I apologize for the lack of technical content on this blog lately. We've all been pretty heads-down lately, getting this whole WCF thing in the landing pattern for V1. We're at the stage where it's just about time to make sure all the seatbacks and tray tables are in their full upright and locked position and the "fasten seatbelt" sign has recently been turned on (as it were). Doesn't leave much time for blogging.

Anyway, here are some musings about one of my non-technical obsessions: Lost. The finale for Season 2 is next week, and if you haven't been watching you should stop now, because I'd hate to spoil the fun for you. But here are some interesting questions about the show's mythos that are bothering me...

Last week in the show "?", we discovered the Pearl Station which (by all appearances) gives credence to theory that all of the nonsense with the button-you-must-press-every-108-minutes-to-prevent-end-of-world is really all just an elaborate psychological experiment. We saw that the Pearl station could observe the "subjects" doing the button pressing in the other stations...however, there were also video cameras montoring the people in the Pearl station itself. Which of course begs the question who's watching the watchers??  It's possible that either (a) the experiment is double-blind, implying that people in both stations are subjects, even the ones who think they are in control or (b) the experiment is entirely reversed, being carried out only on the people who think they're watching the experiment. The ultimate goal of said experiment remains a mystery. There's also the possibility that we've completely misinterpreted the meaning of the Pearl station Orientation video and that there's no experiment at all.

Speaking of things not being as they appear, this week we got to see bit of The Others camp via Micheal's flashback. This seems to be pretty primitive, yet we know via Claire's flashback that The Others really aren't the dirty bunch of ragamuffins they make themselves out to be. We did see a glimpse of a clean-shaven Mr. Friendly in Claire's episode, and there's the discovery of the makeup kit in that same episode to as well as Walt's warning that "they're pretending" to contend with. The Others are clearly going to great lengths to make themselves appear to be uncivilized; the question remains "to what end?" My guess is that we'd know a lot more if we caught a glimpse of what was on the other side of the hatch door that The Others were seen guarding in Michael's flashback.

Finally, a more thematic question. This whole season has been about a fundamental tension between science (rationality/logic) and faith. Was that really a vision of Walt that Shannon saw? Is Henry one of Them? Can the psychic in the outback really heal Rose? Is the Button real or just an experiment? This whole season has been broadly about duality, a dialectic. Black and White. Rose and Bernard. Locke and Ecko. You get my point. Anyway, all of this is quite interesting in light of this season's central mystery, the DHARMA Initiative. Where did that name come from? It's got to be an allusion to the Buddhist Dharma -- heck, the logo for the thing is practically a yin/yang. Is there an underlying natural/universal law at work on the island?

Other random questions:

• The Others make a binary distinction between "good ones" and "bad ones". Henry said that Locke is one of the "good ones". What makes the good ones good?
• Why do The Others have an obsession with children? Alex, Aaron, Walt...whats so interesting about prepubescents?
• Is the DHARMA Initiative still going on? All the stations appear to be empty, yet supplies are still being airlifted in. Why? Is it possible that the people running the show don't know what's happening on the island?

Anyway, hopefully at least some of this stuff will be answered next week.