I noticed that too--I'm not sure what it is with Moody, but in an earlier revision of Chapter 97 he'd ended the chapter by saying "what the crap--" (it's now been changed to "WHAT -"). It's unclear if EY edited the earlier chapter because it wasn't very British or because it seemed out-of-place, but for whatever reason, he's saying it again now.
For that matter, "mention" is misspelled as "mentio" in the A/N.
I don't see why they're still worried about Bellatrix, it looks like she's been rendered mostly 'armless.
"Fourth. One piece of exceedingly unexpected and happy news. Hermione Granger is alive and in full health, sound of body and mind. Miss Granger is being observed at St. Mungo's to see if there are any unexpected afteraffects from whatever happened to her, but she appears to be doing astonishingly well considering her previous condition."
Should be "aftereffects".
I guess the only other evidence we have is that the Map, using the wards, would (implicitly) alternate between showing him as QQ and TR depending on whether QQ was being actively possessed, but as far as we know reported relatively consistently on the presence of the Defense Professor, such that it was a surprise to Dumbledore that the wards reported him being the troll. We do know that the wards are able to remain aware of identity even through transfiguration, as shown with both the troll and the unicorn.
It seems like that's about as consistent with the ...
If Harry's right about the effect that transfiguring the stunned Voldemort will have, won't the wards identify "the Defense Professor" as still alive?
Ch. 116:
But the International Conferation of Wizards
Should be "Confederation".
Madam Hooch brew a shrill whistle
Should be "blew".
I'm sure there's some small simple potion that makes a whistling noise as its only effect...
deleted
I wonder if he's just getting a new name for arbitrary reasons (like HPJEV, Bellatrix, etc.), for just this sort of anagram fun, or for some story-related significance to his mother naming him after her brother instead of her father?
Looks like I misunderstood the relevant passage in Chapter 49--when Quirrell confirms that other snake Animagi can't overhear them, he isn't implying that you also have to be a Parselmouth, he's implying that he can only understand Harry because Harry wills it.
Iirc, in canon, the Gaunt family (Voldemort's family) was the last living set of descendants of Salazar Slytherin, and they were very inbred by the time of the books, so it appears that JKR at least provided some workaround for this.
As for the reliability of Parseltongue, there's some precedent for it apparently serving as truth-enforcement. Chapter 49:
..."I am not regisstered," hissed the snake. The dark pits of its eyes stared at Harry. "Animaguss musst be regisstered. Penalty is two yearss imprissonment. Will you keep my ssecret, boy? &quo
For that matter, why did he ever bother turning into his snake form? Just to make Harry think he had the limitation of not being able to speak Parseltongue while human, for some reason?
Voldemort is the last known Parselmouth, so it would be highly suspicious for Quirrell to also be one.
As for the last possibility, he doesn't leave from the Quidditch game until around a quarter past 11, so that can't help him for another five hours or so.
Professor Quirrell then turned back to where the Potions Master lay sprawled, bent over and placed his wand on Professor Snape's forehead. "Alienis nervus mobile lignum."
The Defense Professor stepped back, and began to move his left fingers in the air as though manipulating a puppet on strings.
Professor Snape pushed himself up from the ground by smooth motions, and stood once more before the corridor door.
From Chapter 88: Time Pressure, Part 1, before anyone knows about the troll yet:
..."You know," Harry said, as he turned his head aw
Based on Harry apparently still feeling the aura of doom when Sprout was casting spells while Imperiused in Ch. 104, it's likely that casting spells on Harry through someone else is subject to the same problems that doing it directly causes. I guess he could still use more mundane means like a tranquilizer dart and some kind of gurney, but it would be difficult to accomplish without either touching or using magic on Harry in the process.
That's what I thought too, but any idea why the chapter ends by saying "nine days yet remained"?
I rot13d it in my comment just because it's funnier if you figure it out yourself, and like many stealth jokes, it's easy to figure out once you know there's a joke to look for (if you've read canon). If it was an actual spoiler for the chapter that would facilitate discussion because it wasn't just a random throwaway joke, then I wouldn't rot13 it.
Not a spoiler, but rot13'd for explaining the joke:
"All of you in this room... have received grades of at least Acceptable. Neville Longbottom... who took this test in the Longbottom home... received a grade of Outstanding. But the other student who is not here... has had a Dreadful grade entered on her record... for failing the only important test... that was given her this year. I would have marked her even lower... but that would have been in poor taste."
Gur bayl tenqr ybjre guna Qernqshy vf "Gebyy".
¡He terminado!
Less of a joke than a pithy little truism, but I came up with it:
Notability is not ability.
Silver seems to be a running theme for anti-death things (add the Silvery Slytherins and the Peverell crest to that list). Unicorn blood is a likely candidate, though. (Also, that bit you mentioned is probably worth rot13ing since it came from a source that he suggested not reading.)
Quirrel could have suggested or stipulated that wording when zhe and Dumbledore were working out how to identify Quirrel to the wards, reasonably assuming that Dumbledore wouldn't think the "he" was the suspicious part.
Interesting. Some of the things that have been described as silver or silvery so far:
All of these seem to have in common that they represent some sort of resistance to death or indifference (usually represented by coldness, like the vacuum of space or Harry's dark side). This has probably already been pointed out a lot, but I predict that whatever is glinting silver in the prologue represents somet...
It can also be an issue even for canon-knowledgeable readers. A lot of the time readers are used to Harry's thought processes happening in the absence of certain key knowledge from canon (the Philosopher's Stone, etc.), so it's jarring when Harry learns major pieces of information offscreen (the Marauder's Map, etc.)
Maybe certain other Deathly Hallows symbols will now light up in Harry's presence, especially if there is a lost storehouse of some sort with a similar mark.
If it doesn't end up being important, it could just be whatever enchantment is on the Peverell gravestone that makes it recognize someone's anti-Death resolve (possibly only if they're a Peverell descendant) and recite the prophecy, pointed out in the narration so the reader knows where the prophecy was coming from.
Canon strongly implies that the original story was a dramatization of the story of the Peverells, who actually just made powerful artifacts, iirc. Also, dementor cloaks probably aren't invisibility cloaks, since people and other dementors can see cloaked dementors.
New idea: going on the "Dumbledore faked Godric's Hollow" theory, what if "Voldemort's" body that gets found is the unrecognizable, burned body of Narcissa Malfoy?
I interpreted it as Harry being jolted out of his all-consuming inner monologue by Dumbledore suddenly touching his shoulder while he wasn't paying attention to Dumbledore at all.
...But Harry didn't see anything helpful he could do using spells in his lexicon, Dumbledore wasn't being very cooperative, and in any case this was several minutes after the critical location within Time
"Harry," the Headmaster whispered, laying his hand on Harry's shoulder. He had vanished from where he was standing over the Weasley twins and come into existence beside H
Good point--in the original wording, it says it was inscribed by "Bellini", who is established earlier to always tell the truth.
I think it's important that this comes just a few chapters after Dumbledore regrets resenting Harry for having spent his fortune to save Hermione, when he (Dumbledore) chose not to do so to save Aberforth.
"I - I'm sorry, Harry - I -" The old wizard pressed his hands to his face, and Harry saw that Albus Dumbledore was weeping. "I should not have said, such things to you - I should not, have resented, your innocence -"
(Ch. 84)
In the explanation for the puzzle this is adapted from (Puzzle 70 in What is the Name of this Book?, in the "Portia's Casket's" chapter), Raymond Smullyan raises both points: "The suitor should have realized that without any information given about the truth or falsity of the sentences, nor any information given about the relation of their truth-values, the sentences could say anything, and the object (portrait or dagger, as the case may be) could be anywhere. Good heavens, I can take any number of caskets that I please and put an object in ...
I think I did mean to be sarcastic, since it doesn't seem to be actually affiliated with the publishers of Webster's dictionary and the design of the site looks generally sketchy, but coming back to my comment now, you make a good point.
I think a separate discussion post would be useful. When I wrote this, I was thinking of the PoC as something like an axiom that's not explicitly built into logic, but is necessary for productive discussion because otherwise people would constantly nitpick or strawman each other, there would be no way to stop them, and so on. Based on the discussion here, though, it's seeming more like a tool intended for social situations that's usually suboptimal for truth-finding purposes, although again, it's still better than always going with your initial interpretation or always going with the least logical interpretation.
Huh, I'd never realized the connection between PoC and LCPW before. I'll have to think about that, although I wouldn't necessarily say LCPW is a replacement for PoC. They solve different problems in practice--like lessdazed said, PoC can be more effective at countering overconfidence in knowing what you think your opponent meant, if that's the goal. Would you mind giving an example though?
ETA:
...For example, you search harder for possible reasonable interpretations, to make sure they are available for consideration, but retain expected bad interpretations i
Excellent point, I've added to that sentence both for consistency and to make it flow better into the next paragraph. Thanks!
Note that this is my first main post, so in addition to feedback being appreciated, I also hope this hasn't been written about before here. It seemed original when I wrote it, but I easily could have read and forgotten about it.
Just took it, but I think I might have given an overelaborate answer for "Religious Background," in order to give more information than "Family Religion" provided.
Great post. I've had a similar idea for a while but didn't realize just how far it could be generalized.
I especially noticed this idea while reading C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, which seems to posit the hierarchy as being something like "Belief in Christianity because of social pressures / Disbelief in Christianity because who needs social pressures / Belief in Christianity because of comprehension of its 'true meaning' (or something)".
I guess when there are potentially a lot of layers of meta-contrarianism like in Matt_Simpson's example, t...
I was thinking more in terms of moral concerns, so I should have specified to ignore health as well.
I think asking whether or not to value biodiversity is the same sort of question--it reduces to personal preference.
Related question: Independent of any ecological or economic concerns, should a rationalist be a vegetarian?
I attended a lecture by noted theologian Alvin Plantinga, about whether miracles are incompatible with science. Most of it was "science doesn't say it's impossible, so there's still a chance, right?"-type arguments. However, later on, his main explanation for why it wasn't impossible that God could intervene from outside a closed system and still not violate our laws of physics was that maybe God works through wavefunction collapse. Maybe God creates miracles by causing the right wavefunction collapses, resulting in, say, Jesus walking on water, ...
Sheesh, who knew even productivity could be destroyed by the truth?
Doesn't seem to work for me.
Looks like File > Exit works. Still, though, having to go to the File menu can work as a minor barrier to impulsiveness.
Also, AD, the saved session feature in Firefox 4 is kind of the opposite of Firefox 3--it asks you if you want to open your last session when you start, instead of asking if you want to save when you quit, in case you were wondering.
Sad but true. Often, I find that it helps to open a new window for things that I need to read, fill out, etc., because 1), it makes it harder to be distracted by the "fun" tabs I also have open, and 2), Firefox (at least) can't save all of your tabs when you have two windows open, so you have to close one of them, and the "serious" window is a way to force yourself to finish everything in that window before you close your browser and do something else.
Having said that, LW usually takes up most of my saved "fun" tabs...
Maybe I should work on reducing the "value" part of the equation for distracting activities. (For example, reading negative reviews of "The Secret" on Amazon)
Maybe Superman doesn't risk much when he goes around being heroic, but it takes a certain strength of morality for Superman not to take over the world and use it to his own ends.
Great tool. Does the API you're using allow unanswerable questions to be flagged at all though? Just got one question that depended on an image that wasn't there, and another with no question body. Also, labeled axes on the graph might be nice for people who don't already know how calibration curves work and/or don't like unlabeled axes.