Hi, I'm a (white, male) physics student from Germany and 20 years old. My main reason for not believing in any religion is Occam's razor. (I'm not sure whether this makes me atheist or agnostic. Any thoughts on that would be appreciated.)

I stumbled across HPMoR by accident in 2010 and read "Three Worlds Collide" and some other texts on Eliezer's personal website. During 2011, I did some Sequences-hopping (i.e. I started at one article and just followed inline links that sounded interesting, thus causing a tab explosion) I finally registered a few weeks ago to join the recent MoR discussion threads. For the future, I plan to read the Sequences in the intended order (which will probably take me until at least 2013) and join some other discussions from time to time.

Apparently I was being excessively coy. I meant they can't be destroyed without his knowledge. (Also, I notice you left out the stratosphere one.)

Also, this led to a different thought immediately afterwards which I didn't have time to post.

This could explain (some of) Quirrell's dormant-times. He's visiting his other Horcruxes and checking on them. It doesn't fit perfectly because I wouldn't expect it to take much longer than a few seconds for him to check on them. Maybe he's possessing people during those times, or something.

Think one step further. What does this imply about his other Horcruxes?

They could still break it once per incarnation.

Because it's the only large family mentioned and the only family that relies on Muggle technology over superior magic (e.g. stitches).

Wasn't deadly serious: I don't know if it's mentioned directly, but it can't be a mistake that it's a family of six boys, then a girl, and then no further children. I've seen that pattern before.

Oddly, that implies that (some) wizards can't/won't sex-select their kids.

There was a bookcase containing random books rescued from a bargain bin, and a full shelf of ancient magazines, including one from 1883.

Funny. 1883 seems to be the year Grindelwald was born. (Although that's not sure – it even says “c. 1882” in the main article.)

I can't see how this might be related to the rest of the story, and most probably this is just a way of telling us “Yes, these magazines are ancient.“ On the other hand, this 1926/1927 thing made me somewhat more susceptible to possibly meaningful dates …

Interesting.

It is rather unlikely that Christina Rossetti intended this to be a rationalist quote in a sense we would identify with. I do read it as an argument for scientific realism and belief in the implied invisible, but it seems likely that she was merely being poetic or that she was making a pro-religion argument, given her background. Of course the beauty of this system is that if someone quotes this to you as an argument for God (or anything), you can ask them what the leaves and trees are for their wind and thus get at their true argument.

Furthermore, the context in which I first read it is the video game Braid, juvpu cerfragrq vg va gur pbagrkg bs gur chefhvg bs fpvrapr. I would highly recommend this game, by the way.

Assuming that you want to keep the exercise somewhat entertaining, modifying a game like balderdash to start with dilbert-esque executive speak and move towards ever more specific levels could provide a fun, easy to understand method to practice moving up and down in levels of specificity.

As to how this would work in practice, have everyone present get into groups of 5-10 (or however many are sitting at a table) and give everyone a key phrase of execu-speak, such as "Energize the end-user experience." Then, everyone writes down a short, but more specific description of what the phrase really means. All of the player-generated statements are read aloud to the table (which will also display how vague the initial phrase was, since everyone should have vastly different answers), and the table votes on which is the best written response, and authors get a point for each vote they receive. Then, the exercise is repeated with the phrase the group selected as the best, for several rounds, or until everyone's responses are approximately the same, showing that a undisputable level of specificity has been reached.

For fun, you could run the exercise in reverse as well, giving a very concrete example and challenging people to go the opposite way, and give a less specific example phrase.

Hagrid's story seems to be unchanged, and Harry is aware of it - he was told he was responsible for getting the conviction overturned and the wand returned. The point is more that Lucius Malfoy doesn't directly control the Wizengamot. His main tool at this trial seems to be rhetoric, drumming up righteous indignation and playing the part of the aggrieved Noble. If Harry stops focusing on Lucius and in stead focuses on the individual voters, he can find arguments to sway different sections.

Hagrid's case sets a precedent which makes it obvious the Wizengamot is playing to a double-standard in this case, but he would certainly have to come up with more arguments. Another point he could make is that Hermione had no motive. Another is that her behaviour before the event was completely out of character. He has Hermione right there, and veritaserum on hand, so if he asked her the right questions under veritaserum he could probably find out about the huge chunk of missing time she has in her memory - good evidence that she was psychologically manipulated.