Wasn't this on the Singularity Institute's website before? I could swear I've already read this paper somewhere else.

That is fascinating; the doctors in question should definitely apply for a research grant to help decrease the medical costs involved; they're an invaluable source of medical information. The potential benefits to DNI technologies would be staggering.

(chapter 57)

Did Harry just Transfigure a shotgun?

I stated elsewhere that the shield isn't omnipotent. It also won't prevent injury that isn't mind-threatening. For instance, if she were broken into pieces and not set on fire, this wouldn't be immediately life-threatening, so nothing would happen. Then, by the time she'd be in danger of death by starvation due to being unable to eat while in fragments, she wouldn't have enough energy left that the shield could draw power. She can be killed by anyone who's paying attention. It's just harder for her to be killed accidentally or carelessly.

Is it just me, or does it look like Bella's true power is that she can do anything so long as she can imagine it and honestly justify it as necessary to maintain the integrity of her mind?

If so, when she inevitably goes for revenge for Edward's death against the Volturri, she could very possibly just deprogram the werewolves and splatter the vampires because if she doesn't, they'll rip her to bits and then light her on fire and not stop until she's properly ashes.

At the very least, she should be able to think "If my body is damaged, my mind will be destroyed when I inevitably lose the fight; therefore, my body cannot be damaged" and become nigh-invulnerable physically.

If I'm understanding the chronophone correctly, the thing is that what comes out cannot be anachronistic. Maybe I'm not. If I'm understanding it as a strategy-conveying phone, then it would just tell Archimedes that you're trying to trick him into believing an anachronism.

Personally I'd eagerly chirp about awesome technology like nanobots and solar power and high-speed trains that so many countries seem to be ignoring right now, and hope that it would pick up the kind of stuff Hero of Alexandria was doing with steam and such. (Although this might not work. It's such a shame that he came after Archimedes). It would be very interesting to see how this would turn out in conjunction with the whole space travel --> naval expansion idea...

In writing it's even simpler - the author gets to create the whole social universe, and the readers are immersed in the hero's own internal perspective. And so anything the heroes do, which no character notices as wrong, won't be noticed by the readers as unheroic. Genocide, mind-rape, eternal torture, anything.

Not true. If you've got some time to kill, read this thread on The Fanfiction Forum; long story short, a guy who's quite possibly psychopathic writes a story wherein Naruto is turned into a self-centered, hypocritical bastard who happily mindrapes every woman around him, and the people on the forum spend 60-odd pages lambasting him.

A thought: some of Voldemort's followers were from Easter Europe. I wonder what the odds that they had support from the other side of the Iron Curtain were?

I really doubt Bella will be able to take out Alec and Jane, even with Edward's help. Both are old vampires with way more combat training and experience than even Edward. Jacob also said there are some hard-core Volturi fighters there, probably including Felix.

Bella and Edward may be able to take them with the help of Jacob and the imprinted wolves, though; either by using the free wolves as a decoy for the fighters, - should the Volturi not be hostile to Bella and Edward - or just attacking them together. I'm guessing Jane will be unable to keep a pack incapacitated while fighting, and maybe Alec, too.