king of nowhere

actually, as far as i know, there is no accepted univocal definition of life. that's because there are many complex systems that can mimick some of its properties. heck, a few years ago they made a molecule capable of replicating itself from smaller chunks (the molecule was an RNA chain, and it was capable of copying itself by assembling smaller chains; it is considered strong supporting evidence for the RNA world hypothesis); does that count as life? So yeah, I can agree that something like that may even eschew carbon. no one ever mentioned sapient life here. we're strictly talking about bacteria.

I see that as very unlikely. a huge difference between carbon and silicon is that silicon-based macromolecules are much less stable. As an example, you can make hydrocarbons that are indefinitely long, but their silicon-based equivalents spontaneously decompose for a chain length over a couple dozen atoms. Another limitation is that silicon has a very hard time forming double bonds, which dramatically reduce the number of different functional groups you can make with them. Silicon just doesn't have the flexibility of carbon to support differentiated macromolecules. Also the fact that our planet is full of silicon, and yet life doesn't use it at all, is a strong hint against it. That doesn't mean that silicon could not be an important component of alien life; simply, I don't think it could skip carbon entirely. for example the silicones are silicon-based molecules that can be highly differentiated, and they are composed of a main chain of Si-O-Si-O, with minor carbon-based branching chains departing from the silicon atoms. That could be the model of a siicon-based molecule that could support life, but it requires carbon in it. In general, do not confuse "using an element" with "being based on it": I read somewhere someone claim that we discovered "arsenic-based life" in some of the salt lakes, because of a controversial experiment supporting the conclusion that those bacteria iincorporated arsenic in their dna; putting aside that that discovery was eventually debunked, but even had it been confirmed, it would have been carbon-based life that used arsenic.

i am not limiting the storing rate "so much". I am using - for the sake of hypothesis - a ludicrously high storing rate. do you have an idea how much is a megawatt compared to a person? It's one megajoule per second. it's enough to heat all of your body by about five degrees, or enough energy for your car to travel a few kilometers, or the energy released by a modern cannonball on impact. And storing one megawatt means storing that every second. even sleeping. and if - by the sake of this hypothesis - you could store heat at the rate of one megawatt, then with three seconds of compounding you could fully recover yourself from the brink of hypothermia. with one second compounding you'd have enough heat to swim in freezing water for roughly twenty minutes. You could compound one minute per day, and live all your day in freezing water. I'd call it perfectly consistent with "needing to compound only on occasion to tap to impressive levels nonstop. Basically, I think you just don't realize how big are the ammounts of energy we're talking about. Keep in mind that thermal energy(or heat) and temperature are two different things. To someone who has a bit of background in physics it's very cringe-worthy to hear them confused. (thanks for the quote, topomouse). To set off a big enough explosion you need energy. You can use a little amount of energy to heat a very small piece of matter to extremely high temperatures (the sparks you see when hitting a flint stone are actually microscopic pieces of white-hot metal) but you can't get a big explosion out of that, because the energy involved is tiny.

the limit is how much time you have in your lifetime to store. Say that brass compounding allows you to store heat at the rate of one megawatt, which is the consumptiion of a few hundred households and ten thousand times the energy consumption of a human body. Then in your lifetime you could store the energy content of a medium-sized atomic bomb. You'lll still fall short of the energy needed for an extinction event by about one million times.

the heat levels capable of destroying life on our planet are far greater than what any compounder can achieve.

I am less excited than most because I somewhat expected it. I mean, those dark seasonal lines on slopes had been known for a few years, and water had always been the main explanation proposed. So, we got a confirmation of something we already strongly suspected, which is good, but not a world-changing news. I also strongly suspected that was the new discovery when on friday nasa announced that they'd make a big reveal on monday. When they say "mars mistery solved", it could either mean that they found liquid water or that they found life, and the instruments we have there aren't capable of unequivocally detect life, so liquid water it must have been. As for supporting life, that's a question we are not able to answer. Oh, life can exist on mars, that's for sure. They found bacteria in a gold mine four kilometers deep, they survived by oxidizing ores. such bacteria could easily survive deep underground on mars; the ground would protect them from the harsh environment at the surface, and geothermical heat means there would be liquid water available. No, the real question is whether life arose on mars on its own. Right now we have some fairly good ideas on how complex molecules may have gradually evolved from simple ones under the effects of ligthing and cosmic rays, and for every step along the sequence that goes from simple inorganic compounds to simple organics, to complex organics, to biomolecules, to life, we have some plausible explanations for how that could have happpened. The question is, how likely is that? Is it likely enough that iff you take a planet with the right conditions, the evolution of life within a few hundred million years is virtually a certainty? or it is still something extremely unlikely, so that even on a whole planet there is still one chance in a billion of life ever appearing? or what if life requires stricter conditions than we think? sure, bacteria on earth are adapted to live mostly everywhere, but they are the descendant of survivors that resisted at everything the world threw at them. The first bacteria were much less well adapted, so maybe they could only form in very specific environment. So, whether we find life elsewhere in the solar system or not will help us understand how likely is life to form. For the moment, we are not capable of answering the question. As for how people hadn't been talking about it, well, that's the forum of a fantasy writer. People will generally talk about his books. EDIT: I forgot to add, but we aren't even sure of exactly what life requires. We think it needs water, because water has a lot of properties that make it the ideal solvent for life (mostly ebcause it is better than other solvents to support complex organized structures), but I wouldn't be surprised if it was discovered that properly adapted bacteria, with a completely different biochemistry than the one we know, could live in liquid ammonia, using that as a solvent. I'd be more surprised for liquid methane, because it cannot form hydrogen bonds, and its low temperature would stop most chemical processes, buut still I wouldn't rule it out completely. The only certainty I have about life is that it requires carbon and hydrogen, and probably oxygen and nitrogen as well. That says nothing on how those atoms would be arranged, or what other elements may be associated with them.

unfortunately, they are not where I live. Especially not in english. In the best case, i would wait six months and get a translated version (and i'm not enthusiastic about the translation), for twice the original price. In the worst case, it never get translated in the first place.

well, an explosion can happen without confinement if there is a lot of heat involved, like in the case of an atomic explosion. But that heats the air to tens of thousands of degrees in a matter of milliseconds or less. I doubt a feruchemist could achieve effects of that magnitude. As for the secondary power of surviving the effect of yur main power, that's debatable of far that applies here. It is reasonable to assume that you could heat your body with brass feruchemy much more than it would survive otherwise. But if you heat to scorching levels the air around you, will that air be able to harm you? It is very possible. iron feruchemy makes your body harder so it won't get crushed by its own weigth, but it does noty give resistance to external blows, even if the extra hardness should. If brass feruchemy works the same way, you are immune to your own heat, but external heat sources may still burn you. Even if they are less hot than you are. And surely you would not be resistant to an explosion, even the small one you may be able to cause without confinement. That's like standing on a roof and using iron feruchemy to collapse the building: it won't give you resistance to falling on the floor below, much less to the rest of the roof collapsing over your head. EDIT: Hybernation on humans is not so easy to achieve. While movies are full of it, it doesn't seem to work in practice. The main problem is that the bodily fluids freeze slowly, forming crystals that destroy the cells; that at least would be avoided by the extremly fast freezing you coudl achieve with storing heat; that would give amorphous ice. Still, there is no guarantee whatsoever that the body would wake up once unfrozen. Or that it would still work as it should.

I am faced with a conundrum. I wonder if I should order shadows of self immediately, then order bands of mourning a few months after. That means paying twice the shipping cost, which for transoceanic expeditions is more than the price of the book. Plus, the book will still arrive one month later, and this sucks. I vastly prefer a paper version to an ebook, but I realized that could solve the problem. Buy shadows of self as an ebook, then order both in paper when bands of mourning comes out. Saves money, and I get to read sos immediately. However, I've seen that the price of the ebook is higher than I expected. Almost as much as the paper version. And I'm not much comfortable with paying the full price when I'm also buying the paper copy. It just seems needlessly wasteful to pay twice for the same book. I suppose there could be an offer for buying the ebook and book together (haven't looked for it yet), but that doesn't really help me, because the purpose of buying the ebook would be to avoid the double shipping cost. What I would really like would be the option to buy the ebook together with the book at a reduced price, but have the sending of the book delayed until I also can order bands of mourning with it. I thought such an option could interest virtually any transoceanic sanderson reader. Would it be possible to have it among the ordering options?

Oh, but i do fully agree on that. I'm merely stating that she was no more spoiled and injustifiably arrogant than anyone else she contended power with, and she was less incompetent than most.

@ delightful: there are 7 billion people on the planet. half of them are women. Most of them are in an age category when they can potentially desire to be bimbos. If only one in one hundred wants to, it's still 20 million girls. I suppuse you don't know any of them. I also don't know any, and neither I know men who think with their nether regions. That doesn't mean those people do not exist at all. As an example, some 70-80 years ago it was fashionable to have even narrower hips than right now, and several women had the last rib surgically removed to have narrower hips. I'm pretty sure some of the most extreme things done nowadays with surgery also qualify. Furthermore, even if I absolutely don't like those people, they aren't actually hurting anyone - except maybe themselves, but that's their choice to make. So the ideals of tolerance to which I try to comply say that I have to accept their choice and not discriminate them for it. Even if part of me would want to. @ egwene argument: One big thing missing in that debate is the context in which those characters act. Yes, egwene is an arrogant woman who thinks she knows better than anyone else, even when she actually has no idea what's actually going on, and refuses to listen to other's reasons. Yet she is no different from, virtually, any other woman with power in the saga. Or men, for that matter. The only exceptions I can think of are elayne and perrin, who are the only people with power with whom you could actually have a discussion. Although elayne is likely to then follow her own hotheadedness in a moment' decision, and perrin will start charging like a bull at a red drape at the slightest possibility his wife may be in danger. How many times in the whole 14 books two main characters with conflicting ideas sit down to talk and manage to find a good compromise, or one persuades the other peacefully? Just one: when perrin and elayne settled up the legal status the two rivers. anyway, egwene bullied or tried to bully everyone she ever met, except the wise ones. those, she tried to swindle. but those parties are hardly innocent. rand kept going his own way despite the advice of moiraine, but at least he was guided by prophecy and his ta'veren feelings. the wise ones hid informations from rand and from their other allies as much as possible, and the only thing preventing them to scheme for power is that sorilea was in charge and that was it. nynaeve tried to order everybody, ooften threatening people to force-feed them disgusting brews for what basically is disagreeing with them - I see what egwene did to her as no different than tw street thugs beating each other, and one getting the upper hand. You may notice how many secrets nynaeve, elayne and egwene kept from each others, despite beign supposedly close friends. As for the salidar aes sedai, if egwene hadn't taken control, they'd have spent the last battle stuck in their abandoned town still trying to decide whether romanda or lelaine was to be in charge. They may have been "far older, smarter and more familiar with tower politics than her", but I haven't seen any of it. Each one of them only cared for being in charge, not for the tower or anything. The tower aes sedai were no better; one mentions at some point that elaida would be deposed "save for a miracle, like the rebels appearing at the gates of tar valon" (which actually happens). Still, there's nothing to make us think it would have been the case. The hall of the tower was too divided to actually depose elaida, all the ajahs were reduced to voting against each other just for spite, and the ajah heads trying (for a change) to take charge. heck, if they didn't depose elaida after causing a rebellion, trying to kidnap the dragon, sending 51 sisters in captivity, and pitting the ajahs against each other, while the rebels had raised a big army (usefulfor the last battle) and rediscovered a lot of stuff, then they would have never done it. the handful of blacks among the sitters would have seen to it, at the least. Lo, egwene would have wanted to set all the aes sedai doing penances, and she would have been darn right to do so! Then she almost caused a war between the tower and rand. basically, because she wanted to take charge. that was the dumber thing she ever did in all the saga, made even dumber by how competent she had become previously. I like to think that, had he lived, rober jordan would have changed that part. or maybe not. she is, after all, just another woman wanting to take charge. just one who is more headstrong of the others. And one who cared a bit about doing the right thing, and not just about ruling, which made her more fit for the job than virtually anybody else. P.S. It's a pity she never confronted cadsuane. I would have liked to see that.

Well, to be honest, some of them do. Heck, I'd love to say that men don't think with their nether regions and won't by a product they don't need just because the advertising shows some half-naked woman there, but, to be honest, some of them do. Now, I admit I'm not an expert of marketing, but I know they divide the market in "segments", and each segment has specific things it wants. So, when they put out oversexualized content, the marketing guys will tell you they are targeting the market segments "girls who want to look like sexy bimbos" and "men who think with their nether regions" @ comic book heroes being remmade as belonging to minorities: I am not into comics, and I don't know much of how they work, but I have to ask: how can the producers get away with so many retcons? That's far from the only instance; I know superman had more powers that got removed, or that in some comics stuff happened and then in later episodes it was retconned. That kind of thing would annoy me greatly. I can see the marketing value of calling "captain america" or "thor" a totally new guy who just happen to have similar themes, but I'd have a hard time reading stories about a character that is supposedly always the same and yet has changed appearence and significant details of his background several times already.

wow, a lot of things to reply to... Yeah, I think that's wrong, too. I am happily single simply because I never found the right partner, but during my teens years I suffered a lot because of the message passed by society that i needed to have a girlfriend in order to be happy. Including plenty of that "I can't live without you" stuff that works in movies, but in real life can often lead to stalking. It also got me to see most girls around me as potential "targets", because I thought I had to find one - anyone - who wanted to be with me. Incidentally, my relations with girls vastly improved after I realized I didn't need one of them at all costs. So, there's plenty of messages that society passes and that should be fixed. Ok, I should have used something without practical applications, like "you are into fashion". Anyway, I read that in a totally different way: too me, it means "you are a girl sharing my passion. That's nice". With some stronger connotations because it's a passion that is rare to find and it is considered unfeminine. But I guess it strongly depends on how it is worded. More on that as I reply to feather writer. yeah, that's a good argument. And I know it is. I just have a hard time accepting it. I mean, the society will respect a minority more if it is more numerically consistent, and because of that minorities will try to use arguments that they are not so small. Which seem to imply that worth comes from numbers. Which is correct when it comes to voting, but not when it comes to personal inclinations. Still, the concept that if a minority has more right to exist if it is not so small is deeply rooted in the human psyche. It is easier to use it than to fight it. I just have a hard time pshycologically accepting it. Also, it is true that finding similar people is nice. It's certainly good that for all those different kinds of genderqueers there are communities. I was simply stating that even if there is no such community, even if you are the onnly one on the face of earth, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. you are absolutely right, having experience at having marginalized in some way doesn't mean i do understand people who are marignalized in other, very different ways. I didn't want to imply that, at least not so strongly, and I apologize if I used a bad turn of words. But then, isn't by comparing other's experiences with ours that we try to understand? Huh. I am aware that such things happen, but I have never seen it to such levels. That's pretty bad. The times I've seen it used, it was much less rude; it is possible there is more of that kind of rudeness in FPS games than elsewhere, because my experience is that the levels of bad behavior in online players varies strongly with different gaming communities. Yeah, I agree that was really bad behavior. When I said it was merely inappropriate, I was referring to the less rude comments. P.S. I personally have never complimented any girl found on videogames; as I said, I don't consider it rude if the wording is nice, but I always consider it inappropriate when directed towards an unknown person. I have complimented in such a way girls I know in real life and am friendly with. P.P.S I still consider "harrasment" to be excessive; in my vocabulary, "sexual harrassment" means a crime that people should be jailed for, while that was merely something they should be slapped for. It is however possible that it is a failure of my vocabulary. Yeah, thank you for the defence. Yes, what I was basically trying to do was saying "hey, I did that thing and it worked for me, you may want to try it". I may have expressed my case a bit too forcefully. It's difficult to convey the proper shades of forcefulness over an internet forum. P.S. Edited cause I accidentally clicked submit when I was halfway through

yeah, but that's a problem of society, and especiially with the society of the sixties, than a problem of those comic books. It is also a problem for me, because I like several different body types, and sometimes I make compliment to girls that the girls do not perceive as compliments. One oof my favourite is "you are soft", because hey, I like a little padding over a girl. I don't get this thing with super-slim girls; sure, they are nice to see, but the moment you hug them, it feels like hugging a fence. Anyway, I am not trying to woo those girls, so i can tell them what I want to say, not what they want to hear

What i am objecting to is the apparent need of finding others like you to define your identity. You make it appear that to have an identity you have to find someone else like you. phrases like give a clear idea that you seem to think being part of a more numerous group is essential for identity. That's the part I disagree with. That in order to be yourself, you need to be... like someone else. that's pretty much the opposite of identity, if you ask me. You go about how there's nothing wrong with being asexual, but you make it seem like you think there is nothing wrong only because you are 70 millions worldwide; if it was just you being the only asexual person on the planet, then it would be wrong; if you were 140 millions instead, then it would be even more right. The idea I'm trying to pass is that you don't need to be like someone else to accept yourself. I can somewhat understand why social pressure can drive people to do that, but I still think it's overreacting. I also think it gets the wrong message: relying on numbers for it, "accept genderqueers of type X because they are many", impicitly states that it would be ok to discriminate even rarer minorities. It means every minority must fight their own battle. The essage to pass is instead "accept everybody as they are, as long as they're not hurting other people". I am a nerd, which is much akin to be genderqueer under many aspects: you grow up feeling you don't fit with the people around you, most people will think there's something wrong with you, and you must find your romantic partner among a small minority of other people like you. But I never felt the need to fight for acceptance by people; I rather took the opposite approach of finding people who would accept me, and ignoring the rest. I was a nerd far earlier than i ever knew there was a word for it, and knowing such a word didn't change my life. actually, it was harder to accept myself as a nerd once i knew, because of the negative social connotation; accepting that I am as I am is easier than acccepting I belong to a shunned category. And last and more important, I never felt the need to state how many nerds there are to try to get accpetance. If I must explain myself, I say that I am happy to do what i do and going to parties or other stuff than normal people is supposed to do is terribly boring to me. The argument "we must be respected because we are many" just doesn't stick to me. EDIT: Actually, that sexualises and objectifies women. They're there to play games, not for guys to decide how hot they are.As sexual harassment goes, its obviously not as bad as rape threats etc., but thats not actually saying all that much. I beg to disagree. You are merely stating that the woman in question has a rare trait that you find attractive. It's a compliment. How can it be an objectification? It's the equivalent of a woman saying for example "oh, you are a man that likes cooking? That's nice, there aren't many of those". Which to me sounds like a compliment, not an objectification. In fact, it's the very opposite of objectification: if you were seeing the woman as a sexual object, you wouldn't care what she does in her free time. The only inappropriate thing is the context in which the compliment is used, because, I agree on that, people are there to play. And the fact it is used on a total stranger. I feel it would be akin to telling a random passersby on the road "hey, you are very pretty". Which would be inappropriate, but absolutely nothing I would want to call "harrassmment" or "molestation". Also, of course it depends strongly on how it is worded. It can be used as a nice compliment or as a rude appreciation depending on it. I don't remember ever seeing it used rudely. although a friend of mine says that she saw it happen a time when she used a nickname that sounded very girly, and she got plenty of attention. still, she didn't complain about anything particularly rude (and she would have; she likes sexual jokes and innuendos, soif she had been molested she'd have actually joked about it) so the main problem was the amount of messages she got. Anyway, inappropriatedness is not rudeness, and rudeness is not sexual harrassment.

the spiral closely reflects the structure of the choclea, one of the structures in the inner ear. that's all i can think of a connection between the shape and sound

yes, absolutely. but just because a world is not real, it's no excuse to not make sense. I mean, I can accept a world where the sky is filled with ash and people gains power by eating metal powder. i can accept a world where people have superpowers. What i cannot accept is stuff that is not consistent with the workings of those world. say, a person who regularly goes to fight and who expects to fight choosing an outfit that it totally impractical for fighting without any real reason for it.

I think you got the wrong idea of our concept of gender equality. we certainly do not want weakened men, or men incapable of standing on their own. we instead want women to be also capable of doing that if they can. The concept is not "men should not be leaders", it is rather "people who are good at being leaders should be leaders". Or "people should do what they are good at, should pursue the interests they choose, rather than being constricted by social standards based on their sex". Consider: if we lived in a matriarcal society, would you give up on trying to make your wife excercise because she would be supposed to be in charge?

I think both sides have a point here. The way women superheroes are idealized is definitely more fanservice-oriented. But then, we have to keep in mind that those characters were invented some 40 or 50 years ago, when the standards of society were different from now. And yes, the idea that a woman's worth comes from her capacity to attract men rather than by anything she might achieve on her own was stronger at the time. I'm not sure how far emancipation had progressed by then. But that doesn't make it wrong to have beautiful and scantily-clad women. Don't get me wrong: I also am annoyed by it; I wouldn't object to a single heroine being dressed like that, but it's far too widespread to be realistic. Especially when they do battle in those awfully impractical outfits. Heck, in league of legends over half the female champions are fighting in high heels. It's just silly and unrealistic. Also don't get me wrong on a different count: I am not a prude. Far from it. Not only I fully support anything done between mature consensual individuals, but in the specific case of clothing I think beautiful people should be proud of how they look and take pleasure at displaying it. I'd do it myself, if I had any capability to judge male beauty and see if I can qualify. Certainly, if I thought dressing less would make girls around me happy, I'd do it. Just for the sake of making other people happy. I don't understand all those pseudo-feministic (calling it like that to distinguish it from the actually meaningful feministic claims) ideas that if a girl is doing something to please men she is a horrible betrayer of her gender, like if men were an enemy. What I don't like is that it is done for fanservice, or with other purposes in general. Because, let's be honest, the people drawing those comics are putting semi-naked women in it to cater to male readers. That's the part I don't like. That they are trying to cheat me by selling me a story with fanservice. Plus, the story get sacrificed to a marketing ploy, and I find it deeply annoying. To put it bluntly, when I want to see beautiful naked girls I watch porn (or erotic non-nude modeling if I only want them semi-naked). If I am instead reading a comic, it means that I don't want to see semi-naked girls right now, so please don't put them in it. In the same way, I like a girl that dress sexy because she likes to be looked at or to receive attention, but I dislike a girl doing the same because she wants to ask favors. And I respect a prostitute as a person who does a job, but dislike a woman trying to indirectly use her beauty to coax money, for example by getting men to offer her drinks or dinners. Basically, it's the trickery part that I dislike. Anyway, I still don't see anything wrong with scantily-clad beautiful women. I have no interest over seeing them in contexts in which they don't make sense, like an action story, but I don't see anything sexist in exhalting beauty; using it as a marketing ploy is annoying, but I wouldn't call it sexist either. And by the way, I am surprised there isn't a similar use of scantily-clad men targeted towards women. I suppose their sexual drive works differently than with men, but surely it cannot be that different.

i always assumed that the geographical north pole was part of the final empire, just not at the center but rather at a fringe of it.the final empire was pretty big, after all, and scadrial has a low axis tilt. Furthermore, I believe it is located in the terris dominance. It was mentioned that most of terris is a frozen tundra, while thhe ashmounts are centered around luthadel. As the cooling effect of the ash would be greater over luthadel, the only way a place could be colder than it is by being closer to the geoographical pole. Alternatively, the north pole was covered by an ocean.

hoid can use the magic systems of most planets. he has the knowledge to manage it. how does he do it? we don't know. anyway, hoid was old before there was life on scadrial, and that we know for sure

i thought the question had already been answered a few days ago, and we were now on a tangent...

welll, that makes sense as the characters get levels and levels in badass. especially in world where there is magic, so if characters are learning tto use magic it makes actual sense that they become able to dispatch battallions of mooks single-handedly. that begs the question, however: why the dark lord didn't send a battallion first, instead of sending a single mook when the hero is weak and then sending progressively more and more as the hero gets stronger?

you could say that your stored mass is equal to ∫t=0t=z 0.3*M dt

My point is: they need to capture a woman of the right lineage. So they do research on a woman to see if she's of the right lineage. But often she will not be. So they have to research another woman. How many women do they have to research before they find one who meets their criteria? how picky they are? Because, if they have a few dozen women as potential targets, certainly they didn't make research just on those few dozen women. They researched also plenty of other women who did not fit their criteria. And we don't know how many women they have to research before they find one they like. But from the fact that in the whole marriage they took only two women, and they had to look for a while to find them, make me think that they are picky. Not any noblewoman would do for their purposes. So, I stopped arguing that they researched all the noble population. You are right, that's too much. But I still think likely that they researched a few hundred women at the least, and upward to a thousand or two. That many would be a sample small enough to be conceivably researched without too much expence and without rousing suspicion. It is also a sample large enough that it's not too unlikely marasi was part of it. Alternatively, it is possible that one member of the set is someone very close to marasi's family, one of the few who knows her real parentage. That may yet be relevant for the story. I see her father as a very unlikely culprit, but now if some other relative of steris and marasi is introduced in the books, I will have some suspicions on it. But I still think more likely they happened to kidnap exactly steris and marasi because wax rescuing them made for a better story than wax rescuing some unknown woman.