Lost Personal Commentary I'm watch ''Lost'' with my reality-TV addicted wife. So far, the players have completely failed to impress me.

Bear in mind I'm not an outdoors person by any means. This is what I would study if I was expected to compete.

None of the six players seems to have taken the time to study the stars. By the first night, they should have known at a minimum which hemisphere they were in, for both North/South and East/West hemispheres. With a bit of work, you should be able to do significantly better. (Conceivably, the contestents could have narrowed down what country they were in to only three possibilities, which I won't share since people on the West Coast haven't seen the show yet :-) ) I suppose it would have ruined the suspense of stage one if somebody nailed the country on day one.Also note that in both hemispheres, the stars give you true north (Polaris) or south (Southern Cross). Compare that with true Magnetic North, and you can place yourself within +/- 5 degrees longitude without much work in much of the world. For instance, in much of South America, true and magnetic north pretty much match.

The other thing that failed to impress me is that while trying to talk to the natives and figure out where they are, nobody thought of drawing a map of the world in the sand. Of course, given the state of American understanding of the world, perhaps none of the contestents could have drawn an adequate map of the world...