Actually, I don't find the amount of light released to be far from the mark. Burning several pounds of acorns and converting all the released energy into light would be ridiculous - consider that even at a MJ per kilo, you're looking at a million watts worth of incandescent bulbs for 50-100 seconds (incandescents are only 1-2% efficient IIRC.)
Actually, you might be right. I was thinking in terms of a pound or so of gasoline deflagrating, which would be bright if it happened really quickly but doesn't seem blinding when stretched over more than ten seconds (intuitions based on fires and movie explosions being much brighter than the real stuff). But I was ignoring the spectral focus and the lack of kinetic energy released.
Lets's see: Wikipedia gives wood (red oak!) 14.89 MJ per kilogram. Spent over 60 seconds (the Chaos-Dragon battle is said to have lasted "a lot longer" than "ver...
(The HPMOR discussion thread after this one is here.)
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. There haven't been any chapters recently, but it looks like there are a bunch in the pipeline and the old thread is nearing 700 comments. The latest chapter as of 7th March 2012 is Ch. 77.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: