twenty-two years after that awful commencement speech, anyone who attended that ceremony will recall Ms. Min's address with a groan, but despite my reservations about her corporate involvements, her appointment today seems right on target. She is smart, well-versed in the issues, and her roots lie in the kind of advocacy our government desperately needs. I hope she remains faithful to her roots and not to her recent dalliances with the cause of the problem.

I just wouldn't want to sit through any of her staff meetings.

Here's a sentence I never hoped to see: Nama is about to become a franchise.

Since it opened in 2004, Nama has been a jewel in Knoxville's dining crown. This city had never seen sushi of such high quality and superb creativity. Gregg White created something very special here almost five years ago, and over that five years, I and many other loyal customers have served as eager evangelists for the Gospel of Fresh Tuna.

Sadly, that era is ending.

By turning Nama into the TGI Friday's of sushi, Mr. White's bank account is surely smiling, but I'd say few of his loyal customers are. It's easy to understand the allure of dollars floated before one's eyes, but no amount of spin can convince me or any other loyal Nama customer that a franchised version could maintain anywhere near the level of quality and creativity we've come to expect from one of Gregg's restaurants. It is a safe bet that the bean-counters at the helm of this new organization, just like the bean-counters who run any franchise, will compromise the previously high standards of Nama's quality by cutting corners. That's what bean-counters do for a living.

In addition, the Nama at Bearden (and probably other restaurants in the new chain) will add hot food to its menu. Since sushi will no longer be the exclusive source of the restaurant's food revenue, the imperative to maintain quality among the sushi offerings will no longer exist. That would be a fatal blow to the restaurant's reputation, even if the franchise weren't on the horizon.

Gregg White had progressed a long way toward building a stellar culinary legacy in Knoxville. It's tragic that legacy is being abandoned so soon after it began.

In keeping with the rest of Season 5 so far, this week's "Lost" episode ("The Life And Death Of Jeremy Bentham") answered a ton of questions. The pace moved a lot more quickly than "316," and the breadth of the episode's narrative goes way beyond merely telling Mr. Bentham's story.

There's a lot to parse here, so let's get started.

The crash of Ajira 316

Ajira 316 seems to have crashed on the second, smaller island, where the Hydra station is located, and the 316 survivors seem to be using the outriggers to move back and forth between the two islands. This would suggest that the opening scene, showing Caesar and Ilana poking around in a dark office, takes place in one of the buildings above the Hydra station, which we saw in numerous episodes in Season 3.

In that opening scene, Ilana and Caesar walk past the wreck of Ajira 316. The plane is seen sitting in the jungle, basically intact. It doesn't look like a crash site, but rather the aftermath of a bumpy but semi-controlled landing. As the two of them walk past the wreck, the scene cuts to a shot from above, looking down at the wreckage. The plane appears to be sitting beside a flat, linear, paved surface, as if it had skidded off. This appears to be the runway Kate and Sawyer were enslaved to build.

Was Ajira 316 the reason the runway was built in the first place?

Did Frank Lapidus know about the unlit runway sitting hidden in the jungle, or did he just hit it by pure luck?

Waaaaalt!

In the Tunisia hospital scene, Widmore gave Locke the dossier listing where the Oceanic Six were living. How did Widmore know where to find Walt? How did he even know Walt was off the island?

The Oceanic Six would have been famous enough to track down pretty easily, but Walt escaped the island on that small fishing boat with Michael. We've never really seen how Michael got back to the mainland; he merely told Desmond and Sayid that they were picked up somewhere. Although I still don't fully believe Michael's story (he describes too much happening in a 20-day period for it to be realistic), Walt did end up back in New York with his grandmother. Tom visited Michael in New York, but that doesn't necessarily mean Widmore knew about that little side trip.

Locke decided on his own that Walt didn't have to go back to the island. But if all of them were supposed to return, how could he make such a decision? That seems kind of arbitrary to me.

Abaddon's purpose

We've seen Matthew Abaddon planning the freighter expedition with Naomi, working as an orderly in Locke's rehab facility, and passing himself off to Hurley as an attorney for Oceanic Airlines. Now, he's Locke's driver.

Abaddon told Locke years earlier, "I'm more than just an orderly, John." In this episode, he says, "I help people get to where they need" to be. Although that's literally true of a chauffeur, Abaddon was speaking more generally. When posing as an orderly, he convinced Locke to go on the Australian walkabout that caused Locke to end up on Oceanic Flight 815. He convinced Naomi to lead the expedition from the freighter onto the island. And in this episode, he contributed to Locke's self-doubt by saying "you're 0 for 3" in his attempt to convince the Oceanic Six to return.

Perhaps Abaddon was deliberately pushing Locke toward suicide.

Back in a wheelchair

Locke seems to lose function in his legs whenever he's having a crisis of faith. Most recently, his leg was broken when he fell down the well at the Frozen Donkey Wheel; I believe his crisis in that situation revolved around his realization that he was supposed to leave the island instead of Ben. This began to clue him in to the fact that he wasn't destined to be the leader of the Others after all. Widmore told Locke he was special (as Richard had told him before), but I think Widmore was just playing on Locke's fragile ego. After landing in Tunisia and becoming Jeremy Bentham, Locke's return to a wheelchair reflected his ongoing crisis in that regard, and his fear over the fact that he was going to die at the end of his quest to convince the O6.

Locke may have decided to hang himself for a number of reasons. He had failed to convince any of the O6 to return. He had been told by Richard that he had to die in order to bring the O6 back, so maybe he was deliberately trying to fulfill what he considered to be prophecy. He may have also finally realized that he isn't a leader after all, and his destiny lay not with the Others but in a pine box.

Sayid said to Locke, "Why do you really need to go back? Is it just because you have nowhere else to go?" Kate articulated much the same theory by saying Locke needed the island because he'd never loved anyone. After Locke's car accident, Jack said to Locke, "Have you ever stopped to think that these delusions that you're special aren't real? That maybe there's nothing important about you at all? Maybe you are just a lonely old man that crashed on an island."

That was pretty harsh, but I think Jack hit a bulls-eye.

Hurley's sphinx

When Locke approaches Hurley at the mental hospital, we see Hurley painting a scene featuring what appears to be the Great Sphinx. His painting differs from the actual Great Sphinx in a couple of respects. First, the large hills or dunes surrounding it don't match the Giza plain. Second, the Sphinx's head is turned toward the viewer, rather than facing straight ahead.

Long after the emergence of the Egyptian sphinx, it was adopted by the Greeks and folded into their own mythology. Wikipedia's article on the sphinx has this interesting passage:

The word sphinx comes from the Greek Σφίγξ, apparently from the verb σφίγγω (sphíngō), meaning "to strangle". This name may be derived from the fact that the hunters for a pride of lions are the lionesses, and kill their prey by strangulation, biting the throat of prey and holding them down until they die. The word sphincter derives from the same root.

Later in the episode, Locke dies by strangulation. Maybe Hurley has a bit of a psychic streak in him.

Helen

Locke's ex-girlfriend Helen died of an aneurysm in 2006. Was it a result of the temporal sickness that affects time travelers, or was it a plain vanilla aneurysm?

Why Ben killed Locke

In the scene at Locke's hotel room, Ben bursts through the door just as Locke is preparing to hang himself. Ben nervously talks John down from the brink, telling him how "special" he is to the island. Once Locke tells him about Eloise Hawking, Ben suddenly shifts from preventing Locke's suicide to strangling Locke, apparently killing him.

I think the Hawking revelation was news to Ben. Locke said, "Do you know her?" to which Ben replied, "Yes, John. I know her." Ben immediately strangled Locke with the extension cord. Perhaps Ben thought it was too dangerous for Locke to know about her.

A friend pointed out that suicide wouldn't have fit very well in the show's recent framework, which has leaned very heavily on Christian (and specifically Catholic) imagery, metaphor, and even dogma in the last few episodes. Theologically, suicide is an unpardonable sin, and it would be difficult to paint Locke as a savior figure if he'd killed himself.

The same friend also said the producers should just go ahead and title an episode "WTF?" I agree.

He also speculated that maybe Locke wasn't really dead. He theorized that Ben may have just strangled Locke enough to knock him unconscious, then kept him knocked out with the infamous Medusa spider venom long enough to get back to the island. This theory has been floating around ever since Locke was revealed in the casket at the end of Season 4, but wouldn't Locke have been trapped in a casket after the plane crashed? How did he end up standing on the beach?

But back to the scene where Ben strangled Locke: it's possible that once Ben heard Eloise Hawking's name, and that she was in Los Angeles, he immediately saw a way back to the island through her. By faking Locke's death, Ben could inflict enough guilt on the others to convince them to return with him.

Personally, I believe this is a strong possibility. We know for certain that, after apparently rising from the dead, Locke is definitely not an apparition like Christian Shephard appears to be; his remark to Ilana on the beach ("this is the best mango I've ever eaten") seems intended to illustrate that he is actually alive, and not a ghost. Based on that, it's entirely reasonable to suspect that Locke was never really dead at all.

The main argument against this theory is that after Ben strangled Locke, he hung Locke's body from the rafters, making it look as if Locke had hung himself. After cleaning the hotel room of fingerprints, Ben turned back toward Locke's hanging body and said, "I'll miss you, John. I really will." That seems like an odd thing for Ben to say if Locke were still alive.

Jack is convinced

I think we now have a clearer picture of what convinced Jack to return to the island. Until now, I thought it might have something to do with Locke's death, since Season 3 ended with future, bearded Jack holding Bentham's obituary and shouting "We have to go back!" at Kate. That whole sequence implied that Locke's death was the event that changed Jack's mind. But in this episode, something significant happens: in Locke's hospital room, Locke tells Jack his father Christian said "Hi." Jack appears to have just begun growing his beard, and he appears a little intoxicated or drugged during the scene in Locke's hospital room. I'm thinking that Jack may have begun changing his mind when he saw his father in the hospital lobby; it was just a few seconds after that appearance that Jack asked Dr. Erika Stevenson to write him a prescription for clonazepam. Hearing Locke mention Christian by name (probably just a few days after Christian's appearance in the lobby) seems to have pushed him over the edge, since Jack started his trans-Pacific jaunts right after that.

Jack's conversion really didn't have anything to do with Locke at all; it had to do with his long-standing daddy issues and his desire to exorcise his father's ghost once and for all.

The breathless (and in some ways justifiable) controversy over Republican contributor Bill Freeman's appointment as treasurer of the Tennessee Democratic Party brings to mind an update I once saw of an old adage:

The lion and the lamb will lie down together, but the lamb won't get much sleep.

I think we need some Lenny Kravitz for this week's Feel Good Friday. Here's "Are You Gonna Go My Way?"

Turn it up.

Not only did "316" (this week's episode of "Lost") continue the headlong rush toward explanations that has been the hallmark of this season, it seems to have accelerated the pace. In just one single episode, we were given at least brief explanations for the following:

Why the DHARMA Initiative was started in the first place

Why Christian Shephard (or his apparition) appeared on the island wearing a suit and white tennis shoes

How the Oceanic Six planned to return to the island

How they actually did it

Why they had to bring Locke's corpse with them

Why the island can't be seen easily by the outside world

Why so many of the events in the island's past seem to be pulled from cultures nowhere near the Pacific

If this dizzying pace continues for the rest of this year, I don't know if my poor heart can stand it.

The Lamp Post

Eloise Hawking occupies a DHARMA station called the Lamp Post. This is a shout out to the recently deceased Charlotte Staples Lewis, whose namesake C.S. Lewis created the Narnia series. In "Lost," the Lamp Post was the first DHARMA station, and its purpose was to find the island. In C.S. Lewis's work, the Lamp Post was the first synthetic object to appear in Narnia, although it ultimately became an organic being. In "Lost," the Lamp Post is a threshold between the outside world and the miraculous island; in C.S. Lewis's work, the Lamp Post marks the threshold for travelers moving between our world and the miraculous world of Narnia.

DHARMA was founded by Alvar Hanso and the de Groots, so I think it's safe to assume they are the ones who built the Lamp Post station and initiated the search for the island. How did they first learn of the island's existence? Is one of them the person who developed the equations that predict the island's movement, or was it Charles Widmore? If it was Widmore, then shouldn't he be able to find the island on his own today? When Ben went to Widmore's apartment, Ben told him he'd never find the island, so maybe Widmore doesn't have access to the equations Eloise mentioned. If it was Hanso or the de Groots, why aren't they looking for the island?

"Constantly moving"

Eloise said the island is "constantly moving," and she added "Why do you think you were never rescued?" The chart on the wall of the Lamp Post showed latitude/longitude coordinates that were changing, presumably in response to the calculations ongoing on those 1970's-era computers.

If the island is "constantly moving" around the world, it would explain things like Yemi's plane (a little puddle-jumper that took off from Nigeria and could not have possibly made it all the way to the Pacific), the Black Rock (which sailed from Madagascar to the East Indies), the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the odd, multi-cultural architecture of the Temple. Could it also explain ancient myths of disappearing islands or continents, like Atlantis and Lyonesse?

But if the island is constantly jumping around, how come it never lands in the middle of downtown Chicago, or in a corn field in Nebraska?

A promise to an old friend

When Ben gets up to leave the church, Jack asks him where he is going. Ben replies, "Oh, I made a promise to an old friend of mine -- just a loose end that needs tying up." The next morning, Jack's phone rings, and we see Ben at a pay phone. He looks like he's had the crap beaten out of him, and it looks like he's back at the marina.

I think the "promise" is a reference to Ben telling Charles Widmore he would kill Penny. I think Ben went to Penny's yacht to kill her, and I think Desmond beat him to a pulp.

At least, I hope that's what happened.

The portrait of Doubting Thomas

In the church sanctuary above the Lamp Post station hangs a cropped copy of Caravaggio's "The Incredulity of Saint Thomas." After the scenes with Eloise Hawking, Jack and Ben sit alone in the sanctuary. Jack asks Ben (regarding Eloise), "Who is she? Why is she helping us? How does she know all this?" Turning toward the painting, Ben replied obliquely:

Thomas the Apostle. When Jesus wanted to return to Judea, knowing that he would probably be murdered there, Thomas said to the others, "Let us also go, that we might die with him." But Thomas was not remembered for this bravery. His claim to fame came later, when he refused to acknowledge the resurrection. He just couldn't wrap his mind around it. The story goes that he needed to touch Jesus' wounds to be convinced.

Jack replied, "Was he?" Ben answered, "Of course he was. We're all convinced sooner or later, Jack."

Does Ben's reply to Jack mean "convinced of Christ's resurrection" or convinced of something more general, like being convinced of a higher power, or destiny, or of Locke's (possibly imminent) resurrection? If Ben means "convinced of the Resurrection," then the show will have adopted a much more explicitly and exclusively Christian theme than in the past. It would also be ironic, considering that Ben's very next move is (I believe) to leave the church and go find Penny so he can kill her.

I think Ben was speaking more generally here, warning Jack that he should want to be remembered as the brave one, the hero who once made such a big deal of communal inter-reliance, the man whose mantra was "live together, die alone," rather than the man who wasted his days on denial, drugs, and avoidance of his duty. Ben was warning him that he should be remembered as Brave Jack, not Doubting Jack.

It worked, obviously.

Ben was also telling Jack that he must "wrap his mind around" the improbable reality of the island, just as Thomas had to wrap his mind around the improbability of the Resurrection. Only moments before, Eloise had told Jack that he must give Locke's corpse something that had belonged to Jack's father, since Locke was acting as a proxy for Christian Shephard. When Jack pushed back against that bizarre idea, she said to him:

Oh, stop thinking how ridiculous it is and start asking yourself whether or not you believe it's going to work. That's why it's called a leap of faith, Jack.

Rational Jack had to give way to Faithful Jack in order for Brave Jack to return.

316

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." -- John 3:16

The title of the episode refers to one of the most famous passages of the New Testament; the verse is a statement of sacrifice, redemption, and resurrection. All of those apply to the story of "Lost" from its very beginning. Each of the survivors of Oceanic 815 has sacrificed, been redeemed, and in a figurative sense at least, been reborn.

Only son

For reasons she refuses to explain, Kate and Aaron have been separated. I believe Kate had a change of heart and gave Aaron to Claire's mother, who is his biological grandmother; I think the trauma of that separation explains why Kate told Jack never to ask her about Aaron again. Although he wasn't her biological son, Kate did give her only son in order to rescue everyone else. In that sense, her sacrifice of Aaron redeems those they left behind on the island, and he then becomes their unwitting, three-year-old savior.

Parallels between Ajira 316 and Oceanic 815

Eloise Hawking told Jack and the rest that they had to recreate the conditions of Oceanic 815 as closely as possible in order for their experiment to work. Here are some of the parallels between the two flights that came to my attention:

Frank Lapidus was the pilot of Ajira 316 and was supposed to have been the pilot of Oceanic 815.

On Oceanic 815, a male agent traveled with a female in his custody (Kate); on Ajira 316, a female agent traveled with a male in custody (Sayid). I think Sayid's arrest and custody were arranged by Ben, and I think the agent is working for him.

On Oceanic 815, Charlie carried his guitar on board. On Ajira 316, Hurley carried a guitar on board.

On both flights, Hurley was reading a Spanish-language comic book.

Each flight cargo hold carried a corpse in a casket.

After the flash on board Ajira 316, Jack wakes up in the jungle wearing a suit and tie, in a thicket of bamboo. The close-up shot of his eye and the shot from above showing him in the bamboo recreate the opening scene of the pilot episode after the crash of Oceanic 815.

The pool where Jack, Hurley, and Kate reunite looks like the same one where the Halliburton case was found.

Locke's suicide note

Only seconds after Ben tells Jack that Locke's suicide wasn't Jack's fault, Jack finally reads the suicide note Locke had addressed to him. "I wish you had believed me," Locke wrote.

What a jerk.

Locke had faith all right, but it was consistently a faith built on incorrect assumptions and flawed, partial understanding. First, Locke believed it was his destiny to push the button in the Swan station, but that fate sort of imploded on itself. Then he became convinced it was his destiny to rescue everyone from the freighter people by hiding at the Barracks, and that didn't turn out so well either. Finally, he became convinced it was his destiny to lead the Others, when in reality, it was Jacob's intent for Locke to leave the island by moving it.

Locke never really knew his destiny; he merely carried the arrogance of blind faith and a set of assumptions that consistently turned out to be completely wrong. Every single time Locke became convinced that his life carried some grand metaphysical purpose, he turned out to be utterly mistaken. His suicide note's final accusation toward Jack, wishing Jack had believed him, proves once and for all that Locke still didn't see the folly of his own blinkered, unthinking faith, even at the end of his life. He suggests that everything would have turned out differently if Jack had been as blind as he had been.

Things would have been different, all right: Locke would have gotten all of them killed at the Barracks, and not just some of them.

And how did Eloise Hawking come to possess the note?

Hurley on Ajira 316

I believe Hurley showed up for Ajira Flight 316 after a convincing conversation with either Charlie or Eko. I believe one of those two ghosts managed to sway him in a way that Ben or Jack could not.

Ulysses

In his review of the episode "The Little Prince," J. Wood expounds on the narrative similarities between "Lost" and James Joyce's "Ulysses." Go read it. Take a couple of aspirin, then read it again.

On Ajira Flight 316, Ben is seen reading "Ulysses."

While Ben is reading that book, Jack turns to him, knowing what's about to happen, and says nervously, "How can you read?" Ben's smart-aleck response: "My mother taught me."

Snark aside, Ben's mother died during his birth, so why did he say that?

One little thing about Kate

The plea agreement in Kate's trial required her to spend 10 years on probation, during which time she could not leave the state of California. Such a requirement would have necessitated that she surrender her passport. There's no way she could have gotten on Ajira 316 without a passport, unless she was using a forged identity. Since she'll miss all kinds of meetings with her probation officer, she will go straight to prison if she ever returns to California.

UPDATE: Via Twitter, it was pointed out to me that US citizens don't need a passport to enter Guam. That means Kate could have either used another photo ID, or she may have been using a fake ID. Since her real ID would have entailed the risk of being caught fleeing the state, I'm guessing Ben arranged a fake identity for her.