Titan Arum

I feel like Sixth of the Dusk doesn't get as much love as, well, any other book by Brandon. So here ya go, everyone:

I personally think the image of Calamity seems to be...too big for the cover and too big for the cityscape below it. What is up with the perfectly straight lines projecting out of Calamity as well? I can't even tell what they're meant to be. This cover doesn't really work for me. Sad face. Also, no bad metaphors in the blurb? Not even one?!

Spoilers for Sixth of the Dusk

Is it a type of rock? Metal? In its normal state, is it typically one size? Is its size smaller than a chull? Smaller than a loaf of bread? Have we seen it directly on any of the books?

Well said skaa and Kobold King. I am a heterosexual male that identifies as a male. I do a lot of stereotypical male things like play soccer, go backpacking and hiking, have grown a beard for the last 6 years, and drink/make beer. However, I'm not a "manly man". I never will be and I never aspire to be. In America, the stereotypical manly man is muscular, drives a pick up truck, is very assertive, likes to hunt and fish, and build/fix things with their hands. And in my opinion, he seems rather degrading to women. These type of men to me are a trope. Sorry but not sorry: that's not me. My girlfriend recognizes that I'm not such a man and she loves me for it. And conversely I love her for not being overly girly in any way. I'd say we both skew away from the idea of the stereotypical gender in America, but we don't care and are happy with who we are. In the end, as Kobold said: I am me. I am accepting of everyone and every creed to life. I grew up with and went to university with many gay friends, straight friends, transgendered friends, and everything in between on the Kinsey scale. In college I lived with two gay guys: one of whom was the Queen of my university and the other was tall, drop-dead handsome, in great shape, and had gorgeous hair (many of our female friends fawned over his hair). We also lived with a very stereotypical male: he loved Metallica and all types of metal, studied geology and physics, grew a giant beard, built things by hand such as bikes and electronics, and basically backpacked every weekend. The four of us were and still are best friends. We all set aside what society "told" us was gender, and accepted each other for who we are.

9 17th Shard Discussion 4 Tech Support 7 The Coppermind Wiki 12 General Brandon Discussion 10 Events and Signings 7 Interview Database 12 Cosmere Theories 12 Stormlight Archive 12 Mistborn 9 Elantris and Emperor's Soul 10 Warbreaker 7 Cosmere Short Stories 10 The Reckoners 12 The Rithmatist 8 Alcatraz 5 Other Stories 7 The Wheel of Time 9 Writing Excuses 11 Reading Excuses 11 General Discussion 10 Entertainment Discussion 10 Creator's Corner 10 Role Playing 15 Sanderson Elimination 8 Social Groups, Clans, and Guilds 20 Mistborn: The Inquisition

Sixth of the Dusk: Run around on an old man's yard enough, get better technology from aliens without being probed!

Stormlight Archive: Genocide is a justifiable response if your friends aren't trustworthy. [Edit, since I can't spell "Stormlight" and because of general update to moral]

You're still looking at the significance of one observation/draw of four or five Radiants. Which means you're still ignoring the Type 1 Error. Your sample size is too small. You're conveniently confusing probabilities of one event to imply significance overall for all events. And you're conveniently forgetting that it should be a two-sided test. Not one-sided, since we have TWO instances of same-sex spren bonding. Again, just because you flip 5 heads in a row, does not cause me to reject the null hypothesis that the coin is fair. I would want to repeat the test of flipping a coin 5 times in a row over and over again. Because our sample size is going to be much larger in this situation, our statistical precision, or standard error, will be better. As we reach an infinite amount of tests, you'll conclude that the coin is fair and you will not reject the null hypothesis. Without sounding too rude, you're using statistics and interpreting significance incorrectly.

First off, props on knowing that a Chi^2 is inappropriate for a one-sided test. Second, a Chi^2 test would be inappropriate with a sample size of 4 if we are looking at a two-sided test. Instead, the best test for such a small sample size is Fisher's exact test. However, I think you're wrong that we should look at a one-tailed test. A one-tailed test is only appropriate when we want to test one direction of results because we don't think the other direction is important. We already know for a fact that this is not true because we have two observations of same-sex spren bonding, which means a one-tailed test is not valid. Thus, we'd want a two-tailed test to see if the bonding is biased in either direction. Your link to the Wikipedia article showing the results of 5 heads in a row is indicative of why a one-sided test is inappropriate. Would we want a one-sided test if we only flipped the coin 5 times and got heads 5 times in a row and decided to stop testing the hypothesis at this point? If so, we'd have to reject the null hypothesis of the coin being fair, when we know for a fact that the coin is fair. This is what is called a Type 1 Error in statistics, or a false positive. So the question comes down to this one from you: Cliff notes version answer: we don't need any explanation other than randomness, assuming that there is no actual link to a gender-based nahel bond. I know that FeatherWriter has since said that there is something to the gender and spren situation (and I agree that spren are probably gender-less and that the characters are projecting gender onto their spren), but let's continuing answering your question for the sake of understanding. First off, in my line of statistical work, a sample size of 4 is not nearly large enough to yield anything meaningful. I'd argue any correlations we see at this point are just noise, simply because of the low sample size. In my work, I need at least 30 or 40 observations to make any meaningful comparisons, and usually I need 900 to 1200 observations to find statistically significant differences between groups (because I usually try to detect VERY SMALL deviations). If I don't get a large enough sample size, my statistics are under-powered and and significant results could just be superfluous Type 1 errors. In our spren case, we first see four or five cross-gendered bonds. This in my opinion could be due to coincidence/randomness, because it's such a small sample size. Thus, a false-positive. Given this, let's have a quick conversation about what probabilities are and what they mean. Probabilities simply look at the percentage likelihood of a certain outcome. In this case, the probability of four cross-gendered nahel bonds is simply (1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2) = 0.0625 = 6.25%, as you stated. If we were to take a random draw with replacement of two possibilities (cross-gendered or same-gendered), we'd expect that 6% of the time we'd get four in a row that are cross-gendered. It is a low probability, but it definitely is none-zero. Thus it's not impossible that we'd see this (though unlikely). In fact, if we were to do this exercise (choosing 4 draws with replacement) 100 times, roughly 6 times we'd see this outcome. Finally, if we exclude what FeatherWriter says (because there is something up with the gender, which implies that our understanding is not independent of the outcome), we'd assume that these draws are independent of each other. Thus, it is possible that we get two draws of four cross-gender pairwise bonds one after the other. The probability of this is (1/16)*(1/16) = 0.0039 = 0.39%. Yes, it is low, but it's still non-zero. I guess my point is that, statistically, we wouldn't need an explanation for this anomaly other than it could be purely random....assuming that there isn't something up with these cross gender bonds. All of this, though, makes me think of how people commonly misinterpret probabilities and odds. Just because you live on a 100 year flood plain (odds of 1 devastating flood over a 100 year period) and you had a flood last year, that doesn't mean you won't get a flood this year as well. The floods are independent of each other...basically on average over a long period of time, floods occur every 100 years. In probabilistic terms, this means that in any given year there is a 1/100 = 0.01 = 1% probability of a flood and that the probability you get two of these floods in a row is 0.01%. Highly unlikely, but it can and does happen in the real world. Basically, don't complain to nature that you had a flood last year if you get another this year because nature doesn't care about the odds or the short term.

My assumption would be that the entire charge in the spike is evenly distributed throughout. Why? If just the tip had most of the charge, then the spikes going through an Inquisitor's eyes would imply that those two spikes are more or less worthless hemalurgically and only for show/intimidation (no matter what the answer is, eye spikes are intimidating!) The reason is two fold. First, the spikes extend all the way through the skull out of the eye sockets. Thus if the tip held most of the charge, would the body be able to absorb the charge efficiently if it were extended out of the the body like the eye spikes? My assumption would be no, because a hemalurgic spike doesn't work when it's out of the body or simply being held. It has to pass through or into the body some way to work. Second, we know the eye spikes give the Inquisitors sight through Allomantic iron or steel. If the tip is the part that is primarily charged, then they'd lose a lot of their ability just for that intimidation factor (assuming they can't use the power if it's out of the body). From Marsh's perspective alone, his sight proved that he could see the vast majority of the world around him through the metal lines but if the charge of the spike were to not be evenly distributed, then he'd probably need hemalurgic eye glasses of some type to see the world so strongly. (Now I'm imagining an Inquisitor with spectacles!) Given your first question with regards to Spook...that would imply that the entire sword would be a spike. Not just the tip that broke off into Spook's shoulder. I'm surprised that Ruin didn't use this additional spike somehow because otherwise it'd be a wasted spike!

I assume it was good. Your hotel is expensive too! $249 a night. Thankfully work is covering the bill. When you're on the 17th Shard at 9 pm instead of on the National Mall watching the fireworks by the Washington Monument (I live in DC about a mile away from the Mall). Because 17th > fireworks.

This one's a little weird, but bear with it... When you're dreaming and in your dream you're doing an expense report for a work trip and the name of the hotel you stayed at is "Hotel Kobold King". I guess I'm on these forums a wee bit too much!

Based on the numbers, I'd assume this is a probabilistic approach similar to creating a propensity score to determine the probability that one would be given a certain "treatment" due to observable characteristics. (I'm an economist: statistics is my thing!) In this case, the treatment is what Knights Radiant order you'd be. The numbers basically say that given your characteristics the probability you'd be in a given order, without looking at the other orders (i.e. and independent draw), is what you see as a percentage. Thus you're a 59% match for the Truthwatchers based upon your answers and what is known about Truthwatchers characteristics. My quiz results are as follows: Willshaper - 53% Stoneward - 47% Skybreaker - 41% All the others are less than 30% so I won't list them. I always saw myself as a Willshaper since I love to go on adventures and travel. I am also known to be quite scatter-brained and optimistic...so yes, Willshaper I am!

You have no right to say what I have a right to say/think/or write. In fact, I bet others would agree that it is fair to compare the two at this point since we KNOW that Reckoners is set in our universe. As natc says, we should and can compare the power of a black hole to a Shard. And besides, who cares if we don't have people in our universe with real super powers. This is fantasy and fiction as you say. That doesn't mean we can't apply real physics to it when a part of it is set in our world. If Brandon were to decide that suddenly our universe were set in the same universe as the Cosmere so he could pull the wool over our eyes to say Calamity is a Shard, then that is poor writing and he'd have a lot of angry fans on his hands. Everything he would have previously said that is WoB would be a farce and then people wouldn't take him seriously anymore. If we're 99.9% sure Calamity is not a Shard, then that is statistically significant and implies that the probability of it being otherwise is so small that it's probably zero. At this point, find something else that you can play devil's advocate with, because then maybe you'll get people to play on your side as long as there is evidence for it. Here, at this point, all of us are in agreement that you're probably wrong. We've provided evidence for why you're probably wrong, but you keep at it and seem to ignore the evidence we present. At this point, I'd be willing claim that you're just trolling us. So, this is my last response to you on this thread. You're not worth the time or effort any more because you don't know how to have a logical debate. Any argument that depends on "I say it's true despite all the evidence against it" means I can't take you seriously because you're deluding yourself and only looking for what you want to see.

I'm on my mobile right now but I'm pretty sure you brought up our galaxy first. Also, if we're asking questions about different universes and we know Reckoners is set in OUR universe and on our planet, then I have every right to compare our universe to a fictional one, the Cosmere.

When will the evil laughter end?!?! It keeps reverberating around and around my apartment. It's starting to scare my dog SiMon!

I actually love Warbreaker. It's one of my favorites of Brandon's. I only suggest it before SA because of...you know who. Reading it right before SA, and you'll be more likely to get the reference. Also, creating a suggested reading order has no bearing on whether or not a book is liked. At least that's how I feel. The order to me is about readability and linkages. For example, I really believe Mistborn is the best way to start because it's more well written than Elantris and storming entertaining. I usually then recommend Elantris right after Mistborn. But since our friend has already read Elantris, I left it off of the list.

Welcome! The cookies here are, well, not drugged, but spiked to say the least. But not spiked how you think I mean that word. When I say spiked, I mean literally stuck through with metal spikes. Anyway, you'll understand what that means once you read the Mistborn series. Which is what I'd recommend you read after Elantris. In fact, read all Cosmere books in the order that Cracknut suggested: 1) Mistborn Trilogy 2) Alloy of Law (another Mistborn book, but not part of the main trilogy...and books 2 and 3 of this series come out the end of this year and the beginning of 2016) 3) Emperor's Soul 4) Warbreaker (free on Brandon's website!) 5) Stormlight Archive 1 and 2 6) Sixth of the Dusk, which is a short story but set furthest in the future of all of his Cosmere books/short stories. There's another short story called Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell that you could probably read whenever you want. Also, if you email Brandon on his website you can get two unpublished works of his called White Sand and Aether of Night. White Sand, though, is currently being made into a graphic novel and may not be as canon as the graphic novel when it comes out.

Oh, you didn't know? This is actually Brandon's true portrait: In all seriousness, he does an amazing job outlining works and just as LabRat said, he doesn't necessarily power through everything at once. He'll space it out. He's said that if he went from SA2 straight to SA3, he'd probably go crazy and take a while too. Thus he writes other books between them so that when he gets back to a SA book he's excited and completely dedicated to it. I've now reached the point that it's hard to wait even less than a year for a new Sanderson book. I feel like he's not writing fast enough anymore Maybe I am a Sanderson Junky?

Ha. That's a horrible argument too. Is a black hole not powerful? It sure isn't sentient, but it's very powerful! There are forces in our universe, thus entities, that are very powerful. Heck, atomic bombs are powerful. Humanity is powerful. The point is, we KNOW the books that are not Cosmere are not in our universe let alone in our galaxy. With your B scenario they are in different universes, right? Ok, then if Universe B is not Cosmere, it probably isn't ruled by Realmatic theory. Thus it'd be impossible for a Shard to worldhop to a new universe. And why would it do that when there are PLENTY of other planets to do stuff on in it's already small star cluster within its galaxy that the Cosmere is set in? It could just hide somewhere else in its own galaxy. Which, actually, a Shard IS doing. This hiding Shard is the Calamity you've been looking for.

Your logic for A is extremely faulty if A = "a galaxy within a universe". Even if the two galaxies are in the same universe (and they're not), that does not mean that Calamity is a shard escaped from the Cosmere galaxy. That is a leap of logic larger than the distance between Earth and the furthest object in our universe relative to earth, a gamma ray burst named GRB 090429B. There is no evidence, none, to support something like you claim. In our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, name me ONE entity that has come into our galaxy from another galaxy? The distance in space between our galaxy and others is vast. The likeliest way entities from another galaxy could possibly be in our galaxy is if the two galaxies are merging. To put this into perspective, the closet Galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda. They're 2.5 million light years apart and currently are moving towards each other at 402k kph. At that rate they won't begin to merge for 4 billion years. Thus, the probability of an entity coming from another galaxy into our own at any time is so close to zero we may as well call it zero.

source: Quiver

I agree with you, it does not sound like Marsh. Marsh wasn't really part of the crew like the others were and probably would never have called Sazed by his nickname. Whoever wrote the book was obviously very familiar with Sazed before the Last Ascension. Which is why I immediately suspected Spook. Spook knew Sazed quite well and they had a mutual respect for each other after Urteau. And he was knowledgeable about hemurlurgy and recognized that it was mostly a way for Ruin to control him or persuade him despite the powers it provided. Just like the passage in Chapter 2 seems to describe. The only problem with this argument is that Spook wouldn't really know that much about spike placement and the different powers one could receive based upon the type of spike and the location of the spike.

Ahh that's right. It's been awhile since I've read AoL. I should go re-read that now... So we can probably assume that Marsh is the author.