I'm pretty sure this is part of Brandon Sanderson's master plan to make humanity's culture so awesome that when we finally meet some aliens, they'll be so impressed that they will give everyone free alien-cake.
Beetnemesis in a review
from Regarding Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings by Beetnemesis
Before modification by Etzel at 24/04/2010 09:18:19 AM
It does rather look, as if the person on the left is Thom, in the middle Mat, but the right person scratching on the ToG actually isn't Noal, maybe Olver or someone else?