[tangelo212]

Dudes, I just went back to the episode where Mrs. Hawking first shows up, and there's so much good stuff. It's season 3, episode 8, "Flashes Before Your Eyes." Around 15:20, Desmond visits Widmore's office (and Thetagirl218, his paintings DO say "NAMASTE," but written backwards. There's also a polar bear in one of them).
Hawking appears around 25-26 minutes. It's a great scene, I recommend going back and watching (which I clearly just did).

I DO still think Faraday's correct about not being able to change future events for these reasons:

Desmond kept having visions of Charlie dying, and he repeatedly tried to save his to change the outcome of future events, but then he knew he couldn't save him b/c that was what's supposed to happen and he couldn't change it.

Also, in this episode (season 3, #8), Mrs. Hawking points out the man wearing red shoes, who then gets crushed by scaffolding, and Desmond asks her why she didn't do anything, and she replies "Because it wouldn't matter...the universe has a way of cause-correcting." This happens around 29-30 minutes.

So if she is passive and knows that future events can't be changed by acting differently in the past, I don't understand Faraday's contradicting his own theory (as corroborated by Mrs. Hawking) that whatever they do in the past cannot change future events (e.g., his insistence that the bomb be buried). If he knows that the bomb isn't going to explode (at least for 50 years it hasn't), then he can sit back relax and not worry about it. Unless he is trying to do this to appease the Others, but it seems like he truly believes that he needs to DO something about it.