[CJFusco]

Yup - the Island has ways of keeping people alive that it wants alive.

A thought: Since Young Ben thinks that Sayid is one of the Others, and Widmore would have been the leader of the Others at this point in time, maybe this is the beginning of the Ben/Widmore feud? Just a thought.

I stumbled across some info recently about some of the show's more persistent mysteries:

As you know, fertility is a big mystery on the Island: apparently women could give birth with no problem in the 1970s, but "something bad happened" ("The Incident"?) and now every woman that gets pregnant on the Island dies before childbirth.

It also turns out that the Egyptian fertility god - which is the visage of a pregnant woman - also has four toes. Hmmm the statue on the "Others' " side of the Island also has four toes -- and we've only seen it from behind. Now, the statue has crumbled and women can't give birth. Coincidence? I doubt it. Maybe "the Incident" that leads to the necessary pushing of "the button" also leads to women losing their fertility on the Island?

The show is moving more and more toward Egyptian history/mythology:

The ankh necklace that Horace's wife wears
The Egyptian Fertility God statue
The hyroglyphs in the Swan Hatch
The name Horace=Egyptian god
There are many out there who speculate that Richard Alpert, who has a decidedly Egyptian look to him (check out the eyeliner!), might have some connection to ancient Egypt. Maybe Richard Alpert=R.A.=Ra, the Sun God?

Another connection. Apparently someone went back to the season 1 episode in which the original survivors find "the caves," and there are two skeletons in there that they name "Adam and Eve." Remember? Well, apparently there was some writing on the wall, which was in a foreign language (I forget which). It turns out that the writing, when translated, means "Black and White." Hmmm, I wonder what happened to Rose and Bernard... perhaps they time-traveled with the others, and when Sawyer, Juliet, et al., set up camp at the DHARMA Initiative in 1974, Bernard and Rose decided to make a little home for themselves in the caves (with Vincent?) and died long before the crash of Flight 815 in 2004.

During a podcast, the show's writers said that "a clue to the Nadler's fate can be read in an anagram during the episode 'Not in Portland' (Season 3)" Somebody (not me) did the research and found the following phrase during the scene when Carl (Alex's boyfriend) is being brainwashed:

"Only fools are enslaved by space and time"

This is obviously an important clue to what will happen next in the show (time travel), but it's also an anagram for:

"Bones of Nadlers may lay lost deep in cave."

Coincidence?