notes, "Lost" style (SPOILER ALERT)

Editor's note: In our ongoing effort to understand ABC's "Lost," I'm going to be compiling the notes I'm keeping as a casual viewer via this blog. Updates come with every commercial break. Notes may be incoherent, incomplete or just plain wrong. Also, if you're not watching the episode and plan to watch it at a later date, PLEASE STOP READING RIGHT NOW. THANK YOU.

(All times CST)
7:56 p.m.: Currently watching the second airing of "The Lie" with ABC's sub-titles; i.e., the annotated version of the episode. I find this a tad annoying, but whatever.
As we're waiting on the new episode to start, here are a few questions begging answers:
-- Who are Ben's group of mysterious friends off the Island? Are they other survivors from another time period or what?
-- Do they really need to go back to the Island or not? And when Ben said "all of you have to go back," did he mean Desmond too? What about Lapidus?
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8:00 p.m.: And ... here we go. Desmond wandering around a mysterious Asian marketplace, muttering something I can't understand.
8:02 p.m.: Wait a second ... Penny is pregnant? Really? And how did she have an already-pink baby with its eyes open? She's the most fortunate pregnant woman of all-time.
8:03 p.m.: Well, scratch that. The birth of that child was a memory -- Desmond is talking about a "special island," that is, of course, England. And Scotland. And my wife is lusting after his voice.
8:06 p.m.: What is the deal with Miles, anyway? Have we ever figured out what is the source of his abilities?
(After the first big explosion, it's worth noting that these Army guys' clothes appear to be US, from the 1950s. Or not.)
8:07 p.m.: And yet another piece of the "Daniel Faraday as time traveler" puzzle falls into place.
(break to watch Wake survive at home against Duke ... well-played, gentlemen -- as an aside, Alabama never ran an inbounds play that imaginative in 10.5 seasons of Mark Gottfried)
8:10 p.m.: Tonight's episode will apparently center on Desmond, I suppose. The title of the episode is "Jughead," possibly a reference to the child involved.
8:11 p.m.: Penny is apparently as confused by all this as much as the rest of us.
8:12 p.m.: Desmond asks the ominous question: "Why in God's name would I want to go back there?"
8:13 p.m.: Wait, Latin? The Others speak Latin?
8:14 p.m.: Miles just confirmed they walked past (dead) US soldiers, and said something about radiation poison.
8:15 p.m.: Richard = Richard Alpert. Of course it does. That guy is like Dick Clark. He hasn't aged a day at any point.
"I assume you've come back for your bomb." There are so many layers to this Faraday character.
(break)
8:19 p.m.: Recall that Desmond visited Daniel at Oxford in Season 4, during that episode when Dez kept leaping from time to time like Sam Beckett. I'm guessing this is taking place in the present (2007, or "Three Years Later").
8:23 p.m.: We now know Faraday conducted time-travel experiments at Oxford at some point. And apparently he hurt someone really badly. I'm guessing this is foreshadowing what's about to happen to Charlotte.
8:24 p.m.: A theory I'd like to advance: DHARMA was a scientific group conducting nuclear experiments; those experiments somehow caused the Island to acquire supernatural properties; the real reason Charles Widmore wants the Island is related to that hydrogen bomb.
(That theory, incidentally, doesn't explain how the Island already had time-travel properties when DHARMA was first starting out, as we saw in the opening minutes of "Because You Left." So maybe that theory has a few holes.)
8:27 p.m.: Worth noting: because Juliet was actually brought to the Island from outside to help The Others, she knows all of their ways but isn't technically one of them. Which may explain why she's not jumping with each time flash.
8:28 p.m.: John Locke accepts his destiny. He is the leader of The Others.
(break)
8:33 p.m.: I would kill for a purple baseball cap that's completely unadorned.
8:34 p.m.: Just a guess: this chick didn't have what Faraday called "a constant," and that's the reason she turned into that.
8:35 p.m.: So now Widmore was financing Faraday's work? This is getting confusing.
8:36 p.m.: The Others have a thing for taking over other people's stuff.
8:37 p.m.: "Richard's always been here."
8:38 p.m.: Is the chick with the gun the same as the one in the bed from the previous scene? I don't get it.
(break)
8:44 p.m.: Question of the night: is the hydrogen bomb pointed at the ground right now the thing that caused the Island to acquire its time-travel properties?
(Aside: "Jughead" is the name on the side of the bomb.)
8:45 p.m.: So ... the source of the energy DHARMA was trying to harness underground resulted from a buried hydrogen bomb. Now we know something.
(Incidentally, this conversation about the bomb is eerily similar to the one Arzt and the survivors had about the dynamite at the end of Season 1. And we all remember what happened to poor Arzt.)
8:47 p.m.: After saying Mr. Widmore wouldn't even know they were there, he charges into his office? Is he out of his mind?
8:49 p.m.: If Charles Widmore knows where Faraday's mother lives, perhaps he's in contact with her. And if that's true, he knows Ben is there.
8:50 p.m.: My channel just randomly changed on me. So whatever Charles Widmore just said to Desmond after "This is something that goes back many, many years," I missed.
8:51 p.m.: That's the first mention of Jacob thus far this season.
8:52 p.m.: The soldier holding the gun on Locke is Charles Widmore. He's a ruthless bastard, obviously.
And now we know his initial connection to the Island.
(break -- also, my brother and I I would like to announce that it's on like Donkey Kong)
8:56 p.m.: Fishing in the Thames. Ha. You wouldn't want to keep whatever you caught.
8:58 p.m.: Desmond named his son after the father-in-law he and his wife hate. Also, there's at least a 100% chance someone followed him back to their boat.
8:59 p.m.: Richard visited Locke when he was at a very young age, in an effort to recruit him for their leadership.
9:00 p.m.: Charlotte falls, and the circle continues.

And that's that. I think we know a little more tonight than we did at this time last week, but obviously a number of questions remain unanswered.
I'll try to have more the more I can learn from people much smarter than I.