It appeared pretty quickly
on the screen last night, so unless you could understand the scratchy film Locke and Jack watched or had a pausable
recording of the show, you may have missed who made the strange footage shown on Lost last night: The Hanso
Foundation. And yes, someone's already figured out that they have a website.There's not a whole lot to see there yet, but it sure seems we can expect something to appear soon. Hover close to the bottom of the list of "active projects" and you'll see a familiar name: Dharma initiative. (Geek note: I love that the Juxtapositional Eugenics Development Institute's initials are JEDI).
I now believe this new information points to a couple of theories about the hatch lair. First of all, I think Jack could be right, that it's a mind game experiment to see how long someone will actually keep entering the code and hitting the button. Or maybe to see how long of an uptime an Apple ][ can have (sorry, lame techie geek joke). Did you notice the year that film was made? 1980. So that means the code has been entered for maybe 25 years now?
There's also evidence that the fictional Hanso Foundation does studies on life extension and selective breeding. It may be that, as someone once pointed out, entering the code and pushing the 'execute' button sends a signal to some remote station as a "yes we're still alive" message.
Remember when Sayid figured out how long that transmission had been going on, the one that Danielle's voice was saying over and over again, pleading for help? Then the strange male voice saying "iteration ..." and a number? That certainly sounds like yet another experiment: how long can we have this woman's transmission repeat, over and over.
I'm also liking the theory of nanotechnology more. After looking at the list of Hanso's active projects, nanotech would fit right in. Remember that electromagnetic field in the hatch lair? Could that be a containment field for a large number of nanotech bots? If he fails to enter the code, more of the nanobots get unleashed. I say "more" because it sure seems that the island "monster" may possibly be something like that, as it's already confirmed that Jack, Kate and Locke saw a "wisp of smoke" like we all did, when they dynamited the thing in the hole last season. Nanotech would certainly explain the smokey look.
So, could Hanso really have made nanotech back 25 years ago? That's where I'm not so sure.
[UPDATE: Looking for what is said on that 877-HANSORG voice message? Check here.]
Here's the pilot for The United States of Tara - VIDEO
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
10-06-2005 @ 12:02PM
Nicholas Wigant said...
Anyone notice when you click the "Terms of Use" link in the lower left that it takes you to a Walt Disney disclaimer? Could Hanso be creating cryogenically frozen extra-terrestrials for Disney?! :)
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10-06-2005 @ 12:08PM
Steve said...
Nanotech was discussed in 1959 in this talk:
"There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom"
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html
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10-06-2005 @ 12:33PM
mnkekaos said...
As long as we're riding the JEDI wave, (and for anyone who watched the Lost DVD supplements and saw Damon Lindelof wore a Star Wars shirt to his interview), it seemed to me right off the bat that HANSO FOUNDATION sounds a lot like the HAN SOLO foundation.
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10-06-2005 @ 12:36PM
Chris said...
Walt is Luke Skywalker!
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10-06-2005 @ 12:39PM
Chris said...
And Sawyer called Jin Chewie when they were in the pit/prison. The whole scene was very similiar to Chewie, Han Solo, and Princess Leia in Jabba's prison after freeing Han from the carbo freeze.
I'll see you're geek and go all in.
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10-06-2005 @ 12:45PM
Travis said...
And SOLO means "alone", so that could mean that Desmund was never getting reliefs afterall. Going to do it "solo". And for how long? Well, hence the speculation of this mind game experiment. I'm for it.
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10-06-2005 @ 12:46PM
nakameguro said...
anyone notice the book desmond was reading? the third policeman... if you consider an important figure in that novel (de selby) you will find one of his plans was to build a doomsday machine that would kill all human life.
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10-06-2005 @ 2:08PM
mnkekaos said...
Hanso Foundation Geodesic domes=Death Star. And Walt's apparition isn't too far removed from Obi-Wan "visiting" Luke.
I dont think any of this has anything to do with solving this show, but their Star Wars freak flags are definitely flying.
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10-06-2005 @ 2:23PM
Nadia said...
Did you know that Alvar Hanso is an anagram for:
Has no larva!!
Not that it means anything, but it made me laugh!
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10-06-2005 @ 2:35PM
wassily said...
RE: the transmission. Before the French Lady made her recording, the transmission was orginally the code numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42). These numbers were heard by two men monitering the South Pacific. One of them killed himself, and the other was in the same mental hospital as Hurley (where Hurley heard the numbers repeated by the poor loon). The Franch Lady said that after her crew "got sick" and died, she went to the source of the transmission and recorded her own distress call. So the original tranmission of the code numbers would be part of the experiment.
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10-06-2005 @ 2:56PM
Keith McDuffee said...
It looks like we can expect to see some sort of video there soon. Take a look at the images directory:
http://www.thehansofoundation.org/images/
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10-06-2005 @ 4:22PM
Alex said...
Nicholas: The terms o use thing is for ABC. It's obviously a site run by ABC much like the Oceanic Airlines site. I'll have to check to see if the same TOU show up there.
And if we got back to the mural we may be abe to understand it a bit better now. Remember how there were all those houses in it? Perhaps they represent more underground hatches. The video did say that they were in station 3, meaning there are probably more of them on the island. I'm getting a huge hunch that everything on this island is some form of Hanso's experiments, although going by the preview to next week's episode it doesn't look like we'll be getting many answers about Hanso any time soon.
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10-06-2005 @ 4:52PM
Porchland said...
Everytime I see "Hanso" I think of the Hatori Hanso sword from "Kill Bill." Another homage?
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10-06-2005 @ 5:10PM
Jeffrey said...
Does anyone else see remnants of a swastika in the Hanso Foundation logo?
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10-06-2005 @ 9:39PM
mp said...
If it's a science project... then my bet is the scientists' henchmen "others" nabbed walt because they saw what he can do... and want to study/use him. There's probably some state of the art complex the survivors will find at the end of season four.
the ONE thing that bugs me... is the the other 35 or so survivors are content to run around doing nothing. If someone told me that they've blown open a large metal hatch... I'm going that way. What else better is there to do?
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10-06-2005 @ 11:32PM
Mr. Clark said...
all well and good. but here's something of interest.
The website has some interesting things available, and some even more interesting things unavailable. However, it does say to contact the Public Relations Department of the Hanso Foundation.
This is what I am in the process of doing.
I started with 2 emails. One to
publicrelationsdepartment@thehansofoundation.org
and the other to
publicrelations@thehansofoundation.org
the first came back saying there was a delivery error. Meaning, the first email doesn't exist.
The second email address never said a thing.
I am waiting for their response to my my email which says, "I am looking for further Information about the Hanso Foundation and exactly what it's active projects are.
please send."
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10-07-2005 @ 1:16AM
Tom Biro said...
The good news is that you can now click on "Dharma" at the bottom of the projects list, and you get this page - the video from the show.
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10-07-2005 @ 3:11AM
Danielle was part of the science group said...
Anyone notice also in this episode that in the film there is a shot of all these geek scientists sitting together in a circle on grass and there is a long haired lady sitting with her back turned to the camera that looks a lot like Danielle? I think she was part of this science team placed on the island with the rest of these scientist. Could also be linked to the "incident" that Marvin (I think that's the speaker's name) mentioned in the film.
You'll need to pause to see it!
Also I think that the magnetic field is the huge power source that Saiyid mentions that's on the island.
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10-07-2005 @ 4:04AM
They Lost Me said...
I love their effort to keep the mysteries alive and interesting, but they need to go back to the drawing board on realistic character behavior and dialog.
1. Jack gets a gun to go after Desmond, ready to threaten his life to get some answers, but then gets choked up about his ex-wife and just forgets it? Desmond obviously thinks he can go somewhere, said he arrived in a boat or something, maybe Jack would want to know a little more? Nope, too emotional, just forget it.
2. If I'm Sayid and Locke tells Jack he "can't do it alone", I don't just stand there like an idiot. You say, "You can't push this button alone? What in hell is wrong with you freaks?" And you push the button.
3. If three people leave through the submarine door hatch in hurry, do you really think they all close it after them? It's such a pain to open in the first place, give me a break.
I really don't mind the pace, or not knowing anything. But don't insult the viewers with completely unbelievable dialogue and actions just to stretch things out.
While they're at it, they might try giving the flashback parts of the stories a little more punch like last season.
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10-07-2005 @ 5:50AM
richard wallwork said...
I just emailed the numbers to those two email addresses. I’ll let you know if there is some kind of electromagnetic catastrophe. :)
I think the different projects the guy in the film refers to are a key to other research stations on the island. However I don’t think the scientists are the bad guys. I think they did a runner when things went wrong. We've seen evidence linking the different areas of research Dharma is involved in to things happening on the island. I’ve listed these below.
Meteorology - we saw the tide come up real fast in series 1. They made a point of it but we heard nothing since.
Psychology and Parapsychology – Walt is the connection here because he is 'special' and he's been taken so I assume 'the others' have control of this station... They have a boat that requires a port so I think it must be a coastal facility.
The others are also
Zoology - Experiments on polar bears, sharks, monsters, some have escaped, maybe this place is abandoned.
Electromagnetism - this is the place our guys have found. Something’s 'gone tits up' and requires this code to avoid electromagnetic disaster. Maybe Desmond forgot to press the button and that’s what brought down the plane?
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