The canisters and the notebooks...

[BurkRoyer]

That's a heck a lot of cansisters and notebooks...  All handwritten... Talk about major carpal tunnel syndrome!!!  I hope Dharma provided a good health care plan...

[Goldmund]

It looked like years worth atleast. Season three will hopefully clue us in on pre-crash happenings.

[Geronimo Jackson]

And let'shope they are biodegradable

[jugdish]

They must have a lot of money to spend on craphole island. You would think that they would just empty them and return then to the Pearl. Who buys that many cannisters.

[Geronimo Jackson]

Who knows jugdish they seemtoahve a big budgetbut seriously were thye enver ever red now that is arat in amze game.Thye would make great land fill on the enviornmentally friendly island.

[Gelotripsy]

We use a tube system in my hospital to send messages and specimens. Some of us call it the "suck and blow". Anyway, I found that scene hysterical because I have secretly thought that's what really is happening to our cannisters when some department says that they never recieved an order or specimen.

[AlwaysLOST4ever]

We use a tube system in my hospital to send messages and specimens. Some of us call it the "suck and blow". Anyway, I found that scene hysterical because I have secretly thought that's what really is happening to our cannisters when some department says that they never recieved an order or specimen.

Love it!

The whole "dumping the cannisters in the middle of a field" certainly contradicts Locke's assumption that they go back to headquarters.

[Austruck]

...and it backs up Desmond's own assertion that the Hatch 2 people were the experiment, NOT the Hatch 1 people!

How ironic that Locke had it backwards: The button-pushing in Hatch 1 IS important. The note-taking in Hatch 2 is a sociological experiment.

Nice touch.

[psychoag98]

I'm curious.  If the "Hatch 2" (Pearl) people are the experiment, what exactly IS the experiment?  Handwriting analysis? 

With Swan Hatch, it makes sense that they could have been trying to see if people will keep pushing the button out of fear of what could happen.

But what would be the experiment of having two people watch other people pushing a button that actually needs to be pushed?

[Austruck]

I thought it would be a similar psychological experiment. See how long these people will keep watching the other folks and keep filling up those notebooks with notes and sending those notebooks up the tube without any feedback from anyone that what they're doing has value.

Really, the same experiment.

And, we *do* see that the tubes get purposely dumped into nowhere. In this one episode we learn that Hatch 1 has meaning and Hatch 2 might not.

[Austruck]

Sorry about the double-post. Wanted to add this: When I was in college I participated in some experiments in the psych department (for modest amounts of money), and yes, one of them was a pointless exercise in which they were trying to see how long we'd do some otherwise meaningless task simply because we were told to.

[mollyh]

Austruck: Please elborate about the experiment. Thanks!

[psychoag98]

I agree that would make sense if BOTH hatches were fake, but if the need to push the button is a real scientific one, why muddle it with a psychology experiment?

For example, if the whole thing was a psych experiment, I could see them setting up one group to see if they would keep pushing the button, and a second to see how long they would keep recording the data.  But if the first group was NOT an experiment, which it seems it wasn't, why go to a scientific site that deals with intense electromagnetism and set up your psychology experiment there?  It doesn't seem a single group would be interested in both an electro magnetic energy project and a psychology experiment.

Just my take.

[eYeBall]

I thought it would be a similar psychological experiment. See how long these people will keep watching the other folks and keep filling up those notebooks with notes and sending those notebooks up the tube without any feedback from anyone that what they're doing has value.

Really, the same experiment.

And, we *do* see that the tubes get purposely dumped into nowhere. In this one episode we learn that Hatch 1 has meaning and Hatch 2 might not.

There could have been a station or a retrieval system at the end of the tube at one time, but like the some of the rest of the island it fell in to disrepair, was moved or destroyed.  It still could have been a research experiment though, but the information and knowledge gained would have had some value to someone and so I fell like there at one time had to be someone getting the filled-out notebooks.  The pearl would have been a very strategic location and seemed to have been used recently before the intrusion of Locke and Eko.  Maybe the chain of all the experiments broke down and at one time all the stations had a real meaning and served a real function?

[AmazonMonkey]

Maybe someone already said this, but those tube systems work on vaccum and to create the vaccum it has to be a sealed (air tight) system.  The tube that came out if the ground was open ended and therefore would not be a vaccum.  I am either being too anal or someone didn't do their homework.