My Dinner With Jazprof from LT originally posted 5/28/07
So jazprof… I’ve got an idea, but I need to review a few things first…
In my post “Discussion on time” I use a particular analogy in order to grasp the concept of non-linear time. The goal was to conceptualize how non-linear time might allow us to “remember” the future and “anticipate” the past. For simplicity’s sake, please allow me to paste a portion of that post here:
“Imagine a vending machine, and in it there are treats of various kinds… candy and the like… and all of it is put into the machine in a perfectly random way. However, for any treat to come out of the vending machine, a person must put in a certain amount of money, press a button denoting the treat she or he wants, and allow the machine to find that particular treat and drop it into a bin for retrieval by the hungry customer. The treats in the machine represent moments in time in no particular order. But everything done by the machine to sort out the treats represents our perceptions. We can only take the moments in time one at a time and in a particular order. So that is how we experience them. But that is not, in fact, how they actually are. If we could overcome this limitation in the way we experience (break the vending machine), we could ‘remember’ the future just as we remember the past, or we could ‘plan for’ the past just as we plan for the future. Not by traveling in time… that concept has no meaning here because time is not a road to be traveled. Rather, it’s a point wherein all possible events, past and future, exist.
The reason we have this limitation in our perceptions is due to the ‘dimensionality’ of our experiences. I don’t know if any of you have read ‘Flatland’, but in it is described a two-dimensional world that is visited by a three dimensional object. A 2D being asks the 3D being if it will show itself. It agrees, and passes through the 2D plane for the benefit of the 2D being. The 3D creature happens to be a sphere, so the way the 2D being experiences the 3D being is first as a point materializing out of ‘thin air’, then as a circle that gradually gets larger, then the circle gets smaller, then it’s a point again, and then it vanishes. This experience is the best conception the 2D being can have of the 3D being… and notice how inadequate it is!
For us to see time as it truly is, it’s theorized that we’d need to be 4D beings. But we’re more like 3.5D beings, experiencing 3 full spatial dimensions and only half the time dimension (as it travels one way). So there we have it. We’re stuck seeing only one time line when there really isn’t a time line at all. Just every possible moment existing behind the glass of the vending machine waiting for us to call them out one at a time in a logical order.
Now, I really feel as though I must say right now that I am vastly oversimplifying these explanations, but I think they may suffice to get the relevant points across.”
(Yes! That WAS just a portion! :-)
And this comment from the post might also be helpful before we continue:
“Imagine that not all of the treats in the vending machine have the same mass. Actually, some of them are quite heavy. In fact, the greater mass of some treats as compared to others make them more likely to be ejected from the vending machine, such that this concept of ‘varying mass’ among the treats contributes some to the logic of the sequence of events we observe.
Let’s take two treats in the machine. One is a single Skittle in a tiny plastic bag. The other is a five pound bag of Skittles. As it turns out, the single Skittle is very near the five pound bag… there may be five or six other treats between them. Now, the single Skittle is selected. But the five pound bag is so close and so heavy that it slips in the vending machine, knocking out not only the single Skittle but also the five or six treats that had been between the single and the five-pound bag. If the single Skittle represents the most immediate moment in time, then the treats that fell out ‘accidentally’ represent flashes of the future, premonitions of what is most likely to happen based upon the ‘weight’ of the future event. Even though it remains in the machine, we can tell what the weightier event might be by noting what the ‘accidental’ treats are. For example, maybe the treats that ‘accidentally’ fell out are also Skittles in progressively larger bags. So we can guess that it’s a huge bag of Skittles that pushed them out and will soon fall out of the machine itself.
But now that we know this, we might alter our next selection! The incredible weight of the five pound Skittles bag doesn’t make it inevitable. Just very likely. Perhaps we can prevent the five pound bag from ever coming out of the machine. Again… perhaps we can do this. We don’t know precisely what will or will not trip the bag into falling. In fact, in our attempt to avoid tipping the five pound bag, we might decide only to select treats (moments) from the machine that are as far away from the bag as possible. So then we select a very small treat that is miles away from the big bag. But it turns out to be miles above the bag. The considerable distance allows it to gain all the momentum it needs to knock the big bag loose as it falls past it and into the receptacle. Our very act to avoid the big bag caused it to fall!
So, as you can see, there are limits to how much synchronicity can help us. There are things we won’t be able to predict. There are things we won’t be able to avoid. And some things we will cause by trying to avoid them.”
And…
“The ‘heavy moments’ … tend to make themselves known before they happen via omens and premonitions. And people who can read the signs can pick up on this. All divination might be thought to work according to this principle. (The I-Ching, referenced in the Dharma Initiative logo, is often used for divination.)”
I’ve suggested elsewhere that shamanism might be seen as a spiritual discipline that breaks into the vending machine. A shaman can, conceivably, go to any place in any time without limits, because all places and times are right here, right now. I’ve also suggested that a fundamental conflict in the show may be between indigenous shamans and more “scientific types” who, via technology, have broken into the “shamanistic realm” and have done some damage, having never been properly initiated in the manner shamans often are.
So, following jazprof’s lead… what if the whispers and other similar phenomena are “a leak” from the so-called shamanistic realm? (Recall that Kelvin called the incident a leak… he seemed to be referring to built-up electromagnetic radiation… but was he?) And also… what if there is a special place (the temple?) or object that can be used by the uninitiated to “break into the vending machine”?
The more I think about it, the more I realize that popping that machine open would cause all kinds of freaky things to happen. Actually, TOO many freaky things. I mean, the island IS freaky… but not THAT freaky. :-) Still, it’s an interesting idea, I think, that suggests several intriguing possibilities. Thoughts? (Please, everyone… not just jazprof. :-)
Maybe I'm Just Dumb...
... but I think a lot of this is making things way too hard.
I don't know anything about shamans or technological methods of tinkering with time. Label me a skeptic on all that.
It seems that a "problem" is being manufactured here in establishing that we only experience time in a single way. Well, I'm unaware of alternate methods of experiencing the first, second, or third dimensions either, so I find it a little odd that we're bothered that we don't experience the fourth dimension in multiple ways. I see no reason to assume that way we experience time is anything other than a result of the properties of the fourth dimension. We might experience time in the fashion we do because it is simply the only way it can be experienced.
Next, the idea that there's something wrong about perceiving time in "only" one way, or "linearly". Think about how dimensions work. Starting in the first dimension, you have x. When you move into the second dimension, each x is given a y. In the third dimension, each x and y is also given a z. So, for the fourth dimension, it naturally follows that each x and y and z is going to be given a t. Just one t, not three or seven or ten or whatever. You've added exactly one dimension. Why should that translate into multiple methods for that dimension to function? I suppose I can see how that might lead us to believe we should be able to move along that dimension at will just as we move through the other three dimensions at will, but just as we cannot perceive the entire breadth of those three dimensions (I cannot, in fact, see either the Andromeda galaxy or my house from here), there's nothing to suggest we should be able to perceive the entire breadth of the fourth, either.
I don't think my thoughts on this are stated exactly completely here, but maybe my position is obvious now.
Heh...
... no, you aren't dumb. Definitely not, in fact.
From a scientific point of view, though, there doesn't seem to be any reason that we experience time "only one way". In physics equations everything can work going forward OR backward in time and nobody has figured out yet why we should experience time the way we do. That is to say, if a being outside our universe looked at our equations they would not be able to tell from them a priori that we experience time in only one direction (which, as you kind of imply, might be the same as saying they wouldn't know that we experience "time" at all). It's actually a fairly big problem for modern physics, figuring out how the arrow of time works.
But more to the point with "Lost"... non-linear time, whether there's any ACTUAL reality to it or not, is often a key component of paranormal narratives (which I think "Lost" is). So really "Lost" is being used here as an excuse to talk about one model of non-linear time that might be employed as a backdrop of a narrative (but naturally never fully addressed or explained in the foreground of the narrative, as that wouldn't make very good television). 
Lost
I've seen about 20 minutes of Lost, cumulatively. I don't know how anything in Lost applies to the real world or vice versa. I don't normally even look into this forum...
See, what I think is that it isn't so much that time is going forward or backward or any such thing. Since time dilation seems to work exactly as Einstein said it would, it couldn't even be said that time functions in any sort of constant fashion. I think it's doing its job of keeping all events from occurring simultaneously and from repeating themselves. Time "travel"doesn't even make sense. To go back to a previous moment would make that moment happen again, but it's already happened so it can't happen again. To get there without screwing that up, you'd have to be exactly as you were then, in the same place facing the same direction doing the same thing thinking the same thoughts and carrying the memories and whatever else. You wouldn't be able to remember that you'd come back and because of that you wouldn't remember going back once you returned to your original point in time, which isn't even relevant because that moment would have to come about anyway or the past moments that led up to it wouldn't make any sense. I remember tangling with this problem when I was trying to write a sci-fi short story for some silly competition in sixth grade. I wanted to put my protagonist into a temporal loop that he eventually had to solve, but the only loop that made sense was that he went back, fixed something, then didn't need to fix it any more so he didn't go back, so the event he wanted to fix happened... etc. I tinkered with the typical multiple universes trick to solve it but that made the whole thing less sensible than the mess I was already in. I wound up tossing together something that got an honorable mention (stories don't have to be any good to win those things, just better than the trash the other kids write) but I promptly threw it away as the worst fiction I'd ever read.
Experiencing Time & Real Life Time Travel
Esi, I understand what you're saying about the difficulty of experiencing actual time travel. But isn't the idea that we are always in a perpetual present also false--or that we are always experiencing movement forward from present to future. For instance, suppose I'm sitting outside eating a chocolate bar and looking at the stars. My experience of the stars and my experience of eating the chocolate bar are all in my present experience. But objectively they are at radically different moments in time. So am I then experiencing many different moments in time, from an immeidate present all the way out to as far as I can see into the past, at once?
You might want to check out the videos I linked below under Agent's post about spirals which is about current work in physics on time travel.
Spirals in vendoland
The vending machine analogy is cool and fits really well because of their spiral contraptions inside... sooo hypnotic (and dang now I want vendoland donuts...)
Lookie what I found!
A Glimpse of the Spiral as a Symbol for the Transcendental Mystery of God
"Symbols come from the forgotten depths if they are to express the deepest insights of consciousness and the loftiest intuitions of the spirit, thus amalgamating the uniqueness of the present-day consciousness with the age-old past of humanity (Storr, p. 243). "
Heheheheh(This all clearly fits my little agenda.)
Mainly I'd like to quote this:
"The spiral is the most widely recognized and repeated archetype used to symbolize our inner and outer journey to God and the Self. Spirals symbolically represent a passage into the collective unconscious and then back into the world renewed with a greater psychological understanding of who we are and why we are here. This journey provides what Jung called the transcendental function of the psyche by which we achieve what should be our highest goal: the full realization of the potential of our individual Self (Jung, p. 149). "
"Spirals symbolize our soul, our essence, remaining the same while experience deepens and elevates our egos, or personalities, simultaneously. The center of a spiral is the center of the Self as it goes through the forward movement of time, yet never loses the essential spirit of its origin. Ascending spirals represent the reconciliation of the old order (unconscious) with some element of new creation (conscious) (Jung, 225). The unfolding of the spiral is the soul incarnate unfolding upon itself time and again throughout our lives. "
Now isn't that just totally awesome?!
If that isn't Lost, then what is?
... wow that article is really cool.
Speaking of agendas...
spirals=records 
But srsly...that was a very cool article. Double helix spirals--so messing with the vending machine creates dna issues?
Spiralling Light and Real Life Time Travel
Temporal DJs
Damn it!!
Every time I read this thing I have to run out to get a bag of skittles! There goes the "healthy" lunch I had planned. 
I have a question that I haven't been able to resolve with the concept of non-linear time. In your vending machine idea, the participant (let's say it's me) puts in their money and experiences a moment in time selected from the random choices. Let's say the moment I experience is a trip to the beach with my friends when I was 20. That moment has now passed for me - but it may not have passed for them (they may or may not have experienced it yet since it was randomly selected.) But if I speak with them this afternoon and I mention that moment during the conversation one of two things happens; they remember it and we reminisce, or they don't remember it (because they haven't experienced it yet) and I am left wondering how they could forget an entire weekend where Jaz got drunk and went skinny-dipping in the ocean and got arrested for public nudity, and you and Kat and I had to bail her out and then we all got REALLY drunk and got Dharma tattoos.
Since it's a random selection, then the chances that all 4 of us have experienced it should be relatively small. Since I may talk to yo or to them about it, does that mean that my future moments with you will be limited to moments that occur only after you have experienced that moment at the beach? And if so isn't the idea of limiting shared memories to those with common "hits" implying a linear expression to time? Now I'm confused and I still want some skittles.
The selections aren't random...
... the treats are. The vending machine and our choices are really working together as the same mechanism that forces the treats to emerge from the machine in a "logical" sequence. Since all of your friends are selecting from the same vending machine, they will always get the treat that is "logical" from their temporal perspective, and thus there will be continuity between your experience of time and theirs.
To put it another way, say all moments are like puzzle pieces in a black bag in no particular order. A spirit can reach into the bag and pull moments out at random. However, the spirit prefers, instead, to feel each piece while it's hand is still in the bag and only pull out pieces that will "fit" with previous pieces drawn out. Thus a logical sequence of pieces emerges from a random set in the bag. The spirit represents our perceptions (and whatever other mechanisms are involved) that impose a logical order on time where no logical order intrinsically exists.Lost - yes I am!
I'm totally confused now! This implies a cosmic force that is placing the treats in order for us. And since we are experiencing them in a specific order how is this not a linear time line?
Nevermind. I just read your post further down explaining the linear aspect of this.
Tastes great, and still filling :-)
This dinner is like one of those magic rice bowls...every time I open it there's still plenty of yumminess to digest :-)
I kind of want to combine the vending machine with my record analogy and turn the whole thing into a jukebox...
I'm trying to fit it together with my idea about the Heisenburg uncertainty principle too--the range in sizes of the candy being a probability wave. I've got a question though about our sequential perception vs. all moments existing at once. Selecting an item (like observing) produces chronology--but that's illusory. Does that mean that not only could someone who could break into the machine go to any moment and any place--can the shaman control the selections that are made--either dropping one out of the machine or returning a selection? Does the very act of breaking into the machine change the selection process?
I guess the glitch in my own perception that I'm having trouble with is that the analogy about the vending machine does set up a sequence from past to present selections--it leaves the future open (but with some possibility of prediction). How would you imagine the analogy without sequence (if that makes sense)?
I still like the idea of the whispers as a leak from the shamanistic realm. And I think this season suggests that the physical manifestation of that leak would be electromagnetic radiation.
Just a minor idea about the temple vs. the orchid. I think the orchid is going to turn out to be a threshold place. Maybe the temple instead will be more of a sanctuary--a place in which to avoid the effects of transitional states.
Let me take a stab at this here...
We are standing outside of the Time Vendo Machine. Our physical existence has been separated from time in order to understand the linear perception we have of its contents. We are contained in those moments, but can only eat one bag of candy at a time. The person outside eating the bag of candy is our physical existence and experience of the event as we know it.
One selection arm spiral in vendoland - in my perception of it... is a separate timeline - some with events so different that perhaps they are different "universes" indeed as precipitated by our choices. The spirals that separate those snacky experiences of ours are what influences our physical experience of any event and the spiral has a connection to our physical selves through our individuality - tastes, preferences and eventually the choices we make and enter into the machine.
The shaman is standing outside the machine experiencing one snack (s)he is eating and perhaps sharing that same snack with a buddy standing next to them. The shaman, however - has the ability to project into the machine (break into it without breaking time itself) and physically experience the snack while it's still inside the vending machine - without actually consuming the bag's contents in the physical sense as it relates to the one physical body that they "own". That would explain why they don't get really fat in the world they're standing with their buddy in.
Let's say (s)he finds that by eating one particular snack that's still in the machine - that his/her buddy ends up dying because he ate a poison peanut that was in the bag. The shaman can experience the snack (while the snack is still inside the bag unopened to his/her physical buddy on the outside) and finds a vendoland spiral with a happier ending - with powdered sugar donuts laced with Skittles and the works.
The shaman comes back to the shared experience in linear time with his/her buddy... and tries to influence his/her friend on which bag of snacks to buy. Either (s)he has the money and buys the bag outright... or convinces his/her buddy that peanuts are not as good as Skittles. Any number of things (s)he can do to prevent something from happening that (s)he has seen.
Well...
... one point of the analogy is that the mechanisms at work in forming our perception of time results in the "arrow of time" we see as only flowing one way. So... there isn't a way to imagine the analogy without sequence... the machine and our interaction with it imposes sequence. The only place sequence doesn't exist is in the machine, where the treats are placed at random.
When a shaman breaks into the machine, the restrictions of the machine are lifted, but only for the shaman, of course.
Does that address your question, or did I not understand it?
Sequence
No that wasn't really my question, but I don't think I asked it well.
What is clear in the analogy and what I really like about it is the idea of how choices shape the arrow of time but not in any absolute way.
Here's what is somewhat confusing--and follow-up question: inside the machine are all the moments in time existing at once. By "moments in time" you could be referring to moments like 3/14/1756 and 4/2/1208 and 7/17/1960--and thus the shaman who is not limited by sequence can experience any of these moments.
But adding in the part of the analogy in which the person outside the machine makes choices it seems that "moments in time" means something different. There "moments in time" would seem to mean something like "Charlie gets an arrow through the throat" and "Desmond pushes Charlie out of the way."
In that second instance you don't seem to be saying so much that all moments in time exist at once, but that there are alternative moments and that human choice affects the way those moments unfold in our perception (though again the choice does not work in a selection=moment sort of correspondence).
So it isn't just that human perception results in an arrow of time, human perception results in a particular arrow of time whereas the reality is that other arrows could have emerged (this may in part be what Jukin was getting at in his question--because what happens when you get competing sequences/choices--I think the answer there would have to involve the collective unconscious).
Question (at last :-) -- Let's say a person is trying to avoid a particular outcome and tries to make a choice to avoid that outcome--just as you outlined. But ironically the choice brings about the very thing they were trying to avoid (can't be an accident that this is the Oedipal plot and that the show is so much about fathers). Once the candy is out of the machine is that it? Or can the shaman break into the machine and make an exchange? So in the show that would mean alternative narratives, yes?
Ah... gotcha... sorry...
... I really DID misunderstand!
Can the shaman break in and make an exchange? In some ways this question is impossible to answer. Remember that for the shaman both possibilities have played themselves out. (In other words, yes the vending machine doesn't just contain all moments that have happened and will happen but all possible moments that might or might have happened.) For the selector, yes, once a treat is delivered, that's it. If the selector is unsatisfied with the selection, they can't ask the shaman for a "do over" because, to the shaman, there's another version of the selector who chose "the other treat". The only "exchange" that can take place is the selector can switch places with his-or-her alternate-universe self so he-or-she can enjoy the choice he-or-she initially failed to make. That is, the only recorse for the selector is to become a shaman him-or-herself. The question of putting a moment back and exchanging it for another won't hold any meaning for the shaman, as to the shaman at all times all choices are made.
Leakage
That's exactly what I was thinking...
The way I see it... it's a matter of being INSIDE the machine or OUTSIDE the machine...
The typical 3.5-D person is on the OUTSIDE of the machine... so it can only have actual "contact" with ONE treat at a time...
BUT, if one was to get INSIDE the machine... they could have access to multiple treats at the same time...
Is this what you mean? :)
OUTSIDE the machine
That would be only correct if you're saying you only have access to multiple treats ... I'm not sure it's actually accurate to say that one can actually physically experience several treats at once... at least not with the one physical body that you stood outside the machine with in the first place.
You only have one mouth, afterall... and I think the snack package analogy really has to remain true to being symbolic of time outside of physicality or it won't make much sense.
I think that the show is indeed suggesting that Ben has found some scientific way to break the machine.
Whether it's as simple as him taking his magic baton and simply breaking the glass, or if it's a high tech shamanistic "shrinking ray" I'm not sure.
One thing is clear - if he picks from a row where the snack choices have an impact so significantly different from the present physicality... the universe "course corrects". This may create spectres of people (think poison peanuts in one world, fluffy, yummy donuts in another with the same person eating them) or even duplicates of people if the deviant path is a pivotal snacking moment - in order to merge the discrepancies in the worlds that cooexist.
Imagine one spiral "timeline" where a person consistenly selects the healthy snack vs. the one that the person consistently selects the donuts... one's addicted to donuts and dies of a heart attack sooner in the physical world... and the other physical self will live a longer healthier life at the end of their respective spiral arms. After the point in the arm where the addiction cannot be broken for the donut lover vs the organic fruit snack person who would consciously never make the decision to eat a donut - 2 different people have to exist as created by their different values and different choices. This is where the show does a really cool job of investigating any given character's "dual nature" - potential for both good and bad.
The machine can also course correct by jamming the spiral arm with the triscuit package that would indeed allow Michael to die in that alternate reality.
Some higher power - whether it's the island and its controlling factions - or God - love and the universe - has determined that there can be no packages physically eaten outside the machine without Michael being alive at this point in time.
Two treats at once...
Well, actually... I CAN eat two different treats at the same time... I actually enjoy it sometimes... M&M's and popcorn...YUM! :) BUT... of course, that's not the point.
My point was in regards to Bilocation and time.
Scenario 1:
Based on the way time works on this show I see different possibilities for someone to experience 2 things at the same time. Based on what we've seen so far... it appears that by either leaving or going to the island, one can actually travel to the past OR future... So it IS possible for someone to be in Two places at the same time. (would this mean the are enjoying 2 treats at the same time?)
So how would this work with the ol' vending machine analogy? The alive doctor and the dead doctor (same person from diff. times)... they end up in diff. places AT the SAME moment in time...
(This analogy is tricky to me... because we USE TIME to select treats and it takes time to Eat them... So is a treat symbolic for a moment in time?... b/c it's like... a treat can be RE-Eaten... once it's eaten...it isn't gone forever. So I suggest we don't eat the treats. :)
Scenario 2:
I would also say that it is possible for 2 versions of the same person to be in the Same Time/ Place... We haven't seen on Lost, to my knowledge, but I think it IS possible. The only example I can give is from the movie Back to the Future II. 1985 Marty is in 1955... and another 1985 Marty is watching himself in 1955... 2 Marty's in the same time and very close "spacially"... now granted they are not literally "in" the same "SPACE"... (eeks, would the person melt? ) BUT, my point is that they BOTH can be seen by someone at the same time... in the school parking lot in this case.
(sooo would this situation be like 2007 Jen and 2008 Jen sharing the same bag of M&M's?)
It's snack time!
Oh Peach... I know you have a big enough mouth for 2 treats, but me thinks you're missing the point, darlin. 
(Oh how could I resist that!)
Ok, but really - let me try to explain...
Scenario one
If the alive doctor (M&Ms) and the dead doctor (popcorn) are from "different times" (different snack packages) - then they aren't in the "same moment/package" of time.
In the analogy if they are sharing the same moment then the one snack package would be an M&Ms and popcorn mix - and the 2 doctors standing outside the machine. This is what "bilocation" would look like. I think we find out - however - that it's implied that this is not the case - and cannot technically be "bilocation" in this instance because the live doctor ends up dead in the same manner as the dead doctor who floated up onto the beach.
This *one person* is dead at the end of his entire snacking experience. He's had a chain of different snacks - in his experience, very linearly and one at a time. His perception never indicates that he feels both alive and dead in the same moment. The autopsy shows that his M&Ms are long digested before the popcorn ever enters his belly.
The perception that these snack events are happening at the same time by the outside observer are a result of the snack machine being broken into (mechanism unimportant). The result of the "breakage" is that the radio waves from the island that bring the message that the doctor is dead are able to communicate with the past where the doctor is alive. In essence from a "linear time point of view" it is only because of the sequence of events that it appears as if these moments are happening at the same time. The people in the popcorn bag with the dead doctor have a walkie talkie that communicates with the people snacking on M&Ms outside the machine with the live doctor.
Scenario two
It remains to be seen if the show will actually directly imply that the machine has been broken so as to "break" the timelines themselves (the separate snack bags breaking open and intermingling as they come out of the machine) vs the snack bags "being broken into" while still maintaing their order in the linear sequence of things. What we haven't seen is if Ben's actual body in the present moment disappears when he goes on his excursions or if he goes into the shamanistic/fortune telling state that Des did (leaving his present day physical husk behind).
I think the show deliberately plays with this perception of how Ben or Des does what they do in regard to seeing future events as part of their "Science vs. Faith" narrative. It's the same outward appearance - with 2 different and opposite explanations (yin and yang). This is why I think it'd be much more satisfying to see the walkie communications explanation - to and from the snack bag than the Back to the Future route. I can see it going either way though if the writers are attempting to make a statement about the method in some fashion... but that would be about as satisfying as Ewoks in Return of the Jedi.
Two treats at once : )
M&M's and NUTS (not popcorn)! I ate that today for lunch... guess where I paid for the long, skinny bag of yumness...... 
That's it.... I'm done!!
Wow...
There are indeed a lot of neat analogies and examples from the show that collaborate perfectly. And Agent I love the examples you used in your "Outside the machine" post. Very cool.
So this could be what Widmore (and Miles kinda) were saying about Ben? "I know WHAT you are"? - alluding to Ben's ability and knowledge to tap into the funky machine?
I don't think a vending machine will ever be just a vending machine again. And now I want a big bag of Skittles.
Our Anniversary
So Profprof,
It's the one year anniversary of our first dinner together! Thank you so much, my ol LT buddy ol pal, for first extending the invitation,
Love,
JazOz