Exhibit B - Form Of Note: Fill & Download for Free

Ahh, the strawberry. Beautiful, delicious, possessing a little green handle to help you eat it...But wait, what's this...Egad! Now that you've closely examined a strawberry, you can never look at it the same way again. All of a sudden it's like an eighties Glam metal band Air burst over your favorite breakfast comestible!"Get offa my Aggregate fruit, Poison."Not to worry, my good chap. Those little hairs you see on that strawberry are merely part of the Achenes. An achene you might be familiar with is that of the ubiquitous dandelion. Note the fuzzy bits."Doesn't look like no strawberry I've ever seen."An achene is simply "a dry fruit which does not bloom or release its seed upon maturity."[1] Other plants that produce achenes you might know, besides the dandelion and the strawberry, are roses (the rose hips), buckwheat, and cannabis.When you are eating a strawberry, you are actually eating an "aggregate fruit" (not a berry), as the strawberry body is kind of like a holder for all the achenes, and the achenes each have a seed inside them. [2] What you eat is the "accessory flesh" of the strawberry (let the nightmares ensue, bet you've never hear the phrase "accessory flesh" before), which is the medium in which the strawberry's seeds are mounted.Now to get to the hair: most of the hair seems to be a vestige of earlier development. Here's a picture of a strawberry forming. This picture, of a strawberry flower, shows the development of all the typical elements.[3]Exhibit A: the early stages of the development of a strawberry.Now, examine this diagram of the anatomy of a blackberry (another aggregate fruit).Note: this is the anatomy of a blackberry, not a strawberry, but the principles are the same.The flowers bloom, attract some friendly pollinators (such as bees), and you get the development of the strawberry as we know it.Exhibit B: the beginning of a strawberry bud.So, from our examination of the development of a strawberry, it appears that the larger hairs are the remains of filaments (which previously held up the anthers), which are now attached to the fully-formed achenes. From these pictures, however, we can also see many much smaller hairs, which run along the entirety of the plant, and which also seem to be on the strawberry body itself.Many plants have regions that have evolved to not be eaten—regions that provide disincentives to hungry animals. Some of these disincentives come in the form of indigestible material, such as fibrous hairs. Other regions have evolved to be eaten, so that animals will spread the plant's seeds. The delicious part of the strawberry is there to encourage you (or a bear, or a bird) to eat it and thereby spread the seeds of the plant to wherever your travels may take you. It appears to me that some of the "disincentivizing hairs" still form (or are taken up into the fruit in the process of the formation from the base) on the strawberry. I'd posit that since they are so few in number and so small, these tiny hairs don't discourage animals from eating the strawberry in any significant way, and therefore were not selected against in in the drive to create a tantalizing incentive to spread the strawberry plant's seeds.So, in conclusion, it seems like we have two types of hair that we're dealing with; the remains of the filaments and the evolutionary layover from the "don't eat me part of the plant."Enjoy your fuzzy aggregate fruits![1] What Is an Achene?[2] Strawberry[3] Strawberry FlowersThanks to John Burgess for pointing out issues with an earlier draft of my answer.

A quoran in this thread challenged me to present “my 10 favorite” cognates between IE languages, in defense of PIE …While I don’t think PIE needs a defense anymore (the scientific debate moved on ages ago), I did not see anybody in this thread bring out the big guns yet, so in the interest of completeness …Exhibit A: Verb forms (image originally in Bodmer)Never mind the phonetic similarity between the stems, take a look at the endings … you really want to convince me that people in different localities developed near identical conjugations? Try to calculate the probability of that for a moment. Alternatively, find me an example in recorded history where a language has borrowed (not inherited) its inflection pattern from another.Exhibit B: Case endingsI only did Latin, Greek and Sanskrit here because it already proves the point and frankly, I do not have hours to waste on idle debates. I added Old Latin in because it makes the agreement even more impressive. Note: all case forms shown here are attested in writing, no hypothetical “reconstructions”. And now tell me how you get this level of agreement if the respective languages did not come from a common ancestor.(3) ConclusionThe above should convince anybody who is not blinded by nationalistic, religious or other ideological reasons. We can debate if there was one immediate PIE ancestor or several closely related ones that sprang from an even older root - but that’s neither here nor there.An interesting question, however, that had come up was what the actual benefit of PIE reconstruction was. As in: OK, what testable predictions does your model make. Actually, quite a few, there is a nice one in the example above: you will note that Greek neos is missing a w (as in Old Latin NOVOS). IE reconstruction posits a w-equivalent which dropped out before the onset of classical Greek writing. Now, Linear B (which preserves a much older version of Greek) actually shows a word NE-WO which we read as “new, young”. The same old -w- can be posited for other Greek words which then explain why certain Homeric verses don’t seem to fit the meter - once you add the -w- they fit again. One of those words is (w)anaks (leader) - with a w reconstructed from meter, not IE, I should add. And guess what, the word WA-NA-KA shows up in Linear B again. Fascinating, right?So, you can continue engaging in fruitless debate about something that was settled ages ago, or you could take a closer look at where the science actually leads you … your choice.

Oh boy, thank you Sushmit for asking me to answer perhaps the hardest question in all of Tolkien lore!Tom Bombadil, as he was called by the hobbits of Buckland, was known as Iarwain Ben-adar (Sindarin: "Oldest and fatherless") to the elves, Orald (Old English: "Very ancient") to the Rohirrim and Forn (Old Norse: "Belonging to ancient days") to the dwarves.Regardless of what you want to call him, there's not a single literary editor living on Earth today who would allow a fantasy literature author to include this ludicrous character in their novel. Why not?Exhibit A:“Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!”Allrighty then! Moving on to ... Exhibit B:“Now, my little fellows, where be you a-going to, puffing like a bellows? What’s the matter here then? Do you know who I am? I’m Tom Bombadil. Tell me what’s your trouble! Tom’s in a hurry now. Don’t you crush my lilies!”Case closed. The man was obviously a raving lunatic or heavily dosed with hallucinogenic psychedelics.Or perhaps not.Perhaps Tom Bombadil was actually one of the most powerful beings in Middle-earth during the time of the War of the Ring, if not the most powerful.After all, Tom was the one and only being in Middle-earth who was completely and utterly unaffected by Sauron's Ruling Ring.“... Tom put the Ring round the end of his little finger and held it up to the candlelight.For a moment the hobbits noticed nothing strange about this. Then they gasped. There was no sign of Tom disappearing!Tom laughed again, and then he spun the Ring in the air – and it vanished with a flash.Frodo gave a cry -- and Tom leaned forward and handed it back to him with a smile."The sheer amount of power required to accomplish that is staggering.There was not another being in Middle-earth, including Sauron, who could have just ignored the temptation of the Ruling Ring ... and few even in Valinor could. Tom Bombadil's feat required a degree of intrinsic power greater even than the Ring's creator ... and Sauron at the time of the forging of the Ruling Ring was one of the most powerful Maiar in Arda.Or perhaps not.Perhaps it merely required an alien brain incapable of understanding the concepts of "power" and "temptation"?Regardless, we can state with a fair degree of certainty that Tom Bombadil was some sort of incarnated spirit of significant power who chose to take on a human form within Middle-earth ... or at least appear that way to the hobbits he rescued. Therefore I can think of (at least) six possibilities for who or what Tom Bombadil might actually have been:1) A Vala who was not named by Tolkien in the Valaquenta. This appears to make a certain amount of sense, given the incomplete information Tolkien provided in the Silmarillion about the early inhabitants of Arda. If Tom Bombadil were a Vala, it would explain numerous aspects of his known history and behavior:a) It would enable him to validly have been considered the oldest being in Middle-earth.“Then those of the Ainur who desired it arose and entered into the World at the beginning of Time ..."The claim that Tom Bombadil was the oldest being in Middle-earth was made at least twice:1. By Elrond Peredhel at his Council at Imladris:“I had forgotten Bombadil, if indeed this is still the same that walked the woods and hills long ago, and even then was older than the old. That was not then his name. Iarwain Ben-adar we called him, oldest and fatherless.”2. By Tom Bombadil himself:“Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People came, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside.”b) It would explain his utter immunity to the power of the Ruling Ring. A Vala had so much intrinsic power that it did not need that of a lesser spirit such as a Maia like Sauron.2) A Vala who was named in the Valaquenta but who went to Middle-earth incognito at or near the beginning of time. For reasons I won't get into here in the interest of time and brevity, I don't believe this to be the case. But if I had to choose one of the named Valar, it would be Vána, Yavanna's "sister". Again, for the sake of brevity I'll omit my rationale for why Vána was the most logical choice, except to state that Valar are gender-less spirits so it would be no problem for a "female" Vala to take on a "male" incarnated form in Middle-earth.3) A Maia with more internal power than Sauron. I don’t buy this. There were very few Maiar more powerful than Sauron and even a powerful Maia might have been at least somewhat tempted to add to their power by incorporating Sauron's. However Tom Bombadil was completely unfazed by, or oblivious to, the Ruling Ring's seductive power.An additional factor supports the conception of Tom Bombadil as an Ainur (either Vala or Maia) spirit: his facility with music and singing. A distinguishing feature of Tom Bombadil was the remarkable juxtaposition of his incredible ancient-ness and boisterous youthfulness expressed through music. Tom Bombadil seemed at once to incarnate and be sustained by a never-ending internal rhythm that was so fantastically powerful it is like a force of Nature. That basically described the Great Music of the Ainur which shaped the parameters of Arda itself.However, there is a significant argument against these first three possibilities -- Glorfindel's words during the Council of Elrond:“... soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power towards it. Could that power be defied by Bombadil alone? I think not. I think that in the end, if all else is conquered, Bombadil will fall, Last as he was First; and then Night will come.”Note that Gandalf the Grey did not attempt to refute this argument, though he later took exception to Glorfindel's recommendation to throw the Ruling Ring into the sea. Additionally, the Wise at the Council of Elrond did not believe Tom Bombadil could have actually destroyed the Ruling Ring, which should have been well within a Vala's power. This suggests that Gandalf agreed with Glorfindel's words about Tom Bombadil being weaker than Sauron ... and I would never go against the combined wisdom of these two heavy hitters.4) A powerful non-Vala/non-Maia entity that came into Arda, settled in Middle-earth and took on a human form. Similar to the creature Ungoliant but beneficent rather than malevolent. This possibility also makes a certain amount of sense. It provides a mechanism for the entity known as Tom Bombadil to be weaker in power than Sauron but to have remained completely unaffected by Sauron's Ruling Ring simply because he was such an alien entity that the concepts of "power" and "temptation" were outside his scope of understanding. (As Elrond put it: "He is a strange creature.") Additionally, it explains how Gandalf the Grey could have been familiar with him without sensing the presence of a fellow Ainu spirit.5) An incarnation of the essence of Arda itself or at least of its ancient and once-ubiquitous forests; not a spirit created by Eru but a manifestation of the power contained in every rock, tree and water drop in Arda. There is not much to recommend this possibility except a certain amount of poetic beauty, such as his wearing a crown of autumn leaves, and there are at least a few shortcomings arguing against it.6) Eru Ilúvatar Himself, or at least an incarnated avatar of Him. I suppose it's possible, and one could make the argument that Goldberry proclaims Tom to be "The Master." But it doesn't seem likely. For one thing, Eru Ilúvatar seemed to view each and every action of every being within Arda neutrally -- as being equally valid. Even Morgoth's worst crimes were part of Eru Ilúvatar's plan. Yet Tom Bombadil stopped Old Man Willow from trapping and possibly killing the hobbits ... if Tom Bombadil had been Eru Ilúvatar I don't think he would have intervened.To sum up: there may never be a satisfactory answer as to exactly who or what Tom Bombadil was because J.R.R. Tolkien wanted him to remain a mystery. We can weigh the evidence, compose lists of possibilities and make educated guesses as to his nature. But in the end there is only one person who might possibly have known with absolute certitude who Tom Bombadil actually was. And he's dead.But he left us a clue in a letter written in 1954:"And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)."