We finally really did it!
Well the first half of the season came to an end. What is it we thought we saw? What do you BeLIEve? Let’s go!
And I think it's gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone
Rocket Man lyrics by Elton John
Taking the Nestea Plunge
An interesting scene the meeting of Thomas, Isabelle, Sophia and Simon gathered around the table. The classic tea ceremony. A part of the tradition in Chinese culter people make serious apologies to others by pouring tea for them. For example, children serving to their parents is a sigh of regret and submission. How telling is it that Thomas is willing to put on such a show of such cultural significance only to turn and run. Thomas, thinking with the tiny brain.
Speaking of elders, hilarious that Jarvis tried to invoke “I am your elder” line on the President. Yes, we get it, they are like family to each other. Apparently he saw it as the only recourse to try to delay the inevitable. Does he really think that Sterling, much less the President, will let the traitor get by with that nonsense.
Thomas still is trying to deflect the blame, at least in front of mommy, but saying to Isabelle “YOU did give her everything, didn’t you?” Sophia is aptly named, she is wise to them. We also got confirmation the movement of the plane was solely to save Sophia. Now, the interesting thought is if Thomas and Dempsey are somehow in cahoots (remember, they each had orchids in a previous episode) perhaps Thomas got cold feet and could not let his mother be harmed. It is that or he and Dempsey are at odds.
A final note about this scene; the cane. Laura Innes played a character on ER that utilized a cane.
Big questions:
Where is the key? Part of the satellite? Or hidden to keep the others from going home?
What was the message? My thought is to tell others to stay away. By telling his home world (yes it was sent to “home wolrd” per official site info) to not come, it may cause a death sentence since the world is barely viable and there are other unnamed dangers. It would be easy to assume that he was calling home for an invasion, but that would be a different show. ;)Where is the “interface” that created the ability to transport the plane? Apparently the process burns up components. My guess is that it was the proof of concept device used to save Sophia.
Why would Dempsey and company what to give a dose to Leila? Would it have the same impact on her as it did on her pursuer? We are lead to believe that her sister Sam was not adversely affected by the injections. A special case apparently compared to the other girls. Now it seems likely that Dempsey, dear DOCTOR Dempsey is using the drops to continue to look old in order to hide his slow aging.
Mission Improbable continues
Fun facts
Willow Brook is similar to Willoughby. Willoughby is a town featured in a story during the first season of the Twilight Zone. It was an idealized place of residence for a man looking to get away from it all.
The Rosen family health center is across street from Willow Brook. Nathan Rosen is the name of a physicist that worked with this guy named Einstein. In 1935 he became Albert Einstein's assistant at The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and continued in that position until 1945. While working with Einstein, Rosen pointed out the peculiarities of Einstein’s studies involving entangled wave functions, and, in coordination with Boris Podolsky, a paper was drafted. The paper, entitled “Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?" labeled these effects the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox or EPR paradox. Einstein encouraged Rosen to continue his career in physics in Israel thereafter. Einstein and Rosen discovered the mathematical solution for a type of wormhole connecting distant areas in space.
Dubbed an Einstein-Rosen bridge, or Schwarzschild Wormhole, the solution was found by merging the mathematical models of a black hole and a white hole (a theoretical black hole moving backward in time), using Einstein’s field equations. Einstein-Rosen Bridges are purely theoretical. It was shown in a 1962 paper by theoretical physicists John A. Wheeler and Robert W. Fuller that these types of wormholes are unstable. Perhaps that is why they ended up crashing in Alaska. Furthermore, if a white hole was involved it could indicate they are from the future, like say, 5314!
Finally, one of the most lasting discoveries Rosen brought to physics was his formulation of the structure of the hydrogen molecule, a molecule where none of the electrons have a definite quantum number, but the pair of electrons has a pure state. Rosen used what he called “entangled“ wave functions to represent the molecule’s structure.
Crazy “Aunt” mentions a Sallyann Rasmussent. The "Rasmussen Report'", an informal name for the WASH-1400 report about nuclear reactor safety WASH-1400, 'The Reactor Safety Study', was a report produced in 1975 for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by a committee of specialists under Professor Norman Rasmussen. It is thus often referred to as the Rasmussen Report. Yet another reference to nuclear fission.
Good thing the guard is not really interested in detaining Sean and Leila. He must not be comfortable with whatever he has witnessed during his time there at psych hospital.
Lucky guess Leila made about the water tower, eh? Perhaps she has repressed memories of being there and that is what spurred that unlikely guess. That or she is in on the conspiracy. Who recruited whom? Sean pick up Leila or Leila pick up Sean. Speaking of odd, according to her official bio, Leila has a degree in biochemistry from MIT. A tiny little school in Cambridge, Massachusetts that never really produced much in the way of academics. Okay, sarcasm off. I wonder is she doesn’t really work for Dr. Dempsey. Her place of employment is not visible on her bio.
Who are the other people in the picture with Thomas and the dead banker?
Apparently there is a massive phone tree of for Sophia to put the word out to the community.
Everything is going to change – history? Does this mean that what was supposed to happen will not? Or will what happened, happen? See what I did there Losties?
It is illogical for the Chinese to now allow out flyover or send in their own to take care of the threat. What the heck? Oh look, another reference to China.
I forgot to mention earlier, why are there no cameras to watch back door of psychiatric hospital? Or lobby? Mission Improbably. Or they want Sean or Leila (or both) to find the files that failed to be destroyed. Leila seems to be guiding Sean to where she wants him to be rather than explore some other rooms. Or are repressed memories of the classroom coming to surface?
When Sophia said she doesn’t know what Thomas is capable of is probably the most honest we will ever see her. Reminds me of one Benjamin Linus. Perhaps she is secretly please by his deception and is glad to see her son become more like her.
Why transmit the signal from orbit? Why not a ground station? If they can hide a missle silo surely a radio station would be easier. Besides, what about the site of the “interface?”
Fun With Dates
Yep, one of my favorites. When the dates for the pictures were shown it was eye candy for me.
Paul Stern photos
May 4
1886 – An unknown assailant threw a bomb into a crowd of police, turning a peaceful labor rally in Chicago into the Haymarket massacre, which resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and many bystanders.
1919 – The May Fourth Movement began in China with large-scale student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square,Peking against the Paris Peace Conference and Japan's Twenty-One Demands.
Remembrance of the Dead (Dutch: Dodenherdenking) is held annually on May 4 in the Netherlands. It commemorates all civilians and members of the armed forces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands who have died in wars or peacekeeping missions since the outbreak of World War II.
May 4 is called Star Wars Day (also sometimes known as Luke Skywalker Day) because of the popularity of a common pun spoken on this day. Since the phrase "May the Force be with you" is a famous quote often spoken in the Star Wars movies, fans commonly say "May the fourth be with you" on this day.
April 15, 1983
Jackie Robinson day in Major League Baseball to celebrate the integration of baseball.
Tax day for the United States.1892 – The General Electric Company is formed. Guess who owns NBC?
1912 – The British passenger liner, the RMS Titanic, sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg. 1,517 people are killed.
1989 – Upon Hu Yaobang's death, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in the People's Republic of China. Pattern anyone?
August 2, 1962
1939 – Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan project to develop a nuclear weapon. More fission.
1790 – The first US Census is conducted.
1377 – Russian troops are defeated in the Battle on Pyana River because of drunkenness. Not very relevant, but funny.
1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.
December 20 ,1947
1606 – The Virginia Company loads three ships with settlers and sets sail to establish Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.
1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.
Michael Buchannan photos
December 10, 2009
1684 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.
1907 – The worst night of the Brown Dog riots in London, when 1,000 medical students clash with 400 police officers over the existence of a memorial for animals who have been vivisected. Seems timely reference with the student protests happening there currently for the unreasonable tuition hikes.
1968 – Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", is carried out in Tokyo.
July 15, 1984
1916 – In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).
1954 – First flight of the Boeing 367-80, prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series. First commercial jet liner.
2003 – AOL Time Warner disbands Netscape Communications Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation is established on the same day
January 8, 1978
1811 – An unsuccessful slave revolt is led by Charles Deslandes in St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana.
1973 – Watergate scandal: The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate begins
1994 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.
August 6, 1959
1787 – Sixty proof sheets of the Constitution of the United States are delivered to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
1901 – Kiowa land in Oklahoma is opened for white settlement, effectively dissolving the contiguous reservation.
1914 – World War I: First Battle of the Atlantic – two days after the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany over the German invasion ofBelgium, ten German U-boats leave their base in Helgoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea.
1964 – Prometheus, a bristlecone pine and the world's oldest tree, is cut down.
1965 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.
April 3, 1948
1860 – The first successful United States Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California begins.
1888 – The first of eleven unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs.
1917 – Vladimir Lenin arrives in Russia from exile, marking the beginning of Bolshevik leadership in the Russian Revolution.
1948 – President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech.
King spoke on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters) in Memphis, Tennessee. The next day, King was assassinated.
Toward the end of the speech, King refers to threats against his life and uses language that seems to foreshadow his impending death:
"And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
The language is seen by some as a "prophetic" analogy. Moses is the leader of the people of Israel whom they follow because of the prospect of life within a promised Land. Before they reach the land however, Moses is informed by God that he will not allow him to enter into the land and that he will only see it with eyes. The Lord brings Moses to the mountain top that he may see the land. Shorty after Moses dies and is buried by God and his successor Joshua leads Israel into the Promised land.
Final thought – “what does it mean?”,says Leila. No idea. My plan is to continue posting stuff during the hiatus. Thank you for taking the time to stop by and take the time to read these thoughts.
As always, I can be found at Twitter @iowa_card
