Jason> Quick one... 
    Jason> Hypothetically...is it possible for a filesystem to be a few bytes (or 
    Jason> several, but not too terribly many...) short of the end of a partition?  
    Jason> For example, if a partition was 15mb (raw size) and the filesystem was
    Jason> 14.7mb (raw size) would the filesystem remain intact, or would the kernel 
    Jason> eventually panic due to a filesystem error?

No problem.  If the partition was shorter than the filesystem
(one could achieve this by dd'ing a long partition into a shorter one)
than one might have the momentary illusion of success, followed
by enlightenment at some time in the future (from milliseconds to hours,
depending on the relative sizes.)