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shadowkatStill stuck at home recuperating from my battle Tuesday night with the sidewalk. Wales came by last night, brought flowers and a few odds and ends. Took one look at my face and felt compelled to take a picture of it with her cellphone.
Anyhow, I've been entertaining myself with tv. Have been watching the Nip/Tuck episodes I DVR'd - tis okay, except I'm having troubles buying the relationship between Liz and Christian at the moment. Feels too much like a romantic sex fantasy. Of course that is Nip/Tuck - exposing the ugly truth behind sex fantasies.
Saw Lost last night and read some reviews of it this morning. Apparently I'm the only person who saw the preview for next week's episode. Are you guys avoiding the preview trailers because you consider them spoilers? OR are they just not available on the internet downloads?
Regarding Lost - I'm loving this series. And it makes complete sense to me, I know exactly what is going on and what they are doing. The writers have clearly studied time travel and the physics involved regarding time travel.
Best way of explaining it is - think of the island as a record. The wheel as the needle on a record player, and earth as the record player. The island like a record moves according to the needle playing it. The needle is the wheel or mechanism that Ben moved in the orchid.
The people on the island are songs on the record. Each song is distinct and has it's own lyrics. If certain lyrics jump off the record or are "lost", the record gets stuck in one track and keeps repeating itself in a sort of loop. It's what I hate about records, although it does happen with CD's as well - getting stuck on one track. To get it back on track you have to pull the song back on the record or reset the needle. So it plays the entire song and not just that loop. Another way - if you don't like the record metaphor is to think of the island as a book, the characters on the island as the characters in a story in the book. The needle as the reader of the book. The characters who jump of the Island - characters who have jumped out of the book and now need to be put back in, yet in a similar pattern as before, they can't rejoin the story willy-nilly. Just as when you are knitting a scarf and you lose three or four threads and realize you have to pull them back into the scarf or it will unravel - you must go back and carefully thread them back in - you can't do it willy-nilly.
If you look at what happens on earth, the intermingling of our lives, all of them, as one big interlocking tapsetry or knitted pattern - each thread affecting the next, but completely unaware of how it is doing so - then imagine what would happen if a couple of those threads decided to pull out of the pattern and go elsewhere...then you have a clue what is happening on Lost.
Lost like most tv shows is written around a focal point or central concept. On Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the question was "What is the Buffy of it? How does this effect Buffy's journey or emotional arc?" On ensemble shows like say NUMBERS or BattleStar Galatica - the question is usually what is the math of the episode or what does it mean to be human?
In Lost - the central focal point is "what is the LOST of the episode?" How are these characters Lost? Why are they LOST? And how can they be found? Each episode is exploring the concept of being lost.
This season we are exploring what it is to be lost in time. And how the time stream affects the human consciousness. Our own timeline. The time lines of those around us. And how we get lost.
Not sure that makes it clearer or not. It's easy for me to understand, but very hard to explain.
John Lock, Desmond Hume, and Jack Shepard - represent three different theories. Jack is "the Shepard" - he shepards the flock. When he gets lost, his flock gets lost. He thinks of things in logical and concrete terms, but like any good shepard, is open to suggestion. He will do what is necessary to get his flock to safety. Desmond David Hume - is named after the Scottish Philosopher David Hume:
Hume was the first philosopher of the modern era to produce a thoroughly naturalistic philosophy. This philosophy partly consisted in rejection of the historically prevalent conception of human minds as being miniature versions of the divine mind.[5] This doctrine was associated with a trust in the powers of human reason and insight into reality; powers which purportedly possessed God’s certification. Hume’s scepticism came in his rejection of this ‘insight ideal’,[6] and the (usually rationalistic) confidence derived from it that the world is as we represent it. Instead, the best we can do is to apply the strongest explanatory and empirical principles available to the investigation of human mental phenomena, issuing in a quasi-Newtonian project, Hume's ‘Science of Man’.
From wiki - see here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume
"Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin for modern conceptions of identity and "the self", figuring prominently in the later works of philosophers such as David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first philosopher to define the self through a continuity of "consciousness". He also postulated that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, contrary to Cartesian or Christian philosophy, Locke maintained that people are born without innate ideas.[2]"
Go here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
In this season - Lock and Hume are central to the continuity of consciousness for the characters lost on the island. But we have two other characters, worthy of noting.
Eloise Hawkings - clearly named after Stephen W. Hawkings - the author of A Brief History of Time.
Daniel Faraday - named after Michael Faraday - who discovered electromagnetism and theorized about its effects on time and space and was partially responsible for the discovery of electiricity.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and laws of electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena.[2][3] His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualise electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
Go here for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday
Daniel Faraday and Eloise Hawkings explain to Desmond Hume the concept of time.
Desmond Hume pushed the button on the island and was directly involved with the disruption of the electromagnetic field, not once but twice. Daniel tells Desmond that he is the only person who can affect the time stream without disrupting it. He can travel through time in his head.
Richard Alpert - named after RAM DAS or :
Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) was born in 1931. His father, George, a lawyer, helped to found Brandeis University and was President of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. Ram Dass studied psychology, specializing in human motivation and personality development. He received an M.A. from Wesleyan and a Ph.D. from Stanford. He then served on the psychology faculties at Stanford and the University of California, and from 1958 to 1963 taught and researched in the Department of Social Relations and the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. During this period he co-authored (with Sears and Rau) the book Identification and Child Rearing, published by Stanford University Press.
A big deal when I was in college. I remember being coerced to listening to his tapes by a college boyfriend back in the day. At any rate - Alpert is known to be at the start of the self-help movement.
Alpert is the one who tells John Lock he must die to change the situation on the island.
Lock dies to replace Christian Shepard - as his proxy, or so Eloise tells Jack. But, remember the story on the island has been disrupted, for it to continue again and not keep jumping off track - both John Locke and Christian Shepard must return to the island. And the last time John returned he was handicapped - even paralyzed.
Richard Alpert on Lost is a lot like Ram Das - a leader with a cult-like following. Ram Das like Leary were at the head of the 60's commune movement and LSD experimentation. Hawkings, Faraday, and Hume are the scientific realm, how time and space interconnects and how we get lost in it. The Dharma Initiative aspect of the island. Locke is more in tune with the philosophical aspect - along with Alpert. Then we have Shepard in the center, with his flock of black sheep.
That's another constant - each of the characters is lost in some way before they come to the island - they are looking for something or have suffered from a tragedy. Kate was on the run, now she's lost a child and upset about a relationship that hasn't quite worked - in some ways she's similar to Shannon and others Claire. Sayid was hunting his beloved, now he's on the run from the law - much as Kate had been previously. Sun is hunting her mate - much like Sayid had been in the first plane crash - hoping he's still alive. Hugo is running from himself much as Charlie had been in the past and may well be taking on Charlie's role as well as his own. Jack is the only one who is playing himself. He's in the same role as before - Jack the Shepard - sheparding a coffin home to rest.
The reason the episode is in Jack's pov - is Jack is the one seeking to make them unlost. As he has been from the start - always seeking to shepard his flock of black sheep to safety.
Ben is a wild card. He is a bit of a Joker. And his actions have thrown things off course.
Eloise, Christian Shepard, and others state - you can't trust Benjamin Linus. He always has an alterior motive.
Did he kill Penny? We're not certain - but whatever he did - it is bound to result in Desmond returning to the island the way he originally came - by sailboat. The question is -will Penny be accompanying him? The answer may lie within the pages of the Book Ben Linus was reading, Ulysses.
The blend of science, philosophy, mythology, and psychology is what keeps me hooked on this series. That, and I like prickly characters.
Next to BSG, this may well be my favorite tv show on this year. Although Sarah Connor Chronicles is coming in a close second in regards to its writing.
Anyhow, I've been entertaining myself with tv. Have been watching the Nip/Tuck episodes I DVR'd - tis okay, except I'm having troubles buying the relationship between Liz and Christian at the moment. Feels too much like a romantic sex fantasy. Of course that is Nip/Tuck - exposing the ugly truth behind sex fantasies.
Saw Lost last night and read some reviews of it this morning. Apparently I'm the only person who saw the preview for next week's episode. Are you guys avoiding the preview trailers because you consider them spoilers? OR are they just not available on the internet downloads?
Regarding Lost - I'm loving this series. And it makes complete sense to me, I know exactly what is going on and what they are doing. The writers have clearly studied time travel and the physics involved regarding time travel.
Best way of explaining it is - think of the island as a record. The wheel as the needle on a record player, and earth as the record player. The island like a record moves according to the needle playing it. The needle is the wheel or mechanism that Ben moved in the orchid.
The people on the island are songs on the record. Each song is distinct and has it's own lyrics. If certain lyrics jump off the record or are "lost", the record gets stuck in one track and keeps repeating itself in a sort of loop. It's what I hate about records, although it does happen with CD's as well - getting stuck on one track. To get it back on track you have to pull the song back on the record or reset the needle. So it plays the entire song and not just that loop. Another way - if you don't like the record metaphor is to think of the island as a book, the characters on the island as the characters in a story in the book. The needle as the reader of the book. The characters who jump of the Island - characters who have jumped out of the book and now need to be put back in, yet in a similar pattern as before, they can't rejoin the story willy-nilly. Just as when you are knitting a scarf and you lose three or four threads and realize you have to pull them back into the scarf or it will unravel - you must go back and carefully thread them back in - you can't do it willy-nilly.
If you look at what happens on earth, the intermingling of our lives, all of them, as one big interlocking tapsetry or knitted pattern - each thread affecting the next, but completely unaware of how it is doing so - then imagine what would happen if a couple of those threads decided to pull out of the pattern and go elsewhere...then you have a clue what is happening on Lost.
Lost like most tv shows is written around a focal point or central concept. On Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the question was "What is the Buffy of it? How does this effect Buffy's journey or emotional arc?" On ensemble shows like say NUMBERS or BattleStar Galatica - the question is usually what is the math of the episode or what does it mean to be human?
In Lost - the central focal point is "what is the LOST of the episode?" How are these characters Lost? Why are they LOST? And how can they be found? Each episode is exploring the concept of being lost.
This season we are exploring what it is to be lost in time. And how the time stream affects the human consciousness. Our own timeline. The time lines of those around us. And how we get lost.
Not sure that makes it clearer or not. It's easy for me to understand, but very hard to explain.
John Lock, Desmond Hume, and Jack Shepard - represent three different theories. Jack is "the Shepard" - he shepards the flock. When he gets lost, his flock gets lost. He thinks of things in logical and concrete terms, but like any good shepard, is open to suggestion. He will do what is necessary to get his flock to safety. Desmond David Hume - is named after the Scottish Philosopher David Hume:
Hume was the first philosopher of the modern era to produce a thoroughly naturalistic philosophy. This philosophy partly consisted in rejection of the historically prevalent conception of human minds as being miniature versions of the divine mind.[5] This doctrine was associated with a trust in the powers of human reason and insight into reality; powers which purportedly possessed God’s certification. Hume’s scepticism came in his rejection of this ‘insight ideal’,[6] and the (usually rationalistic) confidence derived from it that the world is as we represent it. Instead, the best we can do is to apply the strongest explanatory and empirical principles available to the investigation of human mental phenomena, issuing in a quasi-Newtonian project, Hume's ‘Science of Man’.
From wiki - see here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume
"Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin for modern conceptions of identity and "the self", figuring prominently in the later works of philosophers such as David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first philosopher to define the self through a continuity of "consciousness". He also postulated that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, contrary to Cartesian or Christian philosophy, Locke maintained that people are born without innate ideas.[2]"
Go here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
In this season - Lock and Hume are central to the continuity of consciousness for the characters lost on the island. But we have two other characters, worthy of noting.
Eloise Hawkings - clearly named after Stephen W. Hawkings - the author of A Brief History of Time.
Daniel Faraday - named after Michael Faraday - who discovered electromagnetism and theorized about its effects on time and space and was partially responsible for the discovery of electiricity.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and laws of electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena.[2][3] His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualise electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
Go here for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday
Daniel Faraday and Eloise Hawkings explain to Desmond Hume the concept of time.
Desmond Hume pushed the button on the island and was directly involved with the disruption of the electromagnetic field, not once but twice. Daniel tells Desmond that he is the only person who can affect the time stream without disrupting it. He can travel through time in his head.
Richard Alpert - named after RAM DAS or :
Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) was born in 1931. His father, George, a lawyer, helped to found Brandeis University and was President of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. Ram Dass studied psychology, specializing in human motivation and personality development. He received an M.A. from Wesleyan and a Ph.D. from Stanford. He then served on the psychology faculties at Stanford and the University of California, and from 1958 to 1963 taught and researched in the Department of Social Relations and the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. During this period he co-authored (with Sears and Rau) the book Identification and Child Rearing, published by Stanford University Press.
A big deal when I was in college. I remember being coerced to listening to his tapes by a college boyfriend back in the day. At any rate - Alpert is known to be at the start of the self-help movement.
Alpert is the one who tells John Lock he must die to change the situation on the island.
Lock dies to replace Christian Shepard - as his proxy, or so Eloise tells Jack. But, remember the story on the island has been disrupted, for it to continue again and not keep jumping off track - both John Locke and Christian Shepard must return to the island. And the last time John returned he was handicapped - even paralyzed.
Richard Alpert on Lost is a lot like Ram Das - a leader with a cult-like following. Ram Das like Leary were at the head of the 60's commune movement and LSD experimentation. Hawkings, Faraday, and Hume are the scientific realm, how time and space interconnects and how we get lost in it. The Dharma Initiative aspect of the island. Locke is more in tune with the philosophical aspect - along with Alpert. Then we have Shepard in the center, with his flock of black sheep.
That's another constant - each of the characters is lost in some way before they come to the island - they are looking for something or have suffered from a tragedy. Kate was on the run, now she's lost a child and upset about a relationship that hasn't quite worked - in some ways she's similar to Shannon and others Claire. Sayid was hunting his beloved, now he's on the run from the law - much as Kate had been previously. Sun is hunting her mate - much like Sayid had been in the first plane crash - hoping he's still alive. Hugo is running from himself much as Charlie had been in the past and may well be taking on Charlie's role as well as his own. Jack is the only one who is playing himself. He's in the same role as before - Jack the Shepard - sheparding a coffin home to rest.
The reason the episode is in Jack's pov - is Jack is the one seeking to make them unlost. As he has been from the start - always seeking to shepard his flock of black sheep to safety.
Ben is a wild card. He is a bit of a Joker. And his actions have thrown things off course.
Eloise, Christian Shepard, and others state - you can't trust Benjamin Linus. He always has an alterior motive.
Did he kill Penny? We're not certain - but whatever he did - it is bound to result in Desmond returning to the island the way he originally came - by sailboat. The question is -will Penny be accompanying him? The answer may lie within the pages of the Book Ben Linus was reading, Ulysses.
The blend of science, philosophy, mythology, and psychology is what keeps me hooked on this series. That, and I like prickly characters.
Next to BSG, this may well be my favorite tv show on this year. Although Sarah Connor Chronicles is coming in a close second in regards to its writing.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 03:49 am (UTC)Also the blurbs aren't that enlightening.
(Shrugs)
Your guess is as good as mine on this one.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 02:06 pm (UTC)Rufus
no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 03:52 pm (UTC)Not much to add - except that I was a bit surprised that Abrams takes Joss' metaphor (shoes as paths to destiny) and turns it into a plot twist.