the smoke monster is time as a course corrector, it ‘judges’ people based on their place in time and if they belong on the island. a further explanation will be based on egyptian references and the islands original inhabitants (egyptians and richard (jacob)).

As for the compass, read the story and pay attention to the part about the dictionary. I think it illustrates it well.

hey, listen, I am all for the writers doing their thing and I accept that they may be up to something with that compass, its just not what I would have done. And that’s fine too. I would just prefer that they had established that the compass held some importance to Richard in 1955 otherwise its pretty useless as proof that John’s from the future.
All the paradoxical things aside, that bothers me more than anything else, and smacks of lazy writing to me.

On another note, I saw Star Trek as IMAX Saturday and all I can say is HOLY CRAP ON A STICK!

List of Awesome:
the View Screens
Warp Drive
Engineering

There are some interesting possible answers to the idea, however. For instance, say that something happens to the compass (it deteriorates or something) after Locke gives it to Richard, then Richard wouldn’t be able to give it to Locke, but Richard still would have had it for a time, but he would never have been able to receive it in the first place if it had deteriorated, etc. Is this a more troublesome paradox than the current one? If so, does this help answer why there is a paradox in the first place? This idea that the universe will allow for a material paradox of this sort in order to avoid a more difficult one has been put forward as a possible answer to the paradox. Perhaps you could come up with another, better one? Perhaps the writers already have?

At any rate, they certainly didn’t cop out. Instead, I think it’s safe to say that they have done a really nice job of helping to give some extra fodder to the hardcore theorizers without giving away any truly important information.

maybe this is what Daniel was hypothesizing would happen to manually course correct things in 1977 to ensure that things in 2004 didn’t happen the way they did (i.e., the plane didn’t crash)???

we don’t know yet what happens between 77-2004 yet, maybe we never will?

…but once locke crashes on the island in 2004(and they found out he was paralyzed but no longer is), it sealed the deal for the others, and thus they deemed him their leader…but yet again he disappeared (after leading for only a few hours actually), and was gone for 3 years…when he suddenly reappeared (with boar in tow), it should be all the proof needed to confirm that he is special, not to mention the little side trip to save his own life he orchestrated

…yet it seems like richard is still hesitant & not as psyched about this prospect as he had been in 2004. I wonder why? maybe he is having doubts and wonders if he was a bit hasty in his proclaimation of locke as leader back in 04?